A site for self-development, self-knowledge, personal growth and spiritual improvement. Stanislav Milevich
People are used to saying that the end justifies the means .
But what then justifies the goal?
Any goal in human life is a person's intention to improve himself in an imagined future. A goal is created in the conditioned mind as a suggestion of what its future should be. Every person tries to find his own purpose in life and suffers if it seems to him that he is living aimlessly. But a problem arises: any goal, no matter what a person strives for, is only his imagination about action in the future. The future itself does not exist, in reality it is only a game of imagination, and the fact that the imagined result may depend on your actions is an illusion. In reality, everything happens on its own, regardless of your desire.
What an ordinary person considers himself to be cannot control reality, because he is not its creator and has no access to either control or information. After all, no one can say with certainty what will happen to him not only in a few years, but how events will unfold tomorrow or even in the next moment. A person can only assume, and the fact that the assumption sometimes coincides with what is happening is an accident, just as the wish coincides when a coin is thrown into the air.
The main problem with the goal is that the goal, being a concept of the mind that presupposes certain desired events in the future, if it does not coincide with the inevitable, brings suffering to a person. But if everything that happens is inevitable and nothing can be changed, and the goal brings suffering, then why does a person need a goal? And if the goal itself is just a game of imagination, then what kind of goal can we even talk about?
A goal is the conditioned mind's idea of improving an imagined future. Trying to explain and justify its existence, the mind strives for self-identification and creates many ideas and concepts. But what you are cannot be an idea or a concept of the mind, and cannot be anything more than what you already are. You are and have always been yourself, and you cannot be better or worse, you are being itself. Not understanding that you cannot be something else leads to the creation of imaginary goals that lead nowhere, but are only a desire to improve the idea of your separateness in being.
Imagine empty cups standing on the ground - more than six billion cups, and all of them contain only air. But around them there is absolutely the same air, and there is no difference, no separation. A person's body is like a cup, and his mind is like the air in it. All separation is created by the imagination, but the cup itself, which creates separation, is also a play of the imagination. Because one imaginary separateness begins to perceive other separatenesses as multiple objects, it seems to forget that everything is one and cannot be different.
Because of this separation, there arises the desire of the imagination “within everyone” to become better than the imaginations “within others,” which can be expressed in a variety of manifestations and determine the motivation of the goal. Such a desire to improve the unimprovable gives rise to rejection of existence itself as it is, and this brings pain and suffering to a person.
But there is no difference between the human mind and the infinite consciousness, it is all one. Since everything is one consciousness, all people perceive the illusion of the world around them in the same way. The illusion of separation is created by the body, which is also the same play of the imagination of infinite consciousness. But being in a general illusion, each individual consciousness imagines its own actions and perceives the imaginary actions of objects that seem to it to be different. And a person considers all this to be life, trying in vain to find meaning and purpose in it.
Awareness of the purposelessness of any goal, the meaninglessness of any meaning leads to freedom from suffering, from the monstrous dependence on the ideas of the conditioned mind, constantly clinging to what is happening with its beliefs, creating goals to do something better than it can be, to become better than what you already are , achieve the unattainable, improve the unimprovable.
Stanislav Milevich
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What are life goals?
Life goals are what we want to achieve, and they are much more meaningful than just “what we need to achieve to survive . Unlike daily routines or short-term goals, they guide our behavior in the long term. They do not have a single psychological definition, and they are not strictly a clinical construct, but they help us determine what we want to experience in terms of our values .
And because they are personal ambitions, they can take many forms. But they give us a sense of direction and hold us accountable as we pursue happiness and well-being—our best life.
How to find and define personal goals in life?
We have already looked at the importance of meaningful goals, using Seligman's model, we have established that personal goals for a "good life" will typically be internal rather than external. We put this further into context using Maslow's hierarchy of needs , and we laid out the three-step positive psychology framework for the process of setting life goals, so now it's about self-reflection.
You will definitely be able to find inspiration for a variety of possible purposes, but since the meaning is internal, your answers will be unique. For the purpose of discovering your own values and inspiration, take a look at these self-reflection exercises and see what questions might be right for you personally.
Types of Life Goals
At their core, life goals should be meaningful, and meaning should be subjective. In this regard, it is probably more helpful to think about the types of life goals before disclosing potential goals.
Thus, according to Kasser and Ryan, there are two types of life goals that relate differently to our well-being:
- Intrinsic goals concern emotional intimacy, personal growth, and helping others. They are believed to align with our needs, reflecting our innate desire for self-knowledge and more satisfying relationships.
