🥅 A Letter to Goals: Reflections on Growth in Swimming
Two decades ago my seven-year-old sprint swimmer self would be in disbelief
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Aloha fellow learn-it-all 👋
Greetings from Michigan!
Here’s a shot with my ‘ohana after filling our bellies alongside beautiful views of the Detroit River.
I’ve found myself reminiscing about the first time I went to Maui at the beginning of September in 2021 🚘 Letter 76: Road to Hana and when I biked 6000 ft up Haleakalā National Park in June (mentioned in letter 164).
My unmet ‘ohana on Maui are suffering. They are top of mind each day for me as I feel deep sorrow for this crisis. My thoughts and prayers go out to my brothers and sisters that are suffering due to the fires that took place. If you are looking for ways to support the community, I recommend your financial support to the Hawaii Community Foundation or GoFundMe which can give directly to individuals.
Now, let’s dive into letter 171 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!
❓Question to think about
If I wrote a letter to my Goals, what would I say?
A quick disclaimer first: I tried my best to write about goals in a non-cliché way even though a part of me is screaming “Are you going to make these curious folks read a piece on goals??” I promise I make this worth it ;)
🖊️ Writing
Dear Goals,
I don’t remember a part of my life when you weren’t around.
Heck, you’ve been a part of my life since day one. What makes me a human – which is distinct from non-living organisms – is that I am born with an implicit goal to survive this species by procreating. (whether that’ll happen or not, TBD). So this makes sense that I’m grandfathered into a world centered around you. As a byproduct, it is obsessed with outcomes.
I used to think that life would be better without you.
I’ve tried to cancel you, Goals, out of my life because you make it easy for me to feel lesser about myself. When I swallow my pride and shoot my shot, I risk setting myself up for failure. I’ve already missed countless outcome-centric goals in my life. Over the years I've failed to score higher on the ACT exam after taking it five times. I failed to get into my dream college, make the move back out to the Netherlands, and publish the book I wrote five years ago.
But to be without the ability to fail and still appreciate the experience – that would be robbing myself of an innate human existence. I discovered instead that I can have different types of goals. Ones that intrinsically motivate me toward my own definition of success. Their rewards are personal growth, satisfaction, and joy that bring fulfillment along the way of the journey.
Let’s journey back to a chapter of my life where my relationship with you took formative steps.
I remember the first time I had an athletic goal: to join the swim team.
Next to the Atlantic Ocean, I was swimming in a small 15-yard pool down in Florida.
It started out as fun. I already became part fish during swim lessons when I was five years old and I borrowed my dad’s kickboard. It was leisurely at first. Then I went as fast as I could and beat my older brother again and again kicking next to him. The first time he wasn’t trying but then the next time he was and it felt effortless for me. My spark for competition lit up. A new form of fun surfaced.
My dad spotted my potential and attempted to sign me up for the team the following summer. We showed up to the welcome banquet. My parents sat at the parent's table, my brother sat with his 8-year-old friends, and I felt ditched. Since there was no table for six-year-olds, I somehow ended up at a table with the coaches. I remember the men being giants with long noses. I hid in the bathroom and was afraid of joining. That goal to join the team was deferred until I was seven years old.
I joined the following year and loved it so much. I became one of the best backstrokers on the team for my age. I kicked my flat flipper feet as fast as they’d go for the lap, breathe the whole time and have my coach promise me that he’d catch my head before I banged into the wall. (which only happened a handful of times luckily before I learned my stroke count from the flags.)
My next goal was to learn how to dive headfirst into the pool off the block. Coach Michalic stayed after practice and wouldn’t let me leave until I got it right. I learned to love sprinting with the help of breathing exercises he taught me. Everyone else loved freestyle but I thought back and fly were the bee’s knees. I later became one of the top butterfliers on the team too.
Because I was also on the sailing team, I biked to the early practice to jump in the pool with the big kids, and try my best to keep up. At the end of that first season, the team recognized me for being the most improved.
