It's on my wall.

I don't set goals on January 1st. I like to ease into the year and have time to reflect on what I want to focus on. Every January I go on vacation first.

I go to a beach somewhere. I let the year settle. Then I come back and I set my goals.

I separate them into four categories: business, personal, health, and relationships. No more than three in each. I write them out by hand and tape them on my bathroom wall. I pick a word for the year. Something to come back to when I need to be grounded.

The word this year is unstoppable.

I read it every morning. One of my personal goals says: complete three laps at the skating rink.

It's almost summer and I haven't been to the skating rink since last year.

Here is what happened. I decided to try roller skating last year. There is a class near me every Saturday. I signed up for a four-pack.

Level one requirement: make it around the rink three times without holding the wall. That is it. Three laps. Do that and you move up.

Level two gets you custom skates. Made specifically for you.

I want the custom skates. I have my colors and wheels picked out already.

So I showed up the first Saturday and got assigned to the wall. That is where beginners start. You hold the bar, find your balance, and get comfortable being on the  floor. I held the bar. Found my balance.

Then I stayed there.

Second Saturday. Same wall. Third. Fourth. I only fell once, during the first session. It was more of a slide than a thump. Got up and was fine. And still did not take the three laps.

The instructor told me most people figure it out in two or three sessions.

I smiled and nodded and went back to the wall.

At the end of the four-pack I decided to give it a pause. That is the word I used. A pause.

Then I went home and did not sign up again. It's been seven months.

I look at that wall every morning.

I have seen this before. Not at a skating rink. In the people I work with who have the goal written down, the plan drafted, and the intention fully intact.

And then nothing moves.

There was someone I worked with years ago. She had been talking about making a shift for the better part of three years. She had done the research. She knew what she wanted. She had even started the application once, got most of the way through, and closed it.

Every time we talked she had a reason it was not the right moment. The project was not done. The timing was not ideal. She would get to it after this next thing settled.

The next thing never settled. It just became a different next thing.

What she had was not a goal problem. She had identified the goal. The goal was on the wall. What she had was an intention that had stopped one step before action.

I watched her do this for three years. I said the thing I always say: the timing is not going to get better. You have to make a move.

She knew that. She said she knew that. And then she went back to waiting for life to settle.

I thought about her when I was looking at my goals on my bathroom wall.

Here is what I have learned about goals that live on the wall and do not move.

The goal is not the problem. Writing it down is not the problem. Most people who stall are not missing clarity. They have plenty of clarity. They wrote it down. They posted it. They look at it every morning.

What they are missing is the next concrete thing. The specific Saturday. The actual appointment. The one action small enough to do today that makes the goal real instead of just written.

There is a name for this. Psychologists call it the intention-action gap. You can have a fully formed intention and still not act on it. The gap between knowing what you want to do and actually doing it is not a motivation problem. It is a specificity problem. The goal is clear. The next step is not.

I had a four-pack of classes and used all of them. The goal was specific. The next step after the four-pack was not. So I called it a pause and went home.

Pause was a comfortable word for something that needed a date. Seven months later we are still on pause.

The skates are still on my goals for this year. This time I am not signing up for a four-pack without a plan for what happens after.

Here is what I am doing differently. Before I go back, I am naming the specific thing that will make this session different from the last four. Not the goal. The next step inside the goal. The one thing that moves it from the wall to the floor.

For me that is showing up with one job: leave the wall for one lap. Not three laps. Just one lap. And keep showing up until we get the custom skates.

That is the step that was missing.

Your turn. You have something on your wall. Maybe it is literal. Maybe it is the plan you keep pulling up and not finishing. The application you started. The conversation you keep scheduling and moving.

Name the goal. Then name the next step inside the goal. Not the whole path. The one thing you can do that makes it real.

Unstoppable doesn’t mean never stopping. It means knowing where you are going when you start again.

Until next Tuesday.
Ceaneh