Don’t Let the Goals Define Your Happiness
Let’s not allow the happiness of our future-self to disturb the joy at this moment
We all have certain things we want to achieve in our lives. They might be related to your education, business, family, physical fitness, or many other things. For that, what we usually do is set a specific goal with a time frame. But with that, we try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict the future, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way. And always our happiness depends on how successful or how quickly we achieve our goal. Thus we have become prisoners of our own expectations.
That got me thinking about why we always tie ourselves with goals. We will always have goals no matter how small or big they are. So, should we be prisoners of our mind until we die, or else how can we free our minds from this trap?
The Problem With Goals
When you set a goal and think about what you’ll achieve by reaching that it could be really motivating…at first. Then even without our permission, our mind makes it our sole purpose to make that goal. You might not be working 24*7 towards that goal, or even maybe not work at all. But it is always in the corner of our mind and never let us feel free and drain our energy rather than generating it.
The problem with this mindset is that you put unnecessary stress on yourself and you always put off happiness until your milestone is achieved. Your mind sees anything you do that doesn’t drive you towards your goal as a waste of time. If you are a student, you feel like following your hobbies, reading an interesting novel, or even doing exercise as enemies that drag you away from the goal you set up.
Then what happens when you achieve that long-awaited goal? You will be happy for a few days and then another goal will replace that void. This is a cycle. It keeps going round and round.
The problem with this mindset is that you put unnecessary stress on yourself and you always put off happiness until your milestone is achieved.
Is it worth it? Is anything worth than our happiness? After all, we do everything to make our future self happy and successful. But how can that future ever come to us when we are so goal-oriented?
None of this is to say that goals are useless. Actually, it is the opposite. It really helps us to see where we want to be at the end. It increases our happiness when we have motivating goals in our life. But the problem is the path we choose to get there.
Systematic Approach
To keep all the headaches, stress, and regret away what we can simply do is to follow a systemic approach to our goals. This is a fancy word. What it means is to focus on practice rather than the final performance, which will ultimately make you enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.
In this method, what you could do is keep things simple by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals. If you try to be as good as you could be in every day, you will reach any height without carrying the heavy burden of that big goal in your mind. That’s the beauty of it. We take baby steps towards our goals and we will get there even before we know it.
Our Happiness is the Most Important Thing
Always try to cherish the current movement. The fact is that you may even die before reaching your next goal which you have set to achieve in one year. Our lives are so uncertain and we could never predict that we can live 80 years happily and peacefully. Then you may have worked so hard, neglecting yourself and not giving enough credit for yourself, only to see nothing. Nobody deserves that.
Steve Jobs once said that he “ lives every day as his last day”. I was about 15 years of age when I first heard it. My first thought was why should I work if I’m going to die today. Why should I study for my exams? Why I shouldn’t be enjoying myself? But it is not the idea he was trying to give you.
If you only had 24 hours to live, you wouldn’t ever think about laying on your bed all day, watching mindless content on YouTube, or scrolling through the Facebook feed. You’d realize how much time you’d spent on things you never cared about which made you feel good in the present but would never amount to anything in the future.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life”- Steve Jobs
I think we’d all wish in those last 24 hours for a little more time to live. Before we were bound to a countless number of goals, so we could not wait to feel some pleasure at the moment. Wouldn’t we regret that? We’d regret so much of our poor decisions that took away so much important time in our lives. We all will want a little more to be able to die without regrets. A little more to live the life we could not live.
Anything you do, keep in mind that what we all seek is happiness by anything we do. Never fall into the trap that achieving goals will give you happiness. Goals give your life a meaning. But it is unwise to bind your happiness to those goals. If you don’t see the beauty of life you have today, you will not see it when you achieve that dream. Do not let anything shorten your sleep. Do not let anything cut short your breakfast. You have to look after yourself first. 10 years from now, when you look back, you’ll be thankful for the extra care you took of yourself because all those milestones, once achieved would not mean the world you as they did before.
Work towards your goal with a system in mind. Then you would have time to read that book you always wanted to read for years, start gardening to get your garden to the state you always dreamed of, start exercising for at least 15 minutes a day to get a good physique. We should always try to be“as good as we could be” on a given day. Then it will drive you to any accomplishment you want in life without bearing a heavy burden on your shoulders. Remember, your time is limited here. So, live a life that you can cherish at the death bed.