Why Do We Talk So Much About Goals?

Have you ever noticed how much we talk about goals in our culture? From new year’s resolutions to aspirational advertising, we live in a very future-oriented, acquisition-based, improvement-obsessed paradigm. We rarely question the assumption that we need goals. But do we?

The problem with a goals mindset is that it orients us permanently toward the future. We are always thinking about the arrival. Achievement, satisfaction, even happiness all exist in the space where the goal is realized. But of course when we get there, we realize there are ever more goals. It never ends. There’s always more to do, always more to get. There’s nothing wrong with having ideas about where we’re headed, nothing wrong with dreams. But if we’re regimenting our lives around goals, we risk neglecting the quality of our lives.

Is this the case for you? Only you can decide if it is, and what that means to you, but if the space of your day is taken up by how much you can get done, and you find yourself exhausted, dissatisfied, and experiencing existential terror as the years tick by and you still haven’t found purpose or fulfillment, you may want to examine your relationship with goals and their associated outcomes.

Consider that you may not want what you think you do.

I used to have a big dream for myself. I wanted to get a novel published. And I failed. It devastated me. I wasn’t able to write another novel for fifteen years. Now I’m on the road to publication again, but I’m going about it differently. While I nominally have a goal of publishing my novel, I recognize that what I really want is how I imagine publishing will make me feel. Like I’ve arrived, like I’m a real writer.

It's okay to want those feelings. But it’s important to recognize that publishing isn’t the only, or even the best, way to get them. And letting a goal dictate how you feel about yourself is a dangerous game. The world is full of stories of middle-aged folks having crises because the things they thought they wanted didn’t make them feel happy or fulfilled.

I only started feeling like I was a real writer, like I’d arrived, when I started taking myself seriously despite any goal and achievement thereof. This is what brings fulfillment and eventual happiness: the ability to find value in the self for how you live rather than in what you achieve. Achievements are nice but they’re icing. When you live based on a clear understanding that it’s the feelings around achievement that you are actually craving, you can begin to look for other, smaller ways in your daily life to attain those.

Here's what that looks like in reference to my example of wanting to feel like a real writer: I write as much as I can, I regularly put stuff out on a blog while I toil away at the larger project of my novel, I insist on seeing myself as a real writer and describing myself as such. Together all this adds up to a feeling of arrival. What about publishing my novel? I still really want that! But I feel good about the journey now, as challenging as it can sometimes be. That’s a big win.

Goals talk is only just talk because that’s what it’s supposed to be.

We all know go-getter types who actually do set goals and achieve them, as if they’re part machine, but most people we know probably spend more time talking about their goals than they do actually achieving them. We’re probably a bit like that ourselves. Most of us use goals talk to feel like we’re doing goals. Imagining accomplishing our goals feels like we’re actually doing it in the moment. But the come-down is that later we feel awful when we don’t accomplish them. It’s a bit like a drug reaction. But if we understand that this is what goals can do for us, give us a chance to test out ideas and have good feelings in the moment, we can have fun goals talk without the hangover.

I’ve learned over time that goal setting is best done sparingly, if at all. My quality of life is higher without them. As I point out above, this doesn’t mean living without any idea of the direction I’m headed. But I no longer use a goal setting methodology (visualize outcome, create steps for achievement, feel bad when things aren’t going well, consider it a failure if I don’t realize the goal…). Instead I focus on how I want each day to feel. Sometimes I want to feel busy and accomplished, and sometimes I just want to sink into an endless peaceful moment. Then I find activities that go with those feelings. Somehow the stuff that needs to get done gets done. Most of the time haha.