The downside of a goal oriented world



All around us, day in and day out we are suffused with messaging to be our best selves. As Henry Rollins sang “Do it, don’t think about it, do it!” (which Nike immediately stole and turned into their own “Just Do It” ad campaign). Self help books instruct us in a miriad of ways about how to visualize our goals and how to achieve them, despite the odds. After being dragged to church the preacher has us pray as a way to reach our goals, no matter what. I remember thinking at this time that I guess that I should leave my wife and kids to reach my goals, unachievable otherwise.

This “Achieve your goals, no matter what” mantra that life gives us causes tension and is probably the root cause for many broken homes. Many of you have endured from me over the years an expression of this tension. My massive mental bag of goals, such as having hours a day to play my piano, ride every skatepark in the world, yada yada, have given me nothing but grief. I have great kids and a hard ass May as Well Be A Wife, girlfriend. It’s a very domestic life that I signed up for. I’m now realizing that my prior extreme constant unhappiness didn’t spring from my life, hard as it is, but from my expectations and very strong bull headedness to reach my goals…no matter what. The media of the world tells us to reach, and keep reaching till we attain what we need. This may be a large part of the anger, grief and tension that pervades the world today.

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