- Extrinsic goals are more culturally defined and have less to do with our nature as people, such as our appearance, social status, status symbols, and wealth.
Important! Research shows that internal life goals are associated with greater happiness, self-fulfillment, vitality, and life satisfaction compared to external life goals.
But in the end, the evidence also shows that the content of our goals may be less important to our well-being than our reasons for pursuing them. Having the “right” reason for pursuing a goal—regardless of the pursuit itself—has been found to contribute to our well-being .
Internal life goals
They satisfy human needs, including our psychological and self-actualization needs, as shown below in Maslow's Hierarchy.
Life goals based on the first may include:
- Marriage or a committed relationship with a partner.
- Finding and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, with time for friends and family.
- Live honestly, be honest and open with others.
- Inspire others with your beliefs and actions.
- Be a great listener so others can reach out to you.
- Become an expert in your field and help others.
Goals based on self-fulfillment of needs may entail:
- Come up with a new invention that reflects your creativity.
- Become a successful entrepreneur and run your own business.
- Creating your own personal brand.
- Learning a new language.
- Mastering a difficult skill.
External life goals
Extrinsic goals are not necessarily material, but since they tend to be needs, they are easier to come up with. For example:
- Owning the latest Tesla.
- Become a millionaire.
- Getting a big promotion or job in a management position.
- Having your own workshop or studio.
- Visit every country in Europe.
How to track and evaluate the status of your life goals: the role of responsibility
We write down our goals to formalize them in one way and in another to give us a sense of personal responsibility for results.
The first type of responsibility is internal, and psychologists suggest that it motivates us to continue if those goals are consistent with our personal values. This is all well and good, but how can we track and evaluate our progress?
Tracking Life Goals
First, as already stated, we can define our goals and create clarity around them. Prioritization allows us to focus on the main important tasks.
If you want to set deadlines for each small sub-goal, then go for it - it adds another layer of personal responsibility and is commonly used in project management situations.
Important! When you have specific goals, you can better evaluate your progress. And from here we can adjust our generated paths accordingly to maximize our chances of success.
The process and steps of setting life goals
You can find countless models for goal setting in the relevant literature. But what does positive psychology say about the process and stages of goal setting? It uses three steps: planning a goal, shaping a path, and overcoming obstacles.
Goal planning
The first step is to develop our goals. When developing goals, we must remember a key premise of goal setting theory—they are intentions that guide our behavior.
- Goals should be specific endpoints. That is, we should be able to measure our success because they are clear and detailed.
- They must be approach based. This means that we should easily be able to focus on making positive progress toward their accomplishment rather than distracting ourselves from negative outcomes.
- We should be able to break them down into sub-goals as needed so that we can celebrate small successes along the way.
Path formation
Now we have personal, meaningful life goals, we can begin to think about different potential ways to achieve them.
You can ask friends, family, or someone in a mentoring position to help you come up with ideas on how to achieve your goals. What possible paths could Jamie take to become a certified teacher?
Overcoming obstacles
When setting life goals, it helps to consider possible obstacles that may arise. We can be self-reflective, thinking about our potential paths, as well as our strategies that we could use to solve them. We can do this alone or with others, as in the path formation stage, and our goal here is to prepare ourselves for the unexpected.
Planning life goals and how to prioritize
So you have a million things you want to accomplish. We don't need statistics to understand why writing adds some organization to everything, but active planning can also increase our motivation.
Personal strategic planning
According to Brian Tracy, moving from A to B is personal strategic planning. Simply put, his proposed approach takes the principles of organizational management and applies them to the personal sphere.
Rather than seeking to maximize return on investment (ROI), as we would in a corporate setting, we instead seek to increase our efficiency by reducing the physical, mental, and emotional energy that we might otherwise waste.
If traveling to every EU country is not your life goal, wouldn't it be more efficient to fly? Or could you take a few extra days on your next business trip? Two very logistical examples, but hopefully they illustrate the premise of personal strategic planning.
Priority of life goals
Prioritization is about identifying the most important life goals that you have developed and written down.
- Once you've formalized them by writing them down, rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. As long as you systematically apply the same ranking system to all of them, the most important ones should stand out.
- An alternative would be to divide them first into the areas that suit them best and then rank them within each category. What is your most important goal?
- Is it advisable to focus on five main goals? Or are three more important? Choose the ones that are most worthy of your energy - what will make you happier? What is most important to you personally in terms of your values?
- Planning. What subgoals have you identified? What resources will you need for each stage and when will you need them?
- Find a good, but not necessarily the best, time to start, as the best may never come. Then use a planner to work it all out.
