Living With And Without Goals Happily
http://zenhabits.net/no-goal/ (quotes are from this blog)
"The Best Goal Is No Goal"
"In the past, I’d set a goal or three for the year, and then sub-goals for each month. Then I’d figure out what action steps to take each week and each day, and try to focus my day on those steps.
Unfortunately, it never, ever works out this neatly. You all know this. You know you need to work on an action step, and you try to keep the end goal in mind to motivate yourself. But this action step might be something you dread, and so you procrastinate. You do other work, or you check email or Facebook, or you goof off."
Oh how funny. That sounds just like me.
In fact, that sounds exactly like what I'm doing right this moment.
Oh...wait.
"You find something you’re passionate about, and do it. Just because you don’t have goals doesn’t mean you do nothing — you can create, you can produce, you can follow your passion.
And in practice, this is a wonderful thing: you wake up and do what you’re passionate about. For me, that’s usually blogging, but it can be writing a novel or an ebook or my next book or creating a course to help others or connecting with incredible people or spending time with my wife or playing with my kids. There’s no limit, because I’m free."
Actually, THIS sounds exactly like what I'm doing. Because sitting in the MTSU library on this gorgeous first day of December in 2011 on facebook, reading, and writing a blog most certainly isn't going to get me to the goal I have planned for myself and it most certainly isn't going to get my paper written that is due at 6 PM. But ya know what? I'M DAMN HAPPY DOING IT. This is what I'm passionate about. Reading, writing, and learning about myself and others. I'm growing. Fuck yea.
From reading the previous quote, I have gained some since of it being okay that I feel like I don't need to set goals.
Goals work for some people, and they don't for others.
Every time I set a goal and do my damndest to stick to it, I drive myself crazy. Just like right now. My goal, to become a physicist, well fuck me. It's fucking tough. I've found out the only things that come easy to me and that I'm happy doing is thinking of the idea behind it all, or the philosophy of it all, and some of the math. Now that I'm actually doing this, I'm not sure, 1. that I can, or 2. that I even want to anymore.
Now don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly believe I can do anything I set my mind to. However, I've found that in the process of sticking to this certain goal, I'm doing a hell of a lot more that I DON'T want to do, then I actually DO want to do. So, my question to myself...Do I actually want to become a physicist? Well, fuck, I guess not.
So here I am again, back to square fucking one.
And ya know where I always come back? To writing.
It makes me happy. This makes me happy. You, whoever you are, reading these words from my heart and soul makes me happy. Whether you think it's good, bad, ugly, creative, beautiful, raw, experienced, or don't care, at least you are thinking, and it's because of me. I'm stewing up your thoughts. It makes me happy to be able to talk about things that matter to me, even if nobody is listening.
It makes me happy when I see others happy. It makes me happy when others are curious. It makes me happy that even though I have a paper due at 6 o'clock that I'm not done with, I'm at peace about it because of writing this blog. I don't know how my paper is going to get finished, and at this moment in time, I'm not sure that I care if it gets finished or not. And, I'm happy about that.
I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. I don't know what the reasons are, and I don't want to pretend to know, and now I know that I sure as hell don't want to bend over backwards out of my way making sure that the reason I chose happens.
I know exactly what I want to do. The problem is, I haven't been doing it.
Now I am.
Here it is.
With all the love within me, and all hope for happy lives for everyone,
- Brandy
"The Best Goal Is No Goal"
"In the past, I’d set a goal or three for the year, and then sub-goals for each month. Then I’d figure out what action steps to take each week and each day, and try to focus my day on those steps.
Unfortunately, it never, ever works out this neatly. You all know this. You know you need to work on an action step, and you try to keep the end goal in mind to motivate yourself. But this action step might be something you dread, and so you procrastinate. You do other work, or you check email or Facebook, or you goof off."
Oh how funny. That sounds just like me.
In fact, that sounds exactly like what I'm doing right this moment.
Oh...wait.
"You find something you’re passionate about, and do it. Just because you don’t have goals doesn’t mean you do nothing — you can create, you can produce, you can follow your passion.
And in practice, this is a wonderful thing: you wake up and do what you’re passionate about. For me, that’s usually blogging, but it can be writing a novel or an ebook or my next book or creating a course to help others or connecting with incredible people or spending time with my wife or playing with my kids. There’s no limit, because I’m free."
Actually, THIS sounds exactly like what I'm doing. Because sitting in the MTSU library on this gorgeous first day of December in 2011 on facebook, reading, and writing a blog most certainly isn't going to get me to the goal I have planned for myself and it most certainly isn't going to get my paper written that is due at 6 PM. But ya know what? I'M DAMN HAPPY DOING IT. This is what I'm passionate about. Reading, writing, and learning about myself and others. I'm growing. Fuck yea.
From reading the previous quote, I have gained some since of it being okay that I feel like I don't need to set goals.
Goals work for some people, and they don't for others.
Every time I set a goal and do my damndest to stick to it, I drive myself crazy. Just like right now. My goal, to become a physicist, well fuck me. It's fucking tough. I've found out the only things that come easy to me and that I'm happy doing is thinking of the idea behind it all, or the philosophy of it all, and some of the math. Now that I'm actually doing this, I'm not sure, 1. that I can, or 2. that I even want to anymore.
Now don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly believe I can do anything I set my mind to. However, I've found that in the process of sticking to this certain goal, I'm doing a hell of a lot more that I DON'T want to do, then I actually DO want to do. So, my question to myself...Do I actually want to become a physicist? Well, fuck, I guess not.
So here I am again, back to square fucking one.
And ya know where I always come back? To writing.
It makes me happy. This makes me happy. You, whoever you are, reading these words from my heart and soul makes me happy. Whether you think it's good, bad, ugly, creative, beautiful, raw, experienced, or don't care, at least you are thinking, and it's because of me. I'm stewing up your thoughts. It makes me happy to be able to talk about things that matter to me, even if nobody is listening.
It makes me happy when I see others happy. It makes me happy when others are curious. It makes me happy that even though I have a paper due at 6 o'clock that I'm not done with, I'm at peace about it because of writing this blog. I don't know how my paper is going to get finished, and at this moment in time, I'm not sure that I care if it gets finished or not. And, I'm happy about that.
I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. I don't know what the reasons are, and I don't want to pretend to know, and now I know that I sure as hell don't want to bend over backwards out of my way making sure that the reason I chose happens.
I know exactly what I want to do. The problem is, I haven't been doing it.
Now I am.
Here it is.
With all the love within me, and all hope for happy lives for everyone,
- Brandy
That's exactly right. You have to wade through a whole lot work you don't want to do to get a physics degree. Now that I've gone through 90% of it, I feel like it was worth it. It helped me with what I do want to do more than I originally thought it would. My two cents. It's easy to look back though, much scarier to look forward as in your case.
ReplyDeleteI've felt like this many, many times. It took all this hard work and effort to get through college with a degree and now I don't know how to get to where I want to be, 1. I'm kinda scared to put myself out there 2. I don't want to find out my efforts have been wasted and I'm really incredibly retarded. I think this can all be attributed to this overwhelming fear of growing up and actually finding out for myself that life is so much harder than I ever really thought.
ReplyDeleteI wish you luck on your search and fulfillment of your "goals" and hopefully you'll accomplish whatever it is you truly want to do, even if you don't know that's what it actually is.