Solely focusing on “the bigger picture” is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a problem! Why? It prevents us from practicing the day-to-day emotional availability needed to enjoy the journey of our lives in the present moment.
However, the mainstream self-help genre, celebrity life Gurus, and even some traditional therapies teach us, high-level goal focus is the way. The conventional self-help wisdom is that concentrating on “the bigger picture” is the key to a happy relationship, getting unstuck, goal achievement, and other problems we face as sapiens.
Over 2.12 million Google results back up the philosophy that dedication to long-term, broad thinking about our goals, and the end game, is one of the secret formulas to success.
But, is it?
I think NOT. I’m not going with the majority on this one.
Huston, we have a BP Problem (Bigger Picture Problem) !
Conventional self-help culture has encouraged us to obsess about “the bigger picture” as a solution to achieving success and overcoming our problems— a zinger to our mental health.
This approach takes us to the end of the journey and we can’t focus on the present moment— the here and now of the journey.
When we are in goal obsession mode, we’re not practicing emotional availability. In this frenzied state, we lose sight of the enjoyment of the journey in the NOW, and the process of our self-actualization (in the present moment).
Practicing Day-To-Day Emotional Availability Requires We Prefer Success Versus Demand Success
There are downsides to your emotional well-being when you get overly laser-focused on obtaining the relationship of your dreams, the career of your dreams, your ambitions, and doggedly working to obtain these things as if you’re working on a cure for COVID-19.
Let’s suppose you’re trying to break the pattern of being involved with EUPs (Emotionally Unavailable Partners).
You feel as if you are emotionally available and ready to date.
Brava! That’s great!
Next, you start to do the work of loving yourself while dating.
Now, let’s say it’s been years of “doing the work”, yet you find yourself unhappy because all of this “loving yourself” and “good work” still isn’t manifesting in the relationship you desire.
Come closer. Lean in.
You can start practicing day-to-day- emotional availability by learning the difference between PREFERRING that you are successful in life and relationships, rather than DEMANDING IT!
There’s a difference.
This is counter to pop mainstream culture and gurus who overpromote the power of visualization, positive affirmations, atomic habits and all of that personal empowerment jazz.
Yes, those techniques can be effective; however, it still stands that there are things we don’t have the power to change straightaway. A component of practicing day-to-day emotional availability is embracing that acceptance.
We can prefer a different reality or experience, yet demanding that things be different will lead us to self-inflicted emotional pain.
Emotional Demands Versus Preferences for Our Goals
Let’s continue with the above point about dating readiness. Yes, maybe you’ve assessed that you’re ready to date.
However, just because you are on the path to loving yourself doesn’t automatically mean you will find an emotionally available partner (simply because you are studiously engaging in self-care and positive thinking on the road to obtaining a healthy relationship).
If that’s your premise, it’s likely a conditional demand you’ve placed on your goal versus an unconditional preference.
In the latter, you would strongly prefer a relationship happen but remain sincerely joyous about your life course (without obsessing about dating and “finding the one”).
In the former, you demand with authority that the universe magics up a healthy relationship for you (because you deserve it darn it!) . This screams the self-narrative “I will be happy when….”
Then, you become unhappy went it doesn’t happen despite of all of your dedicated efforts.
A Healthy Emotional Connection With Yourself is Being Okay If It Doesn’t Happen (Right Now)
When we obsess about achievement, we are using a rigidly demanding cognitive framework to approach our goals. When we obsess over our goals, we are hell-bent on the “bigger picture”— the end game.
The result is another self-narrative that screams, “This MUST happen!” versus “I really would prefer that this happen.”
Demands are rooted in deeply entrenched rigid cognitive schemas (deeply rooted beliefs).
These types of beliefs about our success are too rigid. Demands don’t take into account that “life be life’n’” despite the best goal setting and planning.
If we don’t accept that some of our bucket list items may never happen, despite the best of our efforts, we are doomed to create the very emotional turmoil we claim to want relief from.
What? You don’t believe me? Well, then let’s practice. Try this exercise.
Just ask yourself, “What if I DON’T get the relationship that I want, find an awesome emotionally available guy ( or gal ) to replace my EUP (Emotionally Unavailable Partner), or get the bomb career?
Just what if those things don’t happen?”
Now, let’s say the reality is that it DOESN’T happen at all.
Now, how do you feel?
See, what I mean?
If the reality of failing at a high-level goal you set would leave you feeling devastated, then your emotional availability to YOU has gone out the window.
You have to be able to set a high-level goal for “the bigger picture” and then be okay if it fails.
The problem with obsessing over “the bigger picture” is that there may be a long stretch for you to get “there” when you are here.
What if “there” takes 10 or 15 years?
Now don’t go and click the X on your internet browser tab and leave this page just yet. Work with me here. We are going somewhere good I promise.
If you’re open to this gentle nudge to shift your cognitive framework about success and achievement, it will be worthwhile both in the short and long-term.
The Pitfalls of Hyper-Focusing on Long-term Goals
Setting long-term goals to obtain Life’s Big-Ticket Items (e.g. a healthy relationship, a thriving career, the car, the dog, the picket fence, winning the lotto…just joking…etc.) is essential.
Long-term goals keep us inspired to live for something and can be guideposts reinforcing our motivation to achieve something we deem worthwhile.
However, it can go too far when we give ourselves a hard time when our recipe cards for success are not working “like the Amazon best-selling self-help book said”, “like Oprah said”, or “like Deepak Chopra said”.
