Running towards the goals to reach the State.

Running towards the goals to reach the State.
The State: a man sitting on the earth, entire Cosmos is defining his thoughts.

We’re don’t want to achieve the goals. We desire for the specific yet undefined State.

During my journey I’ve been rediscovering dark sides of myself and by allowing them do take their part in my life I was getting new perspectives on the current situations. These insights were naturally leading me to question the process: why that happens that way? It did not take too many time before I figured out the answer. It changes the state I am in.

Effectivity pandemic

Being over-organized from the early childhood I’ve managed to try and wear many roles. Many roles that keep my opportunity doors widely open. But it put me in front of the problem: what to choose? To be precise I had no idea what should I choose, because I can be good enough in many things.

All these topics were shiny and cool, I always felt there are no limits whatever you do. But how to reach the top? Plenty of techniques and stories available nowadays aren’t helpful at all. Somehow choice must be done by me. It is impossible for someone else to know better what should I do. Which way is the one that leads to success, joy and happiness.

Being good at doing things, earning money and being able to do anything leads nowhere. In my case it lead me to an endless plan, where I need to work a bit more on this, wait for something else to achieve that and overall keep being patient on awaiting the results. But when results were not here and I’ve been seeing it leads me nowhere it became a disaster and was bringing disappointment. I suffered so much to become happy, but I was becoming more unhappy, running low on energy, feeling lost.

Outer world is too fancy

I’ve been struggling to tweak the main concept of my life for years. I knew I should define the desired state and do as much as possible to reach it. But what to do, when there is emptiness inside me. When ideas seems cool only because someone else finds it cool? When goals and worth setting and achieving, because these are widely recognized? I knew this is the problem, but with all the knowledge and experience I had no idea how to fill myself. It felt like everyone else simply have it inside and I don’t... I am broken or defective? These thoughts weren’t helpful at all.

One day I put my surname into Google Search and found a YouTube video by popular psychologist with a very similar surname. I remember the exact moment I clicked on the random video among the few I saw. „A guy with the (almost) same surname may shred some light on my problem”. After that case I always smile deep inside when I think about “coincidence”.

Switching sides (inside-out)

The suggestions I started to follow sounded simple. But how hard it is to get away from behaviors I’ve been following for decades. Even those, who formed after traumas and incidents. It feels like my personality is devastated, while in reality it is more of reunion, than destruction and rebuild. After first successes tears and pain became friends. It is not really healthy thing to enjoy them, but enjoying the results naturally made it possible for me to meet and survive these hard moments.

Accepting myself, all these parts I’ve been trying to burrow, truly helped me to accept more quirks in others. This is how I finally understood why I must love myself first. If I am crucial with myself - I will naturally follow these patterns with others. This is obviously not what we want nor need. We need love, acceptance and support instead.

The next step was simple question: what do I want? Eat, wear, read, do. I’ve been questioning everything. I figured out that my life is not so bad, because there are people who stayed and activities that came back to my life. But many people, activities and things had to go away to make a room for things I care about and enjoy.

Consequences and the path

I’ve been loosing people and money, and it does not feel good at the moment when it happens. But later, from the new state we can always validate how good the decision was. In many cases we have second chances, if we did everything openly and fair. It requires discipline. Staying consistent with own decisions. Rely on own feelings. Executing my decisions precisely. This is where the real work happens.

Luckily I found how to train that. This month I learned this is nothing new, but works perfectly for many people. I heard it is defined as a principle: “if you don’t know where to go - move your body”. I started with walking, added cycling and now, when it’s winter I am ice skating, getting tons of positive emotions. With every day my body gets stronger as a free bonus. And it became a complete, self-supported systems.

This is the way I discovered what it means to build a system. A self-supported cycle of activities, that might have a finite goal or might not, nevertheless having a positive impact on my life. Putting me into new state, when brain and emotions are working in different modes. A state, that changes perspective. A state, when world does not feel being full of enemies, frightful and unknown.

Even I spot new problems I have a framework to deal with. If I fail - that’s fine, I have a system that helps me reset and brings me back to fulfilled state, when I am happy to try once again.

Resume

It’s Christmas today and New Year is coming. I’m not setting the goals for upcoming year. Goal-setting technique might be effective for small goals. I found it is limiting in many aspects for a multi-variation outcomes. Defining a goal as a state and building system around that states sounds like much more flexible approach. It feels like a “path”, not a “destination”.

Anyone, who enjoys walking down the path will go further than the one who feels desire to reach the destination.

Go the way you like, reach whatever you want. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!