Do You Need Goals?

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6 years 2 months ago #311613 by
Replied by on topic Do You Need Goals?

JLSpinner wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: As Obi says we need goals to live but we also need attachment to those goals. Fear of failure produces this attitude towards non-attachment but its a false attitude. If we are not attached to our goals that just produces excuses and mediocrity. Neither of which are desired or productive. Do you want to be the best Jedi you can be or do you want to be a mediocre Jedi? You see the goal doesn't matter, but your attitude toward it does.


Yes, the attitude is the most important part. But it works both ways. Obsess too much over that goal and you will miss everything. We cannot lose our awareness of the moment.


And what is it that you are being mindful of in the present? The present accomplishment of your goal of being the best Jedi you can be? Just because we have a goal that we are focused on does not mean we keep our minds on some future milestone. It means we keep our minds on our present efforts to accomplish that needs of that goal right now.

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6 years 2 months ago - 6 years 2 months ago #311618 by OB1Shinobi
Replied by OB1Shinobi on topic Do You Need Goals?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: ....Fear of failure produces this attitude towards non-attachment but its a false attitude. If we are not attached to our goals that just produces excuses and mediocrity....


I think its partly fear of failure but also fear of work thats at the bottom of peoples resistance to goals and goal setting. And after fear of failure and fear of (or more accurately; aversion to) work, i think theres also a fear of putting in all the hard work and one day realizing it wasnt worth it and that the goals have become a trap. I believe that is mostly an excuse which masks fear of failure and aversion to work though. Thats what it was when i did it. I told myself i didnt want to get trapped in the rat race, and that was my excuse for hiding from my own life. Wasted a lot of time hiding... time that i regret losing.

I also didnt really know where to start, because i had an exaggerated sense of what taking responsibility for my life really meant. I thought i had to have everything figured out and organized feom the beginning, and that i had to aim for something extraordinary. So I think that many people read "having goals" and interpret that to mean turning into some kind of hyper-achieving CEO or something. In reality, overly ambitious goals arent goals at all, they are pipe-dreams. Fantasies. A smart goal is one that you can actually achieve. Its also useful to realize that many of our goals are not pass/fail goals, like winning a gold medal at the olympics, but rather they are goals of ongoing maintenance and/or improvement, like eating healthy or getting in shape (or being mindful;)). We can break those into pass/fail milestones such as "eat X number of calories and run X distance on thursday" but in those cases you can still benefit just from the effort even if you dont make the exact numbers. Youre still pursing your goals even when youre not perfect, and you can always modify the goals and the standards associated with them as you go along.

People are complicated.
Last edit: 6 years 2 months ago by OB1Shinobi.
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6 years 2 months ago #311619 by
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In response to the question of mindfulness as a goal, I think I might have a unique perspective to share.

Not too many years ago I was entirely focused on the future and my financial and professional success. I was unaware of mindfulness or "living in the moment" as I was always striving toward something. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy moments, but those moments were seen as the rewards of constantly striving toward a future goal. I was happy, but stressed sometimes.

Then a doctor told me I had cancer and might only live a year or two more. Suddenly the big life goals I had did not seem so urgent. Being promoted at work or buying a better car became meaningless while I grappled with my own mortality. The smell of the outdoors after a rain shower suddenly became more appealing to me than making money. That's when the whole mindfulness thing started to make sense to me.

I still have short term and long term goals, but what has changed is I don't stress nearly as much when I don't reach them on schedule. My goal is now to remain alive and enjoy every minute of it that I can, and that means I make a conscious effort to remain in the moment and actually observe what is happening right now.

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6 years 2 months ago #311620 by
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@OBI - your absolutely right. Most goals are not pass fail but they need to have hard milestones. Eating healthy is hard to define as a goal because it is a function of present mindfulness. But clearing cholesterol from your veins or losing an inch on the tummy could be goals of healthy eating. Any "goal" we have has both a future and present component.

@Senan, Since you went through such a radical reevaluation of your goals maybe you had the wrong goals before? I'm not saying you did or didn't but it seems to me that it is our demise that should drive the urgency of our goals if they are worthy goals.

Buying a car may not be worthy as its materially based but maybe saving money for financial independence for yourself and/or your wife would be a worthy goal. With that independence buying a new car is an option you did not have before that you can exercise if you like or not. Also if you were to go it would also provide options for your wife in your absence. If I had not buying a car as a goal but saving for financial independence and I found out I had cancer it would actually reinforce the urgency of achieving that goal, not destroy it. I think the pursuit of our goals should always create options, not limit them.

