Thread: Deleted my goals list-why

So today I've turned a new leaf. I'm done with spending countless hours over goal setting. I've been doing this for around 3 years and it's driven me to near mental insanity. It's caused my mind to wonder non-stop, and to be nearly permanently stuck in my head 90% of the time. I'm never focused on the present anymore, it's always about "someday when I accomplish x, or when y happens."

I've read most all of the personal development books I care to read in a lifetime. I'm done with stupid diversions that may have little or nothing to do with my real dream. My PD journey started all-out doing everything step-by-step how the Gurus taught it. The more books I read, and the more successful people I listened to, I realized it wasn't so much about this long list of goals. Every year the PD journey seemed to get simpler as I shed the advice I had learned about visualizing and bullshit aspect of PD.

My dream for my "professional" life is pretty simple: Build companies and get rich. How rich? Rich enough to never work again. How will I know when I get there? I'll be when I realize I'm too rich to ever need to work again.

Other than that, I refuse to set my life in stone anymore. I don't believe there is any divine plan that's going to magically allow me to accomplish everything I want.

My epiphany was, life is pretty simple: first you live then you die. You only get to pick and choose a few things. The rest is chance, luck, misfortune. No one should think they know where they're going to be in 10 years, although it's good to have a general idea. No one should be as niave to think that the road isn't going to take a sharp turn at some point. Life can suck really bad one day and be great the next.

But writing down a list of goals 1yr, 5ys, 10 or even 20 years into the future is like saying you control every aspect of your life and future. When you finally understand things aren't that black and white, that you never had so much control in the first place, you're ok with not stressing out about things anymore. We spend way too much time stressing about things, analyzing and mulling over things in our minds we really have no control over, yet think we do. And when we stress over things we can't control, we get fucking pissed, as if it was just suppose to turn out right merely because we decided.

Some of you might need to have goals to focus on what you want. Fine. We all discover what works for us personally.

So I'm not going to live life in a delusion that my little list of goals is the only thing that's ever going to make me happy. Life is a discovery. We go places we never imaged going, become what we never imagined becoming, and do things we never thought we'd do. It's called life. The emotional freedom we look for is usually found in facing reality, accepting what is and working on changing what we feel needs changing. We're not gods, we're just people. Accept what you can't change and live each second, because in 100,000 years from now you will be as important as the people 100,000 years ago.

Life has no predefined purpose, other than to just exist, purpose is subjective.

In the past 5-6 years, from age 16 to age 21, I've been stuck in this mentality that I'm not good enough, not prepared, successful enough, what-have-you to begin living and enjoying life. I'd be at parties, and because I was so used to worrying about finance/success/achievement, my mind would constantly wonder back. So I put off dating, working out, partying and socializing less then I should of, working towards a long list of goals, which had really nothing to do with my dream.

I do daily planning, so I know what needs to get done that day. I can't really decide what needs to get done next week or next year until I know where I am at the end of today. I create some monthly objectives to keep in mind over the course of the month.

Cheers all!

Instead of setting Long Term Goals that require thinking about the future, I've found something more profound:

Setting STANDARDS and VALUES

They are not bound to past or future, they are actively shaping the decisions I make in every moment of my life.

I'd recommend everybody to write a "Personal Mission Statement", as Stephen R. Covey lays out in his book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"


If you've ever read Ayn Rands Books (Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) you know what I mean by values. Her characters, Hank Rearden or Howard Roark, are the perfect heroic example of what it means to live up to ones own rules and values.


Some Examples:

My Standards:

• I work out 2 a week
• I express myself rather then trying to impress other people
• I meditate at least 10 minutes a day
• etc

My moving toward values

1. Authenticity
2. Honesty
3. Fun
4. Self-Improvment
5. Self-Acceptance
6. Slow Down in EVERYTHING I do
7. Being chill
8. etc...

interesting topic