Is It Okay to Give Up on a Goal? Why Changing Your Mind Isn't Failure
Here's why changing your mind about a goal is a sign of growth — not quitting.
I once held a dream so close I couldn't say it out loud. For years, I wanted to attend the Bread Loaf School of English — the prestigious summer writing program at Middlebury. In 2023, I applied, submitted my essay, and got in. I screamed loud enough to worry my neighbors.
And then I never went. COVID hit days before the program started, and the dream got filed under "unfinished business," where it sat untouched for two years.
So this spring, when I pulled up my goals, Bread Loaf was still there. And I asked myself an honest question most of us avoid: Do I still even want this?
The answer surprised me. It wasn't yes.
Not because the dream wasn't beautiful, but because I realized I'd wanted it for a reason that no longer applied. I'd wanted someone to authorize me to call myself a writer. The acceptance had already done that, years before. The validation didn't live in the summer I missed. It lived in the yes.
Here's what I've come to believe: most of us treat the mid-year check-in as a productivity audit. We pull up the list, count what we haven't finished, and resolve to work harder. We measure ourselves against goals we set as a version of ourselves who hadn't yet lived through everything this year has asked of us.
But the real question isn't am I on track? It's do I still want this — and do I still want to be the person who reaches it?
Changing your mind about a goal you've outgrown isn't quitting. It's the whole point of doing the work. We accept this everywhere else — we return things, we leave movies, we put down books we aren't enjoying. Somehow, with our ambitions, we treat revision like failure.
It isn't. You have the right to change your mind. You always did.
The miscalculation isn't that we fall behind. It's that we assume the finish line stayed put — and forget to give ourselves permission to move it.
Read the full issue — including the four-step Mid-Year Reset for deciding which goals to keep and which to release — on Substack.