early train window
fog folding over fields slow
heart still learning pace
There are goals that look impressive on paper—career milestones, fitness numbers, things you can track and measure. And then there are the quieter ones. The ones that have no applause built in. The hardest goal I ever set for myself belongs to the second kind.
It wasn’t to run a marathon or learn another language. It was this: to live at a pace where I could still hear myself think.
The Noise
For years I mistook motion for meaning. I packed my days until there was no air left in them—commutes, emails, late-night projects that blurred into early mornings. The reward was exhaustion disguised as progress.
People would say, “You’re doing great.” But I wasn’t being anything. I was just doing. My thoughts started to sound like traffic—constant, directionless, honking at itself.
So I made a promise that scared me more than any deadline: to slow down without losing momentum. To move deliberately, not reactively. To be busy only with what mattered.
That was the hardest goal because it required unlearning almost everything I’d been praised for.
The Reset
The first few months were brutal. Stillness felt like failure. When I didn’t fill every hour, guilt crept in. I’d wake up and feel a kind of restlessness that lived in my bones.
But little by little, I began to notice things I’d lost touch with: the texture of bread crust in the morning, the way sunlight wandered across my desk, the sound of rain becoming percussion on my window.
At first, these details felt trivial. Then they became anchors.
Slowing down wasn’t laziness—it was calibration.
The Discipline of Presence
We like to think discipline means grinding harder. But I’ve learned that real discipline is restraint—the courage to protect your focus.
When I began guarding my first hour each day, everything shifted. Before messages, before noise, I would write. Or stretch. Or simply sit by the window watching the fog lift off the Aare River.
That small ritual became a boundary line between chaos and clarity. It taught me that attention is a resource, not a reflex. Once you spend it on the wrong things, you don’t get it back.
So the goal wasn’t just to slow down. It was to choose my speed consciously.
The Mirror
Hard goals always hold up a mirror. Slowing down forced me to see how much of my ambition was built on fear—fear of missing out, fear of being invisible, fear of not doing enough to matter.
When you strip away the noise, what’s left is just you and the question: what’s worth your energy?
The honest answers are rarely glamorous. They’re simple. Family. Health. Craft. Long walks. A cup of coffee with someone who doesn’t need to fill the silence.
That simplicity is easy to name, hard to live.
The Setbacks
Even now, I fail at it. Some weeks I rush again. I check messages before sunlight. I say yes when I mean maybe.
But the difference is awareness. I can feel when I’ve slipped—my breath shortens, my thoughts scatter, my body tenses as if bracing for an invisible storm. That’s when I stop, take a long walk by the river, and start again.
This kind of goal has no finish line. It resets every morning.
What I’ve Learned
I used to think hard goals were about endurance. Now I think they’re about alignment. The challenge isn’t to go faster, or longer, but truer.
To align your days with your values. To make your work echo your inner voice instead of drown it. To let your actions match what you quietly believe.
That’s not a one-time achievement—it’s a lifelong correction.
A Small Story
A few winters ago, in a small inn outside Asahikawa, I met an elderly man who used to be a carpenter. He told me, “When I was young, I built fast to prove myself. Now I build slow so the wood can answer back.”
I wrote that line in my notebook and underlined it three times. Because that’s the whole thing, really. To live in a way that the world can answer back.
The Practice
The hardest personal goal isn’t something you cross off a list. It’s something you return to, again and again, until it becomes a kind of rhythm:
Wake before the world does.
Move slowly enough to notice light changing.
Do the real work before you touch the noise.
Say no to most things, yes to the few that make you feel alive.
End the day knowing you paid attention.
That’s it. That’s the goal.
life 
Leave a comment