In later seasons, I set personal record (PR) goals for myself with material possessions that I couldn’t wait for Christmas to have. Some of these included a boombox, a keyboard, a Nintendo DS, and my first-ever girl’s yellow bike (that wasn’t a hand-me-down). As I usually followed through on my promises of achieving my goals, I am fortunate that my parents agreed to my incentives and afforded me these gifts.
Self-directed goals have since played a large role in my life in evolving from childhood ambitions to present-day challenges. Modern life has a giant public leaderboard that showcases an artificial need to “keep up”. But instead, I pop out my contact lens, let my vision go blurry to go inward, and figure out what I actually desire.
Flash forward two decades, it’s 9 pm on a Saturday evening in a foreign city: Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was in a hotel room with my parents, brother, and two golden doodles. The stealthy barks of our smuggled-in dogs punctuated the silence alongside the loud nervous voices in my head. Merely making it this far felt like an accomplishment in itself.
But then I heard you, Goals, whisper in my ear. You wanted to play a bigger part in my event on the morrow. I swam three miles the week prior in Lake Michigan, so being able to finish 2.4 miles was a no-brainer. So with my food baby post eating a protein-packed pita wrap, I scribbled down some extrapolated data estimates. The goal I came up with was to finish within one hour and 16 minutes. We certainly ended up dancing on that edge of achievement!
The morning came and people would call me crazy to be up at the crack of 5 AM but you, Goals, say “that’ll do.”
I zipped up the neoprene sausage casing onto my body which left me smooth like a seal ready to fly through the water. My dad stretched out my lats, and I blew the butterflies out of my belly just like I had when I was seven years old.
Intimidating Ironman athletes surrounded me. You, Goals, were my steadfast companion and a beacon of motivation, encouraging me to set my sights on completing the swim and doing my best.
I was grateful to have my watch to track my speed so I didn’t need to compare myself to everyone else for these 4224 yards. It was an added bonus when my watch vibrated for the first 500-yard split and I not only stuck between my 8-9 minute pace, but I also got a personal record of 7 minutes 35 seconds.
In love with my newfound buoyancy in my first-ever wetsuit on the vast glassy lake, my arms pulled faster. My strokes per minute increased, pushing me beyond the usual 23spm to 25spm. I still made sure that my hands, acting as my paddles, pushed all the way through the water with my thumb gliding against my outer thigh. In the face of the blinding sunrise, I adapted. I started to breathe only on my nondominant left side and lifted my head, instead of a breaststroke kick, to make sure I was navigating well. Foggy goggles and the latex red cap sliding off my noggin were some obstacles, but I had my eye on you Goals.
While I missed the mark I set out on by a mere minute at 1:17:18, I couldn't deny the sense of triumph as I swam under the flags at the finish line. I find solace in the realization that you, dear Goals, aren't confined to achievement alone. Rather, you're the steady rhythm leading my evolution. The constant presence reminds me that the pursuit is as integral as the destination. I am fulfilled by the journey that has gotten me to that finish line, especially being the second female to cross.
As I look back, I'm filled with a sense of accomplishment I get from you in my life that isn't solely tied to the stopwatch. You, my steadfast Goals, prompted me to chart a course of impressive pacing and to embrace a challenge that once seemed beyond reach. And while spending my Sunday morning swimming a long distance is an unconventional definition of fun, it's the kind that enriches my life.
The jaw of my seven-year-old sprinting self would drop to the floor if she knew I enjoyed swimming long distances.
Our partnership was evident in every stroke. Though, I must tell you. Despite what you may think, I wasn’t there just because of you. You, Goals, are not synonymous with Ambition or Success.
I love swimming. It wasn’t always this way in high school and college, but I am competent at it. Swimming makes me feel capable, which makes me feel more alive. You, Goals, are a tool that helps to enhance those intrinsic motivations rather than as the sole purpose. Like my first time beating my brother in Florida, you shake my ambition awake. But the pursuit itself, the unwavering determination to push beyond my comfort zone, paves a path forward for me to define my own success.
