Starting Life on a Thursday: Permission to Skip the List
A client told me recently that, for the first time in her life, she didn’t make a list of goals on her birthday.
She says she didn’t feel lost. She felt relieved. That part of our conversation stayed with me. Because most people — especially thoughtful, driven people — can’t imagine achievement without goals. What else would get you out of bed? What else would prove your life is going somewhere?
But here’s the thing: you don’t need a finish line to know you’re moving well.
Goals aren’t the problem — the chase is! Goals are fine. They give shape to effort. They help us aim. But too often, they help to create proxy identities — fantasies of who we’ll get to be once we’ve achieved "the thing".
And in chasing goals, we start to loose ourselves.
We measure each day, each week, each year, against an imagined future. We may call it ambition, but it’s often just postponed permission — waiting for a future version of ourselves to deserve what we want now.
I’ll feel like a real adult once I finally get my finances together.
I’ll believe I’m talented when something I make actually takes off.
I’ll deserve rest when I stop procrastinating.
But your relationships, your health, your attention, your mornings — they don’t wait for you to become your ideal self. They ask who you’re being right now.
So what if you’re already the kind of person you’ve been waiting to become — and the real question isn’t whether you have goals, but whether they reflect the life you’re already living?
Take a second look. Could you rewrite your goals from the inside out — not as distant outcomes, but as daily identities?
You say: “I want to finally run a marathon this year”.
You might mean: “I am someone who trains daily — not to chase a finish line, but because I value strength and stamina”.
You say: “I want to launch a coaching practice”.
You might mean: “I am the person people talk to when things get real. I show up to the work of trust and truth-telling”.
You say: “I want to write a book”.
You might mean: “I am a writer who writes every morning, because it helps me think clearly, understand myself, and stay connected to what matters”.
This isn’t wordplay. It’s a shift in orientation — from fantasy outcomes to principled action. From some-day intention to today’s trueness.
So the alternative to goals isn’t giving up. It’s showing up for the thing you’d do anyway, even if no one is checking if you did.
It’s letting your instincts and principles decide what matters. Not your moods. Not trends. Not the sinking feeling that you’re behind again — the very feeling that makes you cancel it.
A few questions to help you process:
What insists on being lived through you — even when there’s no reward, no audience, and no tidy story to tell about it?
What do you keep doing when no one’s watching, when nothing is at stake, when the world isn’t demanding?
Who are you when it’s just a Thursday, and you’re not trying to be anyone but yourself?
Don’t answer with aspirations. Answer with behaviors. What are your patterns — not your plans?
Because who you are is shaped by what you’re willing to do over and over — not what you promise to do someday.
A Short Exercise (That Skips the Bullet Journal)
Rewrite three of your current goals using this pattern:
“I’m the kind of person who ___, because I care about ___.”
Make them boring if needed. Mundane is powerful. If you write: “I’m the kind of person who does the dishes before bed, because I care about waking up in clean space” — you’re on the right track.
Let the action matter more than the outcome. And if you still want a goal — fine. Just don’t let it do your living for you. Don’t hand it the weight of proof, or wait for it to give you permission. If it helps, keep it. If it starts telling you who you will be — drop it.
And if you wake up the day after your birthday or New Year’s and realise you forgot to write a list — maybe that wasn’t a lapse. Maybe it was the moment you stopped asking for permission — and started being present.
This isn’t guidance. It’s interruption. Pass it to someone who still stares at their list, convinced it will become a life. Not to change them — but to remind yourself: you’re not the only one who’s tried to build a self out of bullet points.