I think some of my friends share with me the ethical points of view, to see things as its result rather than the process of achieving it, and the other to see the process of arriving at the result is more important than the result itself.
For me, I think I relate to the latter more. Or at least, I used to. And then I started to adopt this to-do list system that checked out all of my single tasks. At first, it was a big shift for me in term of motivation. I cared more about how many things I have ticked off the list, rather than the quality or magnitude of importances of it. And then, after a while, I started to lose that grip of motivation. Checking out tasks become this null, boring acts that was so forceful to do. And then, I just ultimately abandon the whole list.
If you finish watching the above video, perhaps you would argue that the title could have been “Reaching your goals won’t make you happy, but the process of reaching it will”.
Ultimately, what makes a goal become worthwhile, is how much time and effort it takes you to accomplish it. Of course, for those who think goals to be the most important, as it should be the guiding light for the process to take place, whatever you do doesn’t matter as much as the goal itself. But for me, I don’t really see the achievable goal to be on the highest reflect, but rather, the purpose of carrying out that goal is much more important. You don’t want to be the President just for the sake of being the President,..you want to be President either because you want to have the power that goes along with it, or because you know people need you to be one that can make their lives better.
So having to achieve a goal is secondary to why you want to achieve it. And that’s the reason why you won’t be totally happy if you just merely achieve your goal. If you lack of the reason for why you want to aim for that goal initially, you just hitting into the abyss, and then it left you with an empty void.
So coming back to putting effort. You would reach the goal, or won’t. Either way you have already put in the effort, and they are valid things to count on. People who say process are not important, think again. You can’t grow if you don’t look back to the process and analyze the flaws, as well as the good sides to make better improvement. People merely give up, or even if they achieve something, they don’t look at the process and say, “Hey, this was what happened, thanks God it did”, or “because we decide to change the course, we are now getting better outcome.” because whatever happened in the process for sure contribute at least a small degree to what the output would be.
And so I think that if we can be more reflective of what went wrong and what would be better, I think that ultimately we would learn along with achieving our goals. Because achieving new goals are part of our survival, advancement and the ultimate well-being, I think we shouldn’t be afraid to create new milestone to reach. Deliberately thinking about what’s the next best thing to do, is what going to keep us moving forward to the right direction.
What we can practice to do more often, is to train our vision to develop clearer goals, but also, give ourselves a reason why we want that goal, too.
Qbooz 