Setting and achieving goals became a virus of the beginning of the 21st century. Western civilization became obsessed with setting, achieving, helping to achieve, consulting and failing at achieving of our goals. In general methodology is good enough and helps with one of the biggest challenge of modern life: keeping the focus. However, there are quirks that prevents us from maximize the use of it.

The first problem is having either no goals, unspecified or too broad goal or chasing wrong goals. This is the first group of the issues with modern citizens. In most of the cases we don’t know what we want. And we have no time to figure that out. Being afraid to stay alone, being immediately bored staying in the silence and being obsessed with staying in touch and being successful. Such misbehavior supported by the modern culture takes the clarity and focus away from us. Leaving us in a deep vacuum. Which makes it even harder. So we adopt external goals without validation, we chase values that makes no sense to us and in general - do a lot, but nothing of it is right.

We end up making no progress, going circles and never reaching what we truly want. Rarely achieving any goal if any. Dissatisfaction, burn-out, over-fatigue, destruction of the personality due to coping mechanism we adopt to put the weight off our shoulders for at least one night. We achieve our anti-goals, we push ourselves deeper and deeper into a block hole. That has no end and can suck out any amount of happiness, energy and destroy any system we might have built so far.

The second problem - extreme fixation on the goal. Form, attributes, timelines - it does not matter what exactly. But it is so tempting to imagine how exactly I’m achieving a goal and completely ignore the real life. Life, that brings unexpected challenged and previously unknown solutions for these challenges. Life that requires us to loose the control and learn something new. Circumstances that among discipline and determinations tests our patience. Sometimes the best move is to stay in place. And if you have been battling any or all of the issues from previous group - it will become a trap. When pausing for a reasonable rest or reprioritize feels extremely dangerous. If I won’t do that - I will fail again. I don’t want to fail.

And the third problem - achieving meaningless goals. With all the effort and resources used. There is no happiness, no satisfaction of doing so. Literally just a tick in to-do list. No matter how important it seemed in the beginning, no matter how hard it was and how long it took. Just the tick - and emptiness. This creates a huge impact on the future goals. What’s the point of setting and achieving these if it makes no sense? This is not what we decide. This is how our brain and body is wired. Each and every effort has a reason. That’s the way nature preserve it’s resources, not because we are broken or lazy. Even it seems small and irrelevant - it must be shared and celebrated. Not because it is a huge goal and you try to impress everyone, but because we achieved what we decided. It is the result of effort and consistency. And it is worth to celebrate. Small wins sums up and becomes a big success the other day.

And some goals... must stay goals and dreams. Because these are not meant to be achieved. These are meant to show us the direction. Being our compass. Sometimes for a while. „Go straight down the street, toward that big shiny building...” - isn’t is the way we help strangers on the streets to navigate the city? Are they looking for that building? No, they need a park 3 blocks away. But that building is the best way to explain the direction which they should take. And when possible - take the best route. And the best is the one you enjoy. That’s one of the most efficient way of avoiding being obsessed with the goal.

There is no destination - there’s the path. Follow yours, enjoy the process and one day you’ll reach the place where you haven’t even dreamed to be.