Necessary Challenge: Meaningful Goals for a Fulfilled Life (Part 1)

I was taking a shower when a thought popped into my head, a shower thought if you will.

It wasn’t the usual “making a typo in an online argument is like your voice cracking in a real-life argument,” shower thought.

This thought seemed to have some merit behind it (at least to me it did).

The original thought was:

“A fulfilled life has the pursuit of a few big meaningful goals and a lot of small meaningless goals.”

But then it clicked, these small goals aren’t meaningless, for a few reasons:

1. If you have decided to live a meaningful life, everything you do is meaningful, there is no picking and choosing.

2. These “small” goals are interesting to you, and if they bring you joy or not, setting and pursuing them teaches you about yourself. That’s meaningful.

3. With enough awareness, you will see that pursuing these goals has/will help in pursuing your larger “meaningful” goals

So the thought changed to:

“A fulfilled life has the pursuit of a few big meaningful goals and a lot of small goals that are meaningful too.”

How do you go about finding meaningful goals to set?

The Hidden path within Two:

At first, I thought, there are two ways one could go about setting both big and small meaningful goals...

But, at second glance I realized there is a hidden singular path within the two.

First, let's look at what I mean when I say “big” and “small” goals.

A big goal is a more abstract long-term goal. I.e. what you want to do with your life.

A small goal is a more specific tangible goal on a shorter time horizon. I.e. wanting to make $100,000 in a year.

The First Path:

The first path is to start with the “small” more specific goals.

The desire to write a book, code a website, put on 20 pounds of muscle...

You'll choose one goal, then pursue it.

After which you will take the skills and information you learned as well as what you learned about yourself...

The desires you have, the feelings you felt, and the beliefs you developed and discarded.

To then create a “big” meaningful goal to pursue.

The Second Path

The second path is to start where you are now and ask yourself what you want to do with your life. You’ll usually come up with a few goals around two ideas...

How you want to make the world a better place.

And...

How you want to live the majority of your days.

For example, you come up with building 1000 schools in the Congo and wanting to be a painter who usually works a few hours a day.

They’re the same path…

If you look at the two paragraphs above, you’ll realize they’re different parts along the same path.

The first path is the start of the path.

The second path is a little way down the road.

We’re all a little ways down the road…

The path is a direct reflection of the knowledge you have.

At the start of the path you have no knowledge, as you gain knowledge you'll move down the path.

Assuming you’re older than 5, you know something.

Particularly:

• What you want

• What you don’t want
  

• What’s right

• What’s wrong

Using this information you can develop meaningful goals for yourself.

What’s Right and What’s Wrong?

Before I tell you how to use this information, I need to explain what I mean by “what’s right” and “what’s wrong”.

To find meaningful goals to follow, you will use the information listed above to plan a goal to aim towards.

But, as you will learn…while pursuing your goals…you don’t know much of anything.

This is true for what's right and what's wrong...

The Archery Competition of Life

Let’s pretend you’re at an Archery competition…

You step in front of the crowds, but it doesn’t start when you enter the arena, it starts months earlier…in practice.

In practice, you hone your skills, and you get information on what to do and what not to do.

Now in front of the crowds, you must put all those months of work to use.

It’s time to take action… to shoot the arrow at the target.

But there’s a problem…

There’s wind.

In practice you were inside, you never had to deal with the wind.

Fortunately, some of your practice can still be put to use. You’re able to hit some of the closer targets. But, the farther ones evade you.

So in preparation for the next competition, you train with the wind.

The next event there’s wind, but this time you’re prepared, you nailed every target until…

The sun comes out, you can’t see with it glaring into your eyes, and again, like the last competition, you miss the furthest targets.

You go back to the drawing board...next time you will be prepared for the sun.

Finally, after months of training with the blaring sun and howling wind, it’s time to perform again.

You start strong, the wind has no effect and you could care less of the sharp reflections hitting your eye…bullseye after bullseye…

Until…

The Moral of the Story…

The story is a metaphor for setting and achieving meaningful goals.

The practice represents your life up until this very moment.

You have had countless experiences in your life, each one influencing your beliefs of what you:

• Like
  

• Dislike

• Think is wrong

• Think is right

The targets represent your goals.

You use the information you gather in “practice” to figure out how to hit the target or how to best aim.

You’ll hit some target first try. While others will take time.

And if this was exactly like life, you would use the information to decide what targets to aim at.

The wind and the sun represent the inevitable.

No matter how much you prepare.

How much you think you know.

You will be wrong about something and something will come up to throw you off.

There will be wind.

Finally, the bow and arrow represent the decision to take action.

Continuing…

You may think you know “what’s right” and “what’s wrong” but as you set and pursue goals what you think will change.

There is no objective right and wrong, you have to decide that for yourself through trial and error.

Use what you learn to create "better" challenges to face.

Then repeat it all over again from your new perspective.

You will have some beliefs that the majority agree with and for good reason.

Don't convince yourself robbing people is good.

But don’t fear going against the grain sometimes, for example…

You may be completely against a 9-5 job and think it’s the worst thing a person can do for work...that’s okay. You must realize this isn’t true for everyone, for some it may be the thing they need.

Because it’s wrong for you (or right for that matter) doesn’t mean it's wrong for everyone.

The moral of the story: it’s okay to be wrong, it’s okay to try things out, and it’s important to question your beliefs.

Now let’s get onto how you will apply all this, shall we?

Let’s start at the beginning of the path...

How to find Meaningful “small” Goals:

This is much easier than you are thinking.

You already have a whole list of “small” goals you want to pursue.

The car, the pay raise, travelling…

What you're going to do is use your past experiences and the information they hold to vet whether a goal is worth following.

Let me show you how:

Let’s say you want to get a brand-new car.

A nice car, that will turn heads as you drive down the road.

The first step is to ask why you want the car.

Be honest.

Is it because you want the status it brings?

Nothing inherently wrong with this.

Or is it because you appreciate the mechanics of such a vehicle?

Again not better or worse than wanting it for status purposes.

Now take your honest answer and compare it back to your information (your beliefs).

How?

Picture someone else who has the same goal as you, for the same reason.

Then ask yourself:

What do I think about this person?

Using the status example:

If this imaginary person wants to get a brand-new car to increase their status...

1. Do you negatively judge them?

2. Feel neutral towards there motivation?

3. Or feel some sort of positive emotion?

Do this with a few of your goals.

Pursue one that makes you feel positive.

Or if you want, pick one that gives you a neutral feeling towards this imaginary person.

If the goals you chose to vet only illicit a negative judgement, (for now) pick new goals to vet.

This post is getting a little long so I’m going to wrap it up here.

In the next post I will talk about finding “big” meaingful goals for yourself.

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For now set aside some time to try out what you learned today.

Thanks for reading.

I hope you enjoyed!

If you did share it with others:)

Until next time…

- The Babbling Mind