Goal Achievement

“We are at our very best, and we are hap­pi­est, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the jour­ney toward the goal we’ve estab­lished for our­selves. It gives mean­ing to our time off and com­fort to our sleep. It makes every­thing else in life so won­der­ful, so worth­while.“
–Earl Nightin­gale

“Suc­cess is a jour­ney… Not a des­ti­na­tion.“
–Ben Sweet­land

Goal achieve­ment is con­sid­ered by some to be suc­cess, for it is true that suc­cess is defined by the achieve­ment of a desired objec­tive. But you may have noticed that I like to use words such as “poten­tial,” “align­ment,” or “suc­cess­ful­ness” to describe this true suc­cess to which I am refer­ring. As you can under­stand, goals are per­sonal and suc­cess is rel­a­tive to the individual.

There are as many types of goals as there are peo­ple in the world. Not only that, but some peo­ple con­sider them­selves as suc­cess­ful with or with­out any goals. If a per­son works and lives with some spe­cial pur­pose, that per­son may con­sider him­self as successful.

For instance, to the painter, who is engrossed in his work and doesn’t care if whether or not his work is com­pleted let alone worth any­thing, could very well mean suc­cess. Another exam­ple is a per­son who devotes his life to char­ity. If giv­ing of him­self is his pur­pose, even if that per­son has no spe­cific goal in mind, he will find a sense of ful­fill­ment in what he does.

This is why I will not show you spe­cific tech­niques on how to achieve your suc­cess but to help you make your jour­ney more con­sciously pur­pose­ful. Just as “fail­ure” is not the per­son who failed but the result of fail­ing, “suc­cess” is not the result of reach­ing goals but the process of liv­ing a wor­thy ideal. Hence, the trick is to become pur­pose­ful, regard­less of the outcome.

Goals, there­fore, are not really meant to be achieved but to bring mean­ing and pur­pose to an individual’s life. They are not meant to be objec­tives in and of them­selves. A quote by psy­cho­an­a­lyst Erich Fromm sums it beau­ti­fully: “There is only one mean­ing to life; the act of liv­ing itself.”

In essence, true suc­cess is the jour­ney and not the goal. You must bring pas­sion to your life rather than find goals that bring you pas­sion. Whether or not they are achieved is of no impor­tance. Suc­cess does not occur after goals have been reached but dur­ing the process of work­ing on them. In other words, suc­cess is in the liv­ing and not in the achieving.

Just as death is a result, you don’t live in order to die. Life is not meant to be lived out but to be lived up. In the same way, a goal is not meant to be reached but to be enjoyed. For­get the rush, the expe­di­ency, and the do-​​as-​​much-​​as-​​you-​​can attitude.

This is where so much frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety in the world is cre­ated. Peo­ple think they can not be or do or have some­thing until they get it in its phys­i­cal form, in which case they will never fully achieve a sense of fulfillment.

If moun­tain climbers strive to climb Mount Ever­est, do they do so just to be at the top? Of course not. For instance, I’m not a moun­tain climber. I have no love for the sport. There­fore, I can eas­ily take a heli­copter to get there if this was (and if I were to focus strictly on) my goal. But to a moun­tain climber, the pas­sion is in the chal­lenge and not in the peak. It’s in the climb and not in the summit.

Harold V. Melchert once said, “Live your life each day as you would climb a moun­tain. An occa­sional glance toward the sum­mit keeps the goal in mind, but many beau­ti­ful scenes are to be observed from each new van­tage point. Climb slowly, steadily, enjoy­ing each pass­ing moment; and the view from the sum­mit will serve as a fit­ting cli­max for the journey.”

That is why I can not define suc­cess but only gen­er­al­ize it as being a process and not a result. In essence, suc­cess is being your best at doing your best to enjoy life; it’s in the liv­ing and not in the win­ning. If your life has greater mean­ing and pur­pose, then you are truly suc­cess­ful. Even if you failed along the way, it is of no impor­tance at all.

How much more will­ing are you to keep on keep­ing on when you fol­low your bliss, when what you do has intrin­sic value? The answer is obvi­ous. Fail­ure is not the end of a goal but a form of feed­back on your jour­ney. Suc­cess is not the end of a goal either, for it is the con­tin­u­ous process of liv­ing out your inner you.

Your suc­cess­ful­ness does not lie in pro­duc­ing results or in achiev­ing goals. Suc­cess is in the essence of a goal. In other words, if you love what you do or do what you love, what you seek will come to you as the result of what you believe in and not what you do. When you’re con­nected, you are nat­u­rally attract­ing the essen­tial qual­i­ties you seek and your life will have greater meaning.

I believe that goal achieve­ment has been overly sen­sa­tion­al­ized in today’s hec­tic and fast-​​paced cul­ture. Con­se­quently, goals — and not the pur­pose behind them — have become pri­or­i­ties. Today, out­put is the name of the game and goals have become as nec­es­sary as oxygen.

While they are impor­tant because they can be used as out­lets through which one can achieve a sense of pur­pose, the level of impor­tance peo­ple attribute to their goals is what causes some peo­ple to fail in life. Dr. Ste­fan Rech­schafften, in his book TimeShift­ing, said, “Try­ing to accom­plish more and more takes away the most pre­cious resources in the world…

“… Your present moments.”

Focus­ing on goals will usu­ally cause a per­son to won­der, “Is this it?” “Where has the time gone?” or, “There must be more to life than this!” Goals can become incon­spic­u­ously mis­lead­ing and may end up caus­ing more harm than good. I’m not say­ing they’re wrong but that the rea­son peo­ple put behind them is.

Goals are meant to bring you a sense of ful­fill­ment now and not at some point in the future. So, the key is not to have goals but to have — and cher­ish — one’s present moments. Now, let’s take a look at what can be done to counter this sit­u­a­tion and to live “in the now.”

About the Author

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