Before You Chase the Next Goal, Make an Appointment With Yourself
By Mboneni Stan Mulaudzi
I have spent many years pursuing things: qualifications, career progression, professional competence, writing, publishing, broadcasting, learning, building, and starting again. Yet, after all those years of movement, I have discovered something slightly inconvenient: movement and direction are not the same thing.
You can be extraordinarily busy travelling in the wrong direction. You can fill your diary, meet deadlines, collect certificates, receive applause and accumulate respectable evidence of progress while quietly becoming a stranger to yourself. I know this because there have been seasons in my own life when I was so occupied with where I was going that I did not spend enough time with the person who was doing the travelling.
That is why I have come to believe that there is one appointment we should make before some of the important appointments of life: an appointment with ourselves. No secretary needs to schedule it. There is no Teams link. Nobody sends an agenda. There will be no refreshments, unless you are sufficiently civilised to make yourself coffee. But somebody important will be waiting. You.
Not the version of you presented at meetings. Not the professional biography. Not the qualifications. Not the job title. Not the person social media knows. I mean the private person who knows which dreams still make your heart move and which ones you continue carrying simply because you have carried them for too long. The person who knows where you are pretending, what hurts, what you still want and, perhaps most importantly, what you no longer want.
When I look at the books I have written, I realise that they were never simply books. They were conversations I was having with life at different stages of my journey. I wrote The Power of the Tongue because I became fascinated by the extraordinary power carried by words. Words can construct and demolish. They can encourage somebody who is almost finished or become the final weight placed upon an already burdened spirit. Years later, I understand that the tongue we must occasionally examine is also the one speaking inside us.
What have you been telling yourself? That you are too old? That you missed your opportunity? That everybody else is progressing faster? That because one chapter went badly, the entire book of your life has somehow been ruined? Be careful. You may eventually become obedient to a sentence that was never true.
Then there is Overcoming Life Stop Signs and Still Succeed. Even the title tells you something about my relationship with life. I have never believed that a stop sign means the road has ended. A stop sign says stop. It does not say die there. It does not say build a house beside the disappointment, furnish it with regret and make it your permanent address. It says stop. Look. Assess. Then, when it is safe and sensible, proceed.
That distinction has become more important to me as I have grown older. We sometimes worship persistence so enthusiastically that we forget to ask whether the direction still deserves our persistence. There are times when courage means continuing. There are also times when wisdom says, “This road no longer belongs to me.” Walking away from the wrong destination is not necessarily surrender. Sometimes it is the first evidence that you have finally started listening to yourself.
This is where the appointment becomes uncomfortable. Ask yourself: If nobody knew I achieved this, would I still want it? That question can cause administrative difficulties in the ego. Some ambitions survive it beautifully. Others begin perspiring.
We borrow goals more easily than we realise. Family can hand us definitions of success. Our professions give us ladders and quietly suggest that respectable people should want to climb them. Friends establish timelines. Society tells us what somebody of our age should already possess. Then social media arrives carrying everybody else’s edited achievements. Someone buys a house. Someone gets promoted. Someone graduates. Someone travels. Someone announces another success. Suddenly, a life you were perfectly content with at breakfast appears inadequate by lunchtime.
Comparison can inform us. Sometimes another person’s achievement awakens something genuine that we have neglected. But comparison can also become a ventriloquist. You think you are hearing your own voice when somebody else’s expectations are moving your lips. That is why, occasionally, you must become quiet enough to ask: Whose voice is this?
I wrote Work Heartily because I believe deeply in commitment to work. I have spent decades in the world of work. I know something about discipline, responsibility, learning, performance and the dignity of doing what has been entrusted to you properly. I still believe in working heartily. But experience has added another sentence: work heartily, but know what your heart is working toward.
Hard work is magnificent when it is attached to meaningful direction. Hard work without reflection can merely help you arrive at the wrong destination faster. That is one of adulthood’s more expensive discoveries.
We sometimes imagine that the next achievement will settle something inside us. The promotion will do it. The qualification will do it. The money will do it. The recognition will do it. The house will do it. Then the achievement arrives. We celebrate. People congratulate us. Photographs are taken. And after the applause has packed its bags and gone home, there we are again. Still ourselves.
