It’s Okay to Live Without Goals

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What I want to do is to tell you that it is okay to live your life without goals.

You will see, you will hear, you will read many people telling you that you need to have goals. I want to turn round to those people and say ‘nonsense’.

You are not an inferior person by not having goals in your life.

So let us look at what goals give you.

Goals give you something to aim toward, something to achieve or attain. At the same time, your goals also highlight what you lack. So if your goal is to buy a car or a house, then it indicates that you lack a car or a house. Or, maybe, that you lack the car or the house that you desire or that you feel will make you happier. Or, maybe, having a better car or a bigger house will make you look and feel more successful. So your goals are showing you that you are not yet successful or that you do not feel successful enough.

You see, your goals can have a negative effect upon your life by highlighting your failings.

And when you achieve your goal(s), what’s next?

Well, more goals, higher goals, of course.

So goals become moving objects which are replaced with newer goals once you achieve your current ones. How does that sound like a satisfying life?

The frustration is that goals never seem to end. Once your complete one, another one takes its place.

Then there’s the big question;

Are you goals really your goals?

Can a person always honestly claim that each and every goal that they give themselves is really their own? Think about it, how many of your goals are given to you by your boss? How many are given to you by your parents, your family, or by your peers?

When working toward goals, is a person working toward their own success or the success of others. If your boss gives you a goal and you then achieve it, is that your success, your boss’s success, or your company’s success?

It may be all, but ask yourself how much of your life is spent working toward other people’s goals rather than your own. How much of your effort goes toward someone else’s success?

oes there ever come a time when you say ‘enough is enough’? Do you ever get to feel you have achieved all you want or need to achieve? Is there ever a point at which you need no more goals? Or do you die without having achieved the last, final, goal?

Goals can, and I would say ‘should’, be employed to help you improve yourself, your life and the life of those around you. Care should be taken, though, that they do not become a millstone around your neck which weighs you down. There is always a time to say ‘no more goals’ and to take time to live life as you are.