This is one of the usual posts on my blog and you will find some strong, vulgar words inside – it was necessary, because I’ve come a long way and want to name certain things appropriately, without any mercy. Do you have any goals? Are you goal-oriented? I was such a man for a few years, and I can’t recommend such approach. It may look like good motivation, but it’s destructive and stupid, in most of cases, it’s just coaching bullshit. Right now, I change my life from goal-oriented to systems-oriented, I will explain difference and write, why goals are bad option.
It’s difficult to not hear about goals nowadays – a lot of people discuss about success, about scaling, about self-improvement. One of the core elements of such approach are goals: you must have goals and you must do anything to achieve them. For example, attractive shape, fit. According to many people, you should set your weight target and then train and eat to archive that goal. Or your own business: you SHOULD grow up, earn more, hire more employees, produce more, and more, rise your market, scale up every time. It looks fine seemingly, but there is a big problem – what after that?
Table of Contents
Rat race
Last years I have archived a lot from my assumed goals. And guess what – almost every time, I felt happy for only a moment, and then I felt a void – no more goal, no more sense… Solution is simple and coach gurus can tell you: find another goal to achieve and continue your adventure! But it’s stupid. It’s like rat race, never-ending story with only few moments of happiness and rest of enormous, debilitating effort. It’s not hard to work hard, to work a lot, but make it without good sense: for example, waste time for meetings, for pep talks (I really hate them), but without real vision, without knowledge of what we want to do and what our values are. The tricky thing it to work smart, to say STOP in some moments and decide we are not interested in scale up, because… it will break our rules and we are happy now.
With systems, values are more important. Back to fit example from the beginning: weight target is bad, because after months of many austerities you will be happy for only moment, and you will return to the previous weight quickly. It will need a lot of willpower and will “drain” you, like bad app can drain your phone battery. All changes you made were only temporary, only to achieve that goal. Then you will try again… and again… and again. With the same result. And it’s a definition of insanity: “Insanity is doing the exact… same fucking thing… over and over again expecting… shit to change… That. Is. Crazy.”. With system, you do not need austerities. You can decide I want to be healthier, and then, step by step, change your habits and nutrition – still tasty, but healthier than before. You do not have to plan finish an Iron Man, but you want to be quite active every day: because you know, that good sleep + healthy food + some activity = you will feel great most of time. Most, not only few minutes after each stupid goal! What an amazing difference!
With systems, it’s not important to push extremely hard. It doesn’t make any sense. Example from my life: I can run fast, but when I increase my pace, I also increase chance to injury. It doesn’t matter, because benefits from higher pace are small and from my perspective, irrelevant: I do not have goal to win something, I want to be healthier to have more power for my family, to enjoy life so… As you can see, it’s simple. Amazingly simple and I love simple things a lot. The hardest thing is to change a way of thinking. During years, a lot of us has been infected by toxic thinking, that only achieved goals can give you happiness. If effect, lot of us uses social medias “to be famous”, to show different people, what we achieved, to measure our progresses and compete with others (like Strava). But all of that it’s bullshit, just answer that question: what will you do after your current goal? Will you set a new one? Just think about that.
Goals are for losers
With systems, you do not have to abandon all your goals. They can remain, they can build your systems, but you must remember, to not treat them as process determinants, milestones etc. If you will fail some goal – no problem, you can learn a lot from that lesson and it’s always solution where everyone benefits. I think it’s hard to separate these two things – I can blame myself easily after non-achieved goal, so in such cases, it’s better way to avoid them. And it’s the reason I still not full decided to use or to not use some services like Strava. They have their advantages, but “hidden defects” are particularly important in most of cases. Life is too short and too beautiful to waste time for such defects.
To be honest, I do not mean to stop, sit down, do nothing, and say: “I’m happy now without that rat race!”. No, it’s not an option, not for people like me, who like challenges. I urge to change life fundamentals, to build few systems based on our values and then use them to be happier. If you think you can be happy because of money, you are wrong: new jacket/car/home/TV/plane will be great for few days, but after that, you will lose a sense of novelty. If you think, achieved goals and “sucess” (whatever it is) will give you better life, you are wrong. Simple things can give you a lot of happiness, and you can use systems to make your life longer and simpler, to have more time for happiness instead of mindlessly, crazy forcing forward. It’s your life, don’t fuck this up.