The Downside Of Being Goal-Directed
The Downside Of Being Goal-Directed
Mountains, princesses, pirates, and ninjas.
Sometimes you start on a path and you don’t know where it will lead.
Sometimes you want to get to a very specific place, but you’re not sure how to get there.
As a fairly “goal-directed” person, as many of you likely are, too, I usually feel like I need to have an endpoint in mind. There needs to be a mountain to climb, a beach to take, or a path to travel.
This is fine. It’s led to some minor achievements—nothing crazy. But I can’t help but maintain this odd feeling that figuring out how to embrace the path without knowing the ending is more congruent with enjoying life while living it.
Perhaps it’s the fear of never getting anywhere that drives me. Perhaps it’s the anxiety of not knowing if I’ll accomplish the things I want to accomplish in my life. I’m unsure. It does call into question whether I know enough at this point in my life to be sure that my goals are actually the best use of my time at all.
You wouldn’t ask a kindergartener to decide what they wanted to be when they grew up and then commit them to it, right? Otherwise, we’d have a lot of princesses and pirates and ninjas as professions.
One thing that does seem certain, though, is how much of life is the climb and how little of it is the peak. This is such a stupid platitude, yet I still have trouble living this way. I keep looking for peaks instead of climbs.
I think that one of the next levels of personal and professional development for me, and hopefully many others, is to reach a point where we are following a path, where we are fulfilled by being on it, and happy with what outcomes we know we’ll eventually achieve.
I think that next level is some sort of balance between seeking achievements and enjoying the journey.