Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Improving life by changing and eliminating goals.

The common question people ask is how do I achieve my given goals.

But sometimes the better route for a good life is having other goals.

Sometimes giving up on certain goals can make life better.


Many of our goals are unconscious. Knowing these goals and sometimes changing them is even a bigger challenge.


Sometimes, pursuing the goals "the way we want them" is plainly irrational.
Even not by our own standards. It is many times either stubbornness, or lack of thinking. But there are more emotional and cognitive structures that cause us to get stuck with only certain goals and ways to do things.

Certainly, we sometimes want the things that are good for us. We may not always know the exact way they are good for us. But the heart knows things the mind does not.
Sometimes it is the idiosyncrasy way of things that gives them special taste.

But the idea stays.

1) Changing goals can be the way to improve life.
2) Our goals and the good life are not always compatible.


PS. Some believe that the fact that we want something makes it worthy of pursuit.
This sounds tautological for me. Especially when we see people pursue goals that are quite clearly destructive.
I do not believe that personal goals are above reason and criticism (criticism in the common sense meaning). Our goals are not exempt from being stupid.


Update. I see there is research showing that disengagement from unattainable goals is linked ot better health and well-being.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ok, so your encorage towards us is not to try to complicate things, the 'goal' have to be robust, rational, and mind-made not heart-made, and i know if we wake up of our desires or dreams or our ficticios lives would be disastrous because no one wants to hear that the dreams are imposible.

But some times it is necesary, i need moore meditation.

I.C. said...

I completely agree with this post (as with the whole tendency in the last posts) - I think it is quite important in our goal-dominated society!

After all, goals are at most means (and more often damaging or just pretending that something is important), so one should evaluate their usefulness and ask if they cannot be replaced by other "tools": like being open for beauty + gifts from nature or others; like being "present" and "loving to oneself"; like putting an effort for the fun of the effort; ...