_____ Goals ______

Achieve. What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.

 

…

 

We each get caught up in particular goals –earn x amount of money, get this degree, travel to x exotic place. We write life lists, bucket lists, goal lists.

 

But underneath every goal, there is a desired feeling. Why do you want to run the marathon? Because you think you’ll have a certain feeling when you do, that you’ll feel strong or triumphant, or whatever it may be.

 

Why do you want to get that graduate degree? Perhaps because you think you’ll feel more confident with it. Or because it will help you have a particular career…and you want that career because of how you think it will make you feel.

 

Our goals are instruments. Our brains say, “To get that feeling, go do x. Be y. Acquire z. Complete this. Win at that. That thing out there – that experience or credential or moment will give you that feeling.

 

The problem: Experiences rarely change how we feel. Psychology research now shows what most of us have experienced anecdotally: life satisfaction cannot be correlated with external achievement, and we humans are very bad at predicting what will make us happy.

 

So this happens: we work really hard to reach the mountaintop, to make it to graduation or promotion day, and then find it feels nothing like we thought it would. Our goal hypothesis that “doing x will bring me feeling y” is often wrong.

 

But even if it were right – and some goal you’ve set was going to bring you remarkable feelings when achieved, you can also work on cultivating that feeling now.

 

Want to feel healthy, and think that being in tip top shape will help you feel that? Fine, get in shape, but also start feeling healthy today. Yup, today. What would you need to do, what would you need to think, what kind of choices would you need to make, to feel healthy right now?

 

Instead of waiting on a move to a new place, or developing x kind of relationship, or getting to know people, in order to feel “community” or “belonging,” explore what would give you a sense of belonging today. How do you have to see yourself and your current relationships differently? What opportunities—perhaps ones you’ve been avoiding – would you have to take?

 

It’s subtle, but this isn’t about charging into action. It’s not “DO IT NOW.” It’s really: see how what you really, really want is actually within your reach, and is generated from within.

 

You see what happens. This wakes us up. To the present moment. To the life around us. To our capacity to feel what we want to feel. To our true empowerment.

 

Whatever feeling you think your long term goals are going to give you, what if you got really serious about experiencing those feelings week? Today? In this moment?

 

Of course, there’s a reason why we don’t do this: it pushes us to take full responsibility for our state of being. It means letting go of the safety that comes with feeling dis-empowered, insecure, trapped, bored, stuck, and instead stepping into the more vulnerable territory of finding love, choice, aliveness in this moment. A part of us wants to run for the hills. And another part knows this is where real freedom and real peace lie.

 

~Tara Sophia