There’s no such thing as a goal. Only an expectation.
Achieving goals is a waste of time!
There, I’ve said it… I say this because, for the majority of my early adulthood, I’ve looked at my future and saw high hopes for myself and imagined myself to be somewhere great. The pinnacle of where I would like to be and bask in glory after all of my hard work and efforts.
In retrospect, I’ve realized that my focus was completely messed up and distorted.
There are many reasons why I believe this to be true since I’ve often seen people with very little in terms of achievement lead the happiest lives. But the key significance between these people and people who look towards high achievement is simple:
They love what they do…
Looking back, I never really liked what I did and never really had direction in what I wanted from my life up until recently when I realized that while earning a living is important, it is very easy to get drawn into the mindset of earning more and becoming a consumer in order to seek and achieve happiness.
The reality of it is, it’s simply not true.
I’ve always been the happiest when I did the things I truly enjoyed. I not once thought about goals or cared about whether what I was doing was right or wrong. All I cared about was the activity.
It’s not really the ‘becoming’ that’s really important, but the ‘doing’.
Having completely understood this, I’ve now started to focus on the things I truly enjoy. And what’s most interesting is that having forced me now to think about it, I’ve discovered things about myself that I never knew previously due to my focus being distorted.
What do you most enjoy in your life?
I spoke about my cat in a previous article about how he simply got on with stuff and did not think about what he needed to do. This perfectly fits in line with the idea of enjoyment and why I believe having passion in activity is so vital because it takes little thought to do what you enjoy.
All of my anxiety, worries, expectations, and disappointments were all a result of goals, which could have been cleared with this one simple understanding.
If you’re reading this at a time where you’re feeling low because your life isn’t where you want it to be. You now have a reason why you feel this way and should hopefully help you realize that your happiness can be attained by simply changing course and doing what you truly love, just for the sake of doing it and not because you want to achieve something.
It’s our high expectations that cause us to stifle and get held back. In truth, we can do what we truly love from today and finally feel happy about our lives without wanting anything.
Because it’s the wanting that causes pressure and anxiety.
While I could give you tips on how to achieve this. It really is pretty simple and not that difficult to do. All it takes is 2 simple things:
1) Decide what you really want to do in your life that you really enjoy
2) Start doing it.
The biggest tip I could give you is in helping you discover what that is. It’s to simply observe whether what you’re doing takes motivational effort or is something you do with ease despite the challenge.
After all, nobody needs the motivation to do what they love.