I could still be ambitious in my life without you as long as I have a calibrated compass to lead my life intentionally, but life would be more tricky. Noticing the progress and small wins from having you in my life makes it better. The interplay between my definition of success and perceived failure sculpts my sense of self and directs me toward what is worth pursuing. With you around, I am never a lackadaisical and feel better than I was before.
As I tread the waters of life embracing both the smooth strokes and adapting to the choppy waters with currents of perpetual change, I continue to set new goals, with your help, of course, in this transitory nature of life. You, Goals, are not solely the endpoints but the catalysts of transformation. As each stroke propels me forward in the water, every goal we set, achieved or not, pushes me further in my journey of self-discovery.
Goals, you've shown me the pursuit of growth and fulfillment doesn't follow a predictable path. Life is confusing. We progress and develop all while staying whole as we are. It is complete and yet it keeps on moving. Goals, your whisper has done it again. I've registered for yet another Olympic triathlon. Thank you for pushing me to embrace the unconventional and live my life uniquely.
With much gratitude for the lessons, the growth, and the moments of undeniable triumph, I remain,
In continued pursuit of growth,
An ambitious swimmer
📖 Reading
The Paradox of Goals by Ph.D. researcher of the neuroscience of education Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She goes over how setting SMART goals is not the way. Rather setting a pact, an act, and reacting is a better way to setting goals.
Life itself is movement, a perpetual transformation. If we are going to spend most of our time navigating this in-between, figuring out where we are and where we want to grow, we may as well enjoy the dance with uncertainty. Here lies the solution to the paradox of goals.
📜🖋 Poetry Corner
Results or Roses
By: Edgar A. Guest
The man who wants a garden fair, Or small or very big, With flowers growing here and there, Must bend his back and dig. The things are mighty few on earth That wishes can attain. Whate'er we want of any worth We've got to work to gain. It matters not what goal you seek Its secret here reposes: You've got to dig from week to week To get Results or Roses.
A couple of resonant snivlets: The poet Guest, a British immigrant, started working as a copy boy for the Detroit Free Press when he was thirteen years old in 1895. This began his 65-year career for the newspaper after dropping out of high school. He wrote around 11,000 poems and died with the title "the poet of the people” for his sentimental outlook on everyday life.
🎧 Listening
You might think I'm crazy
That I'm lost and foolish
Leaving you behind
Maybe you're right
Maybe you're rightHere comes the part of you and me
Arguing about nothing
You tell me it's as good as it gets
Yeah, I'm real emotional
Blame it on your mental jokes
How much did you think that I could take?So much for taking this too far
You can't blame me for who I am
It's too late for us to try to be in love right now
🔍Word to define
Goal: the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result
⛬ Etymology
1530s, "end point of a race," of uncertain origin. It appears once before this (as gol), in a poem from early 14c. and with an apparent sense of "boundary, limit." In a sports sense of "place where the ball, etc. is put to score" is attested from 1540s. (Link)
🌟Quotes to inspire
“Don’t over-focus on the usual goal. Take your eyes off the prize and look around. Creative experiments, curiosity, and adventures are fun. Fun is always a legitimate and underrated goal.” - Derek Sivers from Daily Run, Part Two
“The purpose of goals is not to improve the future. The future doesn’t exist. It’s only in our imagination. All that exists is the present moment and what you do in it. Judge a goal by how well it changes your actions in the present moment.” - Derek Sivers from Goals shape the present, not the future.
📸 Photo of the Week
🙏Shoutouts
To the best cheerleading crew there ever was above.
To Michigan Titanium race event organizers and volunteers for making this experience possible. If you want to check out the results, they’re posted here.
I appreciate you reading this!
If ideas resonate, I’d love you to press the heart button, leave a comment, reply to this email or reach out to me at vermetjl@gmail.com. If you forgot who I am, I welcome you to my online home.
Never stop learning 😁
Mahalo 🌺
Jen
PS - in case you missed last week’s letter 170 peek into my July reflection
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