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6 years 2 months ago #311622 by
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I practice "self-leadership" (was fortunate to have a leadership class under Dr. Neck, one of the main theorists for the approach). It uses short term goal mapping in a very precise and effective way, but with constant reflection, self-evaluation and the awareness of changing opportunities to be able to flow and change with what life presents. Many of the new post-chaordic models of leadership address the problem of having fixed long-term goals in today's rapid-changing environment. From a purely business sense, it's hard to set a ten year goal when you don't how technology may reshape the playing field in the next two. From a spiritual perspective, being engaged in a praxis that is constantly transforming the way you see the world is very similar - I accept the basic premise that what I will see down the road may not be visible or accessible to me at present, and to *only* focus on what I think is out there may keep me at this current state. For my own long-term goals, I just keep an open mind. I monitor my reaction to present experiences to know whether I want to go in a specific direction, but I also know that quite frequently, the opportunities that come my way are a lot better than what I could consciously plan. For me, keeping the foundation solid in the present with the short term goals helps me be in the position where I can have a lot more freedom to explore my options.

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6 years 2 months ago #311624 by Ben
Replied by Ben on topic Do You Need Goals?
Thank you for engaging with this discussion, everyone...I'm really genuinely very curious at the moment as to how people feel about this, so I'm very grateful. :)

It seems we're in agreement that goals are much more complex and nuanced than the stereotypical 'I want to earn lots of money and buy a big house' sort of thing.

When I asked the question, I was indeed thinking of all manner of goals, big and small - from 'I want to finish this spreadsheet at work today' to 'over the course of my life I'd like to think I'll fall in love, get married, have kids, and then grandkids'. I'm counting as goals both highly specific targets and also the kind of vague dreams that often form our overarching themes in our lives.

I think we have decided fairly conclusively that we can't literally abandon all goals, like the goals to eat, drink, sleep, and so on.

But I guess there's a difference between goals that keep us alive in the very basic sense and the ones that give us something...extra, and are therefore arguably unnecessary.

Personally I'm kind of particularly interested in this element:

Johno wrote: The only thing that keeps me going are principles and goals. They are like the compass and rudder in my life.


Like, do we need the kind of drive and general forward-motion that goals provide in order to be able to be passionate about life - about actually living it?

I've just thought, also - something like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - can we raise ourselves above the bottom level without deliberate, conscious goals (although, y'know, in the spirit of Mr Watts et al I'm going to pretend to ignore the 'Ego' level :laugh: :blush:)

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Or, y'know, please do carry on as you were if I'm now derailing things :D I'm very happy to read and ponder whatever angles come along!

B.Div | OCP
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6 years 2 months ago #311628 by
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While I think Maslow has given us a lot of good insight into the importance of this hierarchy during initial development, I am soooo leery of any pyramid models anymore. In practice, people simply don't operate that in that kind of straight forward motion when making decisions - during my days in architecture school, I pretty much sacrificed the lower four levels (apart from breathing!, LOL) in pursuit of the top one. I do think that the security I had in that base level helped forge that kind of devotion to creative work, but then - I do know some of the exceptions to the rule there. I haven't played around with developmental theory in a while to know if anyone has worked out a less "fixed" model, but it is an interesting thing to consider in the context of the conversation here.

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6 years 2 months ago #311629 by
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Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: @Senan, Since you went through such a radical reevaluation of your goals maybe you had the wrong goals before? I'm not saying you did or didn't but it seems to me that it is our demise that should drive the urgency of our goals if they are worthy goals.

Buying a car may not be worthy as its materially based but maybe saving money for financial independence for yourself and/or your wife would be a worthy goal. With that independence buying a new car is an option you did not have before that you can exercise if you like or not. Also if you were to go it would also provide options for your wife in your absence. If I had not buying a car as a goal but saving for financial independence and I found out I had cancer it would actually reinforce the urgency of achieving that goal, not destroy it. I think the pursuit of our goals should always create options, not limit them.


You're absolutely right, Kyrin. The new information caused me to really evaluate what my goals were and why. I realized many of them were selfish in that I was consumed with my own future happiness without giving due consideration to what might happen to others if I was unable to achieve my goals. I've realized that it is a very real possibility that my wife could be left without my income, but still have my bills. We've changed our focus now, and a lot of it is comfort and stability rather than extravagance.

Interestingly enough, we've also learned to take advantage of opportunities to be extravagant when it makes sense. If we have some extra money, I'm much more willing to spend it on a unique experience that I can still enjoy despite my illness. In years past I never would've considered spending $400 on a pair of concert tickets, but when Justin Timberlake comes around and my wife wants to make a date of it, I'm going to enjoy that opportunity. It is less a shift in goals and more a shift in prioritizing which are more important to me now.

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6 years 2 months ago #311635 by
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Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: And what is it that you are being mindful of in the present?


Life, Kyrin. Experience, Knowledge, opportunity.

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6 years 2 months ago #311639 by
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JLSpinner wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: And what is it that you are being mindful of in the present?


Life, Kyrin. Experience, Knowledge, opportunity.


And what do you "plan" to do with that experience, knowledge and opportunity? ;) :P

Lol just teasing, I know what you mean but to my earlier point I think any "future" goal has a component part of "nowness".

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