Mind-Manual

Real Goal-Oriented Thinking to Achieve More

True goal-oriented thinking has made me happier, helped me achieve more and improved my relationships. What this means is I constantly ask myself, “what do I want here?” and I’ve asked this question consciously so many times that its become unconscious and I automatically figure out my goal, figure out the best path to it. We are almost always in some form of motivated state.

I want to distinguish desire from motivation. Desire is a part of motivation but not the only part. I can be motivated by fear, hunger, ignorance, desire, love, etc. The “best” kind of motivation is generally considered to be desire. We tend to think that conscious goals are the product of desires, and just ignore making fear a motivational force for conscious goals, which would rob them of their power if we did. So, we feel a desire and we translate that into a conscious goal. Why not do that to fears?

That sounds odd, I know. If I told you that one of my goals was not to end up homeless, you may think that’s an odd thing to call a goal. Most people just have a fear of becoming homeless and destitute, but if I say its one of my goals, I rob the fear of its power over me and can come up with a good plan to prevent that from happening. I usually then rephrase the goal into the positive, such as: I want to live in a comfortable home. The other major tip here is fear-setting, from Tim Ferriss author of the 4-Hour Work Week.

This is part of making fears and other “negative” motivations conscious, acknowledging them and then deciding whether to follow them. Here’s another example: in the midst of a fight with someone, I often stop and ask myself what I want. I Accept whatever comes up, and that means I’ve had to acknowledge that I want to be right, I want to blame others or that I want the other person to feel hurt. Then I can say, “those are not my goals. I choose to resolve this situation in a way that preserves and improves this relationship.” And that allows me to get clear-headed again. When I verbalize those motivations, they’re no longer unconscious or hyper-emotional and thus loosen their grip over me and allow me to choose more conscious actions.

In a final example: I value my emotional space and constantly ask myself what I want, and it is usually to feel happy. So, anytime I’m not feeling happy, I consciously choose to feel happy and find ways to feel happier.

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What if Everyone Followed Their Dreams? There’d be no garbage pickers!

This is a question that shows up in various forms, such as, “If everyone awakens, will we all starve?” Usually, this is an excuse to justify the fear that causes us to not pursue what we truly want. Not being courageous enough to pursue our goals is ok, its the denial that that is the real issue is what will hold you back. The first thing is to acknowledge it. Courage is like a muscle and you are simply a bit weaker than your goal requires. However denial will only hurt you in the long run.

That, I believe, is the real reason people ask this question. It’s easy to feel good about yourself if everyone else is also stuck in the same place, or if you can assign some external reason for why you are not doing what you really want to do but don’t have the courage to right now. Those reasons enumerated, I do want to answer the question as asked:

Like I said previously, a massive change like everyone following their dreams will not happen suddenly. If anything, it could be argued that its been happening slowly over the last many decades. Massive social changes like that rarely happen very quickly (they’re called revolutions if they do). “For example, if everyone did what they felt their purpose was and there were no garbage-collectors left, this is some of what might happen: 1. The wages for a garbage collector would skyrocket. 2. People would have to clean up after themselves. 3. There would be a greater demand for solutions that didn’t require humans or as many humans, such as automated cleaning machines, and the people who really enjoy solving society’s problems using technology would love to create that.”

There are every kind of people. Paul taught me about this. This may sound really, really strange to you, but there are people who ENJOY being garbage collectors. The Fred Factor is a book about a postman who brings so much joy and purpose to his work. Most people would think that being a post delivery person would be dreary and boring, but Fred loves his work. The value of these people who really love to do this would go up dramatically because they are so rare, so they could actually make a lot of money doing something that others would consider “dreary”.

Finally, we, as a species/culture, can adapt to massive social changes such as if everyone is starting to follow their dreams. We’ve gone through a number before now. For example, I’m willing to bet that someone said at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, “What if everyone went to work in jobs in factories and left the farms; we’d all starve!”. And we have not starved. This henny penny, “the sky is falling” stuff is usually overrated.

Let’s say there was suddenly a severe shortage in the number of postal workers. Courier businesses would probably skyrocket, people would stop sending as many letters (as they have), the wages of postal workers would skyrocket, faxes and emails would grow much greater in number, many entrepreneurs would step in to attempt to come up with solutions that are cheaper and/or more efficient than the current system. Perhaps instead of getting mail delivered to our doors, each neighbourhood or block would get its own central mail box racks where you go to pick up the mail, like a PO Box, this is pretty common in many places around the world.

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