The Problem With Goals

There is an ongoing, life-long process of ‘sorting my life out’. I’d love to be able to tell you I was making progress but I am plainly not.

I’ve read just about every self-help book on the planet. I’ve studied NLP, undergone CBT, ascribed to Stoicism as a personal philosophy. I meditated daily up until recently, I journal, I do Yoga. I’m vegetarian. In case any of these things are relevant.

But I’m still no closer to being happy, and for one reason – any ‘goal’ requires an aim, and the aim needs to be specific enough to be manageable. ‘Being happy’ isn’t really an actionable goal one can strategise for as it’s too vague.

So when Tony Robbins tells me I can design my best life by starting with what I want, I’m stymied – because I just don’t know. If I could write down ‘massive house, fast car, 100 guitars’ with any kind of conviction I would, but that isn’t it.

I have a fantasy of moving to a small coastal village where nobody knows me, introducing myself to the locals as an artist and living a simple life, painting and being eccentric.

But is that a goal? I guess I’m the only one who can answer that, and at the moment, my answer is a bewildered “I don’t know”.