I recently came across a quotation. ?No man is happy without a goal.?? This seems to sum up alot of what we believe.?It?s a common idea that goals are a good thing and a necessary part of success. If you?ve read any amount of ?self improvement? literature, you?ll have come across material about the importance of goals setting, how to set proper goals and how to go about achieving them.
Goals are very much a part of the western mindset, where we tend to think of time in a linear way ? we are on a journey and we want to get to the destination. But there is also a view that goals are?necessary?- at best, pointless and, at worst, destructive.
Personally, I?ve vacillated between two positions. On the one hand, I?ve often bought into the idea that goals make sense, that they are useful and that a life without goals is like a ship without a compass. ?Every journey has a destination, and I need a plan to get there.
On the other hand, I?ve often thought that the whole notion of goals is misplaced and that a ?life without goals is more authentic, liberating, spontaneous and refreshing. As a child, I did not have goals. I did not grow up in a family with great ambitions for me. We were poor and, although I always felt safe and loved, I did not pick up any great aspiration from my family or my social environment. And yet I did achieve quite alot ? I went to a good university and embarked on a career in which I quite quickly become reasonably successful. I got promoted to various senior positions ? and this happened without any goal setting on my part.
As a young man, I came across the Tao Te Ching, a book which resonated with me very deeply. One of Lao Tzu?s verses is: ?a?good traveler has no fixed plans, and is?not intent on arriving.??What does he mean by this??Can you achieve anything without goals?
Looking back, I don?t think a goal has ever really helped me to achieve anything. The goals I?ve set have rarely produced the results I was looking for, and the things I consider to be the greatest achievements in my life have had nothing to do with goals. I?ve come to believe that goals are essentially?meaningless and can be quite destructive to one?s happiness and even to one?s success.
So what?s wrong with goals?
First, goals over-simplify things. Focusing on a single thing sounds like a good idea, but the equation is very ?complicated. So many factors influence the outcome and you can?t take all of these into account with a goal. There are all kind of things happening that influence the future, and most of them are beyond your control.
Second, goals tend to be confining. They can narrow things down to a point where you become less open to other possibilities. All kinds of wonderful opportunities arise all the time ? having goals can cause you reject possibilities which may have a great deal of potential.
Third, goals force us to focus too much on the future. Ekhart Tolle?s book, The Power of Now, has been near the top of the bestseller list for years, and this is so because we all know, deep down, that there is no future. There is only now. The good?traveler?is good because she understands this. She enjoys the present moment, looks at the view, breathes in the air, enjoys the wind on her face and the sunlight on her skin. This is the time she has.
Fourth, goals can make you feel bad. So much in life is unpredictable ? the locus of control we have is far more limited than most of us like to believe. When something doesn?t work out, we can blame ourselves but, often, the failure is not our fault. We make goals because we believe we are in control. But, as John Parkin explains in his wonderful book, F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way, this is nothing but illusion. He uses the analogy of a child ?driving? a car on a track in a theme park. The child has the impression that he is driving the car but, however he turns the wheel, the car continues to follow the predetermined course. I?m not suggesting that our?destiny?is fixed and that our behaviour has no influence on the outcome ? I have no doubt that it is a real factor ? but I am convinced that our influence is far less than we like to imagine.
Fifth, you don?t know what you want. You probably think you do, but you don?t really. Look back at your life. If you now had what you thought you wanted ten, twenty years ago, would you be happy? Goals make the assumption that we know what we want. This is very wrong.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, goal setting seems to miss the basic point that life is not really about getting anywhere. It is not that kind of journey. It?s not linear ? it?s more circuitous. When I was young, I used to think that age would bring a steady increase of security, success and confidence. But it does nothing of the sort. Life is more of an ebb and flow ? things emerge, they develop and grow, and then they fade away. The tide moves in and out, the seasons come and go. Life moves in cycles, not in lines.
The reason that ?a?good traveler has no fixed plans, and is?not intent on arriving? is simply that to focus on the destination is to focus on an illusion. There is no destination, only a journey, and to become fixated on a point in the future which never arrives is to miss the journey itself.
Ideas for a better way to live.
There is a better way to live than goal setting. It?s a life with more authenticity and, perhaps strangely to us, a way of living that brings about greater success and happiness.
Live with passion. Instead of having goals, find something you love and then do it every day. Success, whatever that means, will follow. Following your passion means that you will?necessarily?be doing something worthwhile, creating something of value or providing outstanding service, and this is bound to lead to happiness and?fulfillment.
Follow your intuition. According to Lao Tzu, ??A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is.??Skillful living is about being observant and trusting your own inner wisdom, not about making plans and contriving ways to achieve them.
Keep it simple. Don?t think too much. Don?t plan too much. You know less than you think. Let life carry you. We tend to over complicate things. Goals and plans are really just another way of our trying to exert control over a world which is, in the end, deeply mysterious and beyond our knowing. Give up.
Talking of simplicity, you might like to check out the minimalists. And also, you could do worse that getting yourself a copy of the Tao Te Ching. In my view, every question you could ever have about life is answered in this book. If there is such a thing as a manual for life, this is it.
You might also like to read?Leo Babauta?s post at Zen Habits ?called?The best goal is no goal.
Source: http://changeyourlife.net/living-without-goals/
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