GOALS ARE DAMAGING
If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that goals are something to avoid. In the past five years of my life, I've accomplished nothing and achieved absolutely nothing of worth. The same lack of progress continues on today — I live a mediocre and unfulfilling life, one with no meaning—all because of goals. My advice to you is to never set goals for yourself ever again or else you'll be disappointed for the rest of your days.
If you're like me, you probably have goals in life. You might want to be the best programmer in your company, the most popular kid in school, the most creative person in your neighborhood, or perhaps even the smartest person in all of existence.
The problem with your goals is that they are too small. To get to where you want to go and make yourself happy as a human being, you need something larger than goals. You need dreams.
While goals are important and should not be avoided at all costs,[1] dreams are still an important part of life. Without them we wouldn't have ambitious ideas for ourselves or for others—it would be a miserable existence and nobody would feel anything positive about themselves.
Which brings me to how my life has been going.
Since I was a child I've always been ambitious. When I was younger, my ambitions were things like "be the best at soccer," or "make all A's this year." As I started getting older, new and more difficult goals were set—things like become a professional soccer player and get an MBA. As time passed, the goals got harder and harder, but the number of them seemed to remain the same—I wanted to be the best at everything that could be done in this world.
Throughout all of these years, one goal has remained constant—goals are important for a person's future. To avoid not accomplishing anything in life, goals must be acquired and achieved.
But I've had to do this alone. For the most part, nobody ever believed in what I wanted—they were always against it and didn't understand me. As much as I wanted to be the best, society still saw me as a failure because of my lack of achievements. As a result, all goals became small—I knew that if I tried really hard, maybe one day all of my dreams would come true.
In 2011 I turned 18 years old and decided to make all of my dreams come true at once. After deciding on this point in time, there was no way back for me. I would make my dreams a reality.
The problem was that I had no idea what to do first.
The first thing I did was read as many books on how to achieve your dreams as possible. I read The Secret, Think and Grow Rich, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, 10 Secrets for Success and Happiness,[2] Uncovering Happiness,[3] and pretty much every other book on the subject that I could find. After reading these books, I learned a few things:
1) You should focus on one single goal if possible; otherwise you'll get confused and forget everything you've learned.
2) If you really want to be successful, you'll need a positive attitude. Always keep your head up and think about how much the universe loves you. This will attract success and make you confident in your abilities.
3) You should reward yourself for achieving each goal or milestone that you set for yourself. If you don't, then how will you know when to celebrate?
4) Imagine everything that can go wrong and make sure it doesn't happen. Think of all the problems beforehand so they won't get in your way later on when it really matters.
5) Do what you're good at, not what other people want you to do. If you do the things you love and are most comfortable with, then success will come naturally. If other people told you to go all out and do something outside of your comfort zone, then they were probably lying to you. Everybody wants to be looked at as smart or brilliant—but nobody wants to be known as someone who's dumb.[4]
So I decided on a goal: become the best programmer in my company. I was excited about this goal because it was simple and easy for me to achieve. All I had to do was work hard at programming and make sure I never stopped studying new technologies.
This goal started to seem reasonable and manageable. At first, all of my friends told me to get a job at a programming company. I thought that was a great idea, but didn't know how to get one. After doing some research on the subject I realized that working at a company might be difficult because I would have to work closely with programmers who were older than me and probably more experienced in their trade. Also, many of the employees there would be making more money than me and all of them would probably be very high-quality programmers as well—all things that related back to my first point about having one single goal in mind.
So I came up with a new plan to go along with my goal of being the best programmer in my company. I would get a job at a place that had younger and less experienced programmers, and be the top1 programmer there. Once everything was in order, I could work my way up from the bottom to become the best—that way no one would know how much talent I actually had and I wouldn't have to compete with anyone for anything—I could just sit back, relax, and show everyone what can be done when someone puts their mind towards something and never gives up hope.
It's been 6 months since then, and nothing has come out of it. I haven't gotten a job yet and the dream of becoming the best programmer in my company seems less and less possible to achieve.
I've realized that I'm not satisfied with my current life. I still want to do things that are bigger than myself; I still want to reach for what can't be seen or touched, but it's all too late now. I have no idea what dreams to have any longer, other than that one which is impossible to achieve. The only thing I'm sure of is that I still want something—I don't know what—from this life, but it's something bigger than myself and beyond human understanding.
Over the past few months, I've found that the reason most of us don't achieve our dreams is because we can't just have one single goal. I have had my goals since I was a child, but now it's time for me to become something much greater. This means that all goals must go out the window and be replaced with something better—something that means more to me and makes me feel alive. What can replace my undying thirst for perfection?
I want to do what God did.
Not necessarily in just creating everything in the universe, but also in giving life to people who can change the world and make it a better place for everyone else—people like you and me.
cONCLUSION
I'm not sure what I'm going to do from here on out, but this is the first step towards becoming the best person I can be. This is only the beginning and I will be writing about my progress every step of the way. If you're interested in anything that's been mentioned in this article then leave a comment or send me an email at: [email protected]
I'm not looking for your sympathy or congratulations. I just want to see what other people think about my problems and why people have those problems in the first place.
Thank you for reading, and please keep me in your thoughts as I begin this next phase of my life.