I have struggled with goals lately. As a financial planner, I’m naturally wired to set goals. An integral part of working with my clients is looking at their goals and the financial ramifications of those goals. In fact, some of the most powerful meetings a financial planner can have the privilege of attending are those in which someone realizes that a dream they never thought was possible could actually become a reality.

Goal setting is powerful and necessary. I understand that, but I found myself resisting the idea of setting goals recently. This resistance was unfamiliar and something I simply didn’t understand.

Understanding My Resistance to Goals

When I don’t understand something, my first response is to try to figure it out. Why was I having an aversion to setting goals for the first time in memory? I had conversations with business consultants, goal-orientated friends and anyone who would talk to me about it. The common theme I heard was that once you achieve your goals, which was where I was at, you reassess and create new goals. It’s the cycle of success: set goals, achieve goals, set new goals, achieve those goals. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I found myself asking – what if I’m content, what if I have everything I want? I have a business I love, my family’s income is comfortable and I’m further along in my career than I could have imagined even a year beforehand. What if I don’t want or need more at this point?

Recalling my conversations about goals, I realized there is a lot of wisdom in being content. The purpose of life is not simply to achieve more, be more and have more.

After recognizing this, I decided to appreciate and enjoy this season of life that I had worked so hard for. I began, for the first time in my career, to allow myself to have slow afternoons and not look for a new designation or training or ways to grow my business.

As I freed myself from the pressure of achieving bigger and better goals, I found that I was resting.

What Rest Looked Like to Me

Resting allowed me to focus on my daily life and enjoy my daily routine. Resting meant that my husband and I started spending time together instead of sacrificing that time for future career goals. Resting opened time in my calendar to drop everything for a friend who needed help one afternoon.

Resting has given me a better perspective. According to an article by Ferris Jabr in Scientific American, “downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to both achieve our highest levels of performance and simply form stable memories in everyday life.” Times of intense, focused work are for a season and are not supposed to be the constant. It’s good to allow periods of time to enjoy our accomplishments, instead of pushing them aside to move on to the next goal, just as it is good to have times of intense work. Besides, life has its ups and downs and different phases. There will be times in my life when I won’t have the luxury to relax; I’m guessing it’s wise to enjoy this slower pace while I have it.

Looking forward, I have several projects I want to start, but happily realize that I’ll be starting from a place of rest rather than a place of exhaustion. I now have the energy and focus to dedicate the time and mental exertion to what needs to be done.

I have come to realize the wisdom in pausing to breathe as part of the goal setting cycle. In fact, I would argue that resting is essential to successful goal setting and accomplishment.