Unfortunately, our society and media reinforce this “at-all-costs” philosophy in the pursuit of achievement.
This framework can undermine our emotional well-being and availability, especially when things don’t go as planned and we are rigidly determined but NOT flexible with life, God, and our responses to challenges (because mainstream says this or that formula for success should work for us).
Sidenote rant: If you’ve read a plethora of Law of Attraction and self-help type books and they ain’t workin’, you’re not the problem. Many books like these are pushed hard to sell us recipe cards for success.
Don’t drink the mainstream marketing Kool-aid. The Guru’s formulas may not work for you because you need to develop your unique path just the way God made you (and not be a carbon copy). I think you get the point. Okay, rant switch off.
How Achievement Obsession Constricts the Flow of Emotional Availability
Intention for achievement can cross over into an obsession with relationship success and life success.
Obsession is rooted in approaching our goals with rigidity, treating them as “This MUST happen, and if doesn’t, I’m going to haul off and… (insert: bleep, bleep, bleep!).”
I’ve read the gamut of self-help like Napoleon Hill‘s “Keys to Success:17 Principles of Personal Achievement” and “The Laws of Success”; they work against this very principle.
Those philosophies rigidly promote success as a formula of success recipe cards that you can just reproduce and apply to YOU. NOT SO!
Not to mention, Mr. Hill had a history of being a con-man, with a dash of fraud, duping people out of money with his failed business ventures and not paying his debts (insert: my side-eye).
This is a one-way ticket to emotional disturbances that we create ourselves.
I can hear the echoes of antagonists reverberating— “Oh, he’s being so negative.”
No, I am not! I promise (smile). I am being flexible with this thang we call my our life and goals (and I want to encourage you to do the same).
I myself am a late bloomer. My inward and outward success has been a super slow burn. Shout out to all my late bloomers. We have special powers — the wisdom that comes with time and age.
When late bloomers get their success (after they’ve climbed over many life stepping stones) , they usually know how to sustain it.
In Richard Karlgaard’s book “Late Bloomers,” he nails it when he talks about “the conveyor belt of success”, how we would benefit from getting off of it, and society’s obsession with early achievement.
He finely illustrates how this contributes to an insidious undercurrent of feelings of inadequacy for those of us who may late bloom with our achievements, taking a slower path to success.
The point is that, we need to be okay if “IT” doesn’t happen in the timeframe we expect our coveted breakthrough to happen (Gulp. I know).
Sidenote: If you’re tired of the mainstream pressure to succeed, and are tired of sipping The Overnight Success Story Kool-Aid on YouTube and mainstream media, go on and check out Richard’s book. It’s a breath of fresh air and a more emotionally liberating path to success in your later years. I promise.
P.S. No, that’s not an affiliate link. I just sharing good resources.
The Zone of Over-Desire™ Shows a Lack of Emotional Flexibility
In her Amazon Kindle book, “You’re Not Lost: An Inspired Action Plan for Finding Your Own Way”, author Maxine McCoy talks about when our “wanting becomes poison.” (McCoy, 2018, Chapter 2)
I want to expound on this idea. Wants and desires can become rigid and toxic.
There’s something called paradoxical intent. Paradoxical intent is when we want something too much, that our energy reeks of desperation which ironically repels the very thing we claim to desire
I like to call it The Zone of Over-Desire™. It’s in this zone that you will be missing the beauty of the journey.
Yes, you can have a good cry over not having what you desire right now. Tears can help us connect emotionally to our feelings. However, don’t become desperate if your desires are delayed.
Be aware of this red flag zone on your quest for achievement and EASE ON OUT of The Zone of Over-desire™
Wrapping Things UP:
Whether you are trying to overcome patterns of emotional unavailability and obtain a healthy relationship, or like me transition careers (in my late 30s #achallenge). Just keep doing “the work” of your goals for the sake of doing it.
The glory may come or it may not. But, when and if it does you will look and feel lighter because you minimized high-blood pressure and wrinkles by staying in TODAY.
Jumping too far ahead to the high peak of your goal so you can hurry up and get to your mountain top is not staying in the present moment. Remaining present focused, while lightly looking to the future, is a prerequisite for practicing day-to-day emotional availability.
Changing how we pursue our goals will help us increase our chances of getting “that thing” we desire. What’s more, is that this approach can help us cope by learning to stay emotionally available (and healthy) even IF there is a major delay on the path to obtaining our big-ticket Items.
I’ve recently challenged myself to stop looking at “the bigger picture”.
This revelation happened after a recent three-month stint employed as a Program/ Product Success Coordinator, for a health tech start-up, which fell through because of the shady antics of the company.
The end game is not important. The point is I transitioned from psychology to tech (however briefly). It wasn’t easy to sell those transferable skills but I did it (by God’s grace).
This is what I’ve wanted since resigning from my clinical gig last year.
No clue what the end game is right now.
UX Design? IT Network, Security Cloud Support? Product Management?
Those are the career transition paths I am on with no clear end destination.
The “bigger picture” doesn’t matter so much anymore because it’s about the direction— not some pinnacle of happiness I’ll reach once I get “there”.
Obsessing about “the bigger picture” end-all-be-all of the journey is now less importance because I’ve made the decision to lock into the present day-to-day moment.
“HERE” is in the NOW. That’s all we’ve got when we are truly living.
In the NOW I feel a release in emotional pressure.
How about you? Come join me!
How can you practice more day-to-day emotional availability with your goals and pursuits? Please share.
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