Guy Reams (00:01.966)
This is day 300. Goals should be unobtainable. At this point in the year, something familiar begins to happen. After months of pursuing another 365 commitment, I find myself staring at the same quiet conclusion I've reached over the past four or five years. Somehow, against all odds, I have done it again. I set out to achieve something impossible, and in one form or another, I actually did it.
This should feel like a triumph. In some ways it is. But it also feels like a subtle warning. If I reached the impossible already, perhaps it was never truly beyond reach. Perhaps my target, as bold as it seemed at the start, was still too low. Every year I structure my commitment the same way. I choose something that demands daily effort and I tie that discipline to a result that I consider far out of my current capability.
I do not make light of this contract. I take it seriously. I offer consistency, sacrifice, and focus, and in return, I ask for transformation. And every year, that transformation seems to happen. Not exactly as I imagined it, rarely in the form I expected it to. But I look back and I cannot deny the change. The impossible thing I longed for and in one way or another had taken root and had become reality.
Which brings me to a difficult realization. I have not been aiming high enough. Over time, I have learned a few things about goals. These lessons were not handed to me. They were earned through repetition, through failure, and through quiet reflection when the dust of accomplishment began to settle. First, you must set the unreachable. A goal that is within reach cannot change you.
It may sharpen your skills or add another line to your resume, but it will not make you different. Real growth only begins when you step towards something you do not believe that you can actually do. The 365 commitment works because it demands the impossible. That stretch, that absurd distance is what gives my commitment power. Second, you must commit every day.
Guy Reams (02:28.398)
The magic is not in the inspiration. It is certainly not really in the outcome. It is the decision to show up again every day, regardless of yesterday's results or tomorrow's hopes. A commitment that lasts 365 days in a row becomes a forge. It takes ordinary actions and refines them through consistency until they become extraordinary.
Third, you must let goals fail upward. I now believe that the best goals are the ones that are never fully reached. They are meant to expose your limits, not satisfy your ambition. When you miss the mark, you are not lost. You are simply ready to aim higher. If you arrive too soon, then you did not set your sights far enough. Fourth, you must make the goal inspiring, not practic-
This is perhaps the most difficult lesson. You must choose a goal that stirs something deep within you, something that feels dangerous to say out loud. It should not fit neatly into your calendar or your current life plan. If it does, it will never carry you through the inevitable resistance. A truly meaningful goal must feel unreasonable and yet somehow necessary. It is not a coincidence that the world's most powerful belief systems and religions
have promised something beyond this life. The most compelling religions do not offer certainty or comfort. They offer transformation, eternity, salvation, realities that remain forever just beyond our reach. That is what stirs the human spirit. Not a reward, but a pursuit that changes who we are along the way. And so here I am again. I set out to do something I could not do.
I kept my end of the bargain. And strange as it is to say, I received what I asked for. Now I face the same decision that I face every year at this time, writing my day 300 blog about what I'm going to do next time. Do I set another goal? Do I dare raise the bar again? Yes, I do. Because the point is not to reach the goal. The point is to become the kind of person who keeps reaching.