Do You Need Goals?

If anyone else remains interested in this topic and the direction we were taking it in - I just finished reading Charles Duhigg's 'The Power of Habit', which is quoted and referenced in the article that Vusuki linked to.

It's a really interesting read, I highly recommend it - it delves into the psychology/neurology of habits and uses case studies to illustrate in a very reader-friendly sort of way the extent to which 'the habit loop' influences the happenings of personal, corporate and societal environments.

In answer to some of my own questions from this thread, it encourages the reader to think that a habit needs to be coupled with belief, which is in itself something that we can work on making into a habit. So if you form a habit without the slightest bit of belief in its ability to effect change in your life, it probably wont, and you'll probably fall off the habit-wagon. If you allow yourself to actually believe that it will have a positive effect, it is much more likely to because your belief inspires you to automatically follow the habit, and to make it a meaningful part of you (yeah, I know that most of the time here we're worrying about trying not to make things a part of our identity, but let's just ignore that for a minute :blush: )

Towards the end, paraphrasing William James:

~
Later, he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change. And that one of the most important methods for creating belief was habits. Habits, he noted, are what allow us to "do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all." Once we choose who we want to be, people grow "to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or unfolded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same folds."

If you believe you can change - if you make it a habit - the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. Once that choice occurs - and becomes automatic - it's not only real, it starts to seem inevitable, the thing, as James wrote, that bears "us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be."
~
Charles Duhigg, 'The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do and how to change'


Anyway, definitely worth a read if anyone is particularly interested.

V-Tog wrote: What role does goal-setting play in our lives? To what extent to do you set and pursue short/middle/long-term goals, and could you function without them?

I almost always have to have a goal or something to look forward to in order to function. I actually have a quote to share that sums it up perfectly for me:

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair." —Walker Percy

V-Tog wrote: What role does goal-setting play in our lives? To what extent to do you set and pursue short/middle/long-term goals, and could you function without them?

In my previous job there was a saying "The amateur focuses on the results, the professional on the actions." If you want to get a six-pack, don't focus on what you look like everyday, because it will take longer than you want and you'll be demotivated. Focus on going to the gym every couple of days, then before you know it you'll have a six-pack.

I'm not someone who has really long-term goals, I may have some vague idea of where I might go in life but it's rarely concrete. The goals which are defining my life the most at the moment is writing a novel and learning French. The habits I am trying to instill everyday towards these goals are to write a page everyday and to do at least one French lesson. If I do this then in three months to six months it's likely I will have finished the novel and be more or less fluent in French. But those ends aren't what I spend my time focussing on, I tend to focus only what's in front of me so each day I just think about doing those tasks.

V-Tog wrote: In answer to some of my own questions from this thread, it encourages the reader to think that a habit needs to be coupled with belief, which is in itself something that we can work on making into a habit. So if you form a habit without the slightest bit of belief in its ability to effect change in your life, it probably wont, and you'll probably fall off the habit-wagon. If you allow yourself to actually believe that it will have a positive effect, it is much more likely to because your belief inspires you to automatically follow the habit, and to make it a meaningful part of you.

As far as making it work, do you think it could be a more effective approach to develop a deep belief and focus toward a reason to form the habit in the first place, more than simply on if the habit will work, as a means of genuinely convincing you to develop it? I think some people try to do this, but are probably not clear enough about their reasons. It turns into some kind of fuzzy idea that is probably slapped together by social expectations from people they think they have to prove themselves to.