Achievement is valuable. I am not campaigning against ambition. Far from it. I still have things I want to do, things I want to learn, books I want to write and contributions I want to make. But I no longer believe achievement should be given jobs it was never qualified to perform. A qualification can educate you. It cannot manufacture self-worth. Money can solve many problems. It cannot answer every question about meaning. Recognition can tell you that people have noticed your work. It cannot tell you who you are when nobody is looking.
Then there is My Bleeding Pen. I love that title because life has taught me that not everything worth writing comes from comfortable places. Sometimes the pen writes from wounds. Sometimes it writes from disappointment. Sometimes from questions. Sometimes from survival. Sometimes from the peculiar wisdom that only becomes available after life has removed your theoretical understanding and replaced it with experience.
There are things I understand today that nobody could have taught me when I was younger. Not because younger me was foolish. He simply had not lived long enough to meet certain teachers. Loss is a teacher. Failure is a teacher. Responsibility is a teacher. Disappointment has an unpleasant teaching methodology, but unfortunately its curriculum can be excellent. So can beginning again.
Perhaps that is why I increasingly resist the idea that we should construct one identity and defend it forever. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to outgrow an ambition. You are allowed to discover that something which once mattered enormously now matters less. You are allowed to become interested in something you never imagined would fascinate you. You are allowed to learn again. You are even allowed to meet a version of yourself that your younger self did not predict. That is not necessarily inconsistency. Sometimes it is growth.
But do not turn self-discovery into another performance project. People like us have a dangerous habit of turning everything into something measurable. Give us self-discovery and before long somebody will create a spreadsheet. Objective: discover myself. Deadline: Friday. Performance indicator: 100% self-awareness. Please don’t. You are a human being, not a quarterly report.
The purpose of visiting yourself is not to emerge from one afternoon of reflection with a colour-coded five-year plan and complete psychological enlightenment. Sometimes the meeting produces only one useful sentence: I am tired. That matters. Sometimes it produces another: I don’t want this anymore. That matters too. Sometimes you realise that you still want the dream, but you have been pursuing it for the wrong reasons. Now we are getting somewhere.
Sometimes the dream is still alive, but the timetable has become cruel. Adjust it. Sometimes you have been calling yourself lazy when you are exhausted. Rest. Sometimes fear has been masquerading as practicality. Challenge it. Sometimes pride has kept you walking down a road long after wisdom whispered that you should turn around. Listen.
When you finally sit down with yourself, resist the temptation to begin with, “What do I want to achieve?” There are better questions. What gives me energy? What repeatedly drains me? What am I tolerating simply because changing it would inconvenience other people’s expectations? Which parts of my life still feel alive? What am I trying to prove, and to whom? If nobody applauded the outcome, would I still want to do the work? What am I postponing until some imaginary future version of my life begins? And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: Can I recognise myself in the life I am building?
Do not rush the answers. Silence is not always empty. Sometimes silence is where borrowed voices finally become tired enough for your own voice to be heard.
I still believe in goals. I believe in education. I believe in hard work. I believe in ambition. I believe in learning until life itself closes the classroom. I believe in getting up after life has introduced you to one of its stop signs. I believe in the power of the tongue. I believe in working heartily. And I know that sometimes the pen must bleed before it writes something worth keeping.
But after all these years, I would add one more conviction: do not become so obsessed with constructing an impressive life that you forget to construct one you can inhabit.
There is a difference.
The world may admire the title, but you must live with the person carrying it. The world may applaud the achievement, but you must wake up the morning after the applause. The world may admire the destination, but you must live through the journey.
So chase your goals. Chase them intelligently. Chase them courageously. Work heartily. Speak life. Walk past the stop signs that were never meant to become permanent addresses. Write, even when the pen bleeds.
But before you run towards the next destination, make one appointment. Visit yourself. Ask whether the goal still belongs to you. Ask whether the person pursuing it is becoming someone you recognise.
And if the goal survives that meeting, get up. Straighten your clothes. Take your courage with you. Chase it with everything you have. Because the tragedy is not always failing to reach the destination.
Sometimes the greater tragedy is arriving successfully and discovering that you were never the person who wanted to go there.