How to "Actually" Pursue Goals
know what a goal is, how know your goal and how to orient yourself>
Dark Red And A Dark Night
1:00 AM, beginning of December, 2018, I remembered it vividly, sitting on the balcony; my phone got stolen last night. As a social media addict that time, not having a phone felt like losing a crucial part of my body, I felt less without my phone. On that balcony, although I was on the 9th floor, I felt like I was captivated and drowned into the deepest seabeds. It was horrific, a really ugly feeling, my body was screaming like it was trying to say something but my mind cannot understand it because it was lost in thought. All of that wasn’t because of the loss of my phone, it was deeper and more concerning than that, the real reason was lying fundamentally inside of my core; it was existential.
It was so calm on my balcony, the streets were empty, the yellow lights of our street were so soft and warm, I don’t know why I thought a lot about these lights, but at that specific moment, I really liked them. I was sitting on a brown wooden chair, I shifted my gaze towards my balcony, I think it was the first time ever that I’ve actually observed it, the pain in my body and the void in my chest were so accentuated and petrifying that I started to escape outside of myself by mulling and focusing on my surroundings. The walls of the balcony were painted dark red, some parts of the paint at the wall were chopped off because of the prolonged exposure of the wind, but it made the balcony more beautiful, it made it antique and sort of vintage. I was lying with the chair on the left wall and right in front of me a cage with two birds in it that my family owned. I’ve never really understood the idea of owning a captivated birds and just keep looking at them desperately trying find a way out and thinking that they’re actually having fun. it’s really hilarious that we resemble freedom by flying but here we are prohibiting the actually flying creatures from it. I really hated that cage. Under the cage there was a box filled with a junk of stuff that I don’t want but I don’t have the enough courage to get rid of them, so I just put them there; one of them was a white mug written on it with dark red color “I’ll always love you”. I looked up, towards the sky, it was very clear, which was unusual because it was December, the sky is cloudy most of the days, but this time it was so clear that the blackness of the night was so prominent, I could see only one glimmering star punching through this utter blackness, like a thin and shy hope appearing within the absolute boldness and darkness of desperateness. I went through a lot of pain, I had three Fs in a one single semester at college and been really a mess. What was really special about my pain and all of the other stuff, is that it was self-provoked; I’ve caused all of this pain, failures and losing whom I loved, all by myself, and there’s nothing and no one other to blame. I was aimless, impulsive and with a shortsighted and shuttered mind. At that moment in the balcony, in a speck of a second, the reality of all that has just hit me, like the shock of a blind who suddenly gained his eyesight. It was the first moment in my life that I realized that I’m empty of meaningful goals and my true self is way buried underneath the mud of the lies and delusions that I was living. I decided that this has to change.
What Is A Goal?
We all know what a ‘goal’ is, simply a target that you aim at and achieve, that target could be eating a cookie, crossing the street, buying a new pair of shoes, passing the exams, or scoring against the other team at football. But what most of us don’t know, and needs to be brought into our attention, taught, advocated and encouraged to, is “the meaningful goal”. A meaningful goal is subtle target that you aim at and it gives you a sense of reason, a justification of existence, and an explanation for suffering; it frees you, it makes you love life despite its hardship, it builds your character, it grows your soul, lightens your face; it anchors you in a ground of self-reliance, confidence and love. A meaningful goal is that thing that when you talk about it makes your eyes glimmer, your pupils widen and your facial muscles tense with excitement. It makes you interesting, attractive, lovable and inspiring. A meaningful goal is utterly filled with hardships and sacrifices (part of what makes it meaningful) it’s filled with tears, pain and a continuous chain of problems that exhaust you, but it’s still beautiful, and you’re willing to suffer for it every single day (part of what makes it beautiful).
The reward of having a meaningful goal is wonderfully vast and accordingly, it’s hard to find; and requires an effort to discover (or create) it.
Types of Goals = Types of Behaviors
Okay, we have an idea of what goal is or should be. Now, it’s interesting and important to know that the nature of the goal itself and how the person approaches it; and more importantly, why is he approaching it will give birth to multiple categories of goals; that brilliantly explains the behavioral approach of the person; and I believe knowing these categories could help you know where your goal setting approach falls, and to know whether you need to change it or not, because the utility of each category is dependent on the context and the circumstances you’re having. Those categories are:
Mastery-approach: it’s when someone has a skill or something that he/she wants to master and accomplish it in excellence, he/she approaches this goal with high motivation, energy and excitement.
Mastery-avoidance: it’s when someone has a skill or something that he/she wants to master and accomplish it in excellence, he/she approaches this goal not because of high motivation, but rather because of the eager need to avoid failure; the reason is out of fear more than excitement.
Performance-approach: is a goal where someone tries to do better than his or her peers. This type of goal could be a goal to look better by losing 5 kilos or getting a better exam score than his colleagues.
Performance-avoidance: is a goal where someone tries to avoid doing worse than their peers such as a goal to avoid negative feedback or bad comments from friends and colleagues.
There’s no category that is specifically better than the other, it’s all dependent on the circumstances that you’re having, but in general, a study by Elliot and McGregor in 2001 revealed that those more likely to use performance-approach goals were more likely to have higher exam scores, while those who used performance-avoidance goals were more likely to have lower exam scores. Therefore, I think it’s better as a rule of thumb, to always use “approach” goals until it’s proven to that you really need to use “avoidance” goals in your specific circumstance.
The Astronomical Importance of Goals
Having a goal is an innate need, it’s deeply rooted in our psychology and biology, we need to have a goal in order to survive physically and mentally. We can summarize the utility of goals in the following points:
Better lifestyle: naturally, when you have a goal, you’re going to divide it into a process of actions until you reach it, this process creates a system of habits and a daily routine; this system and routine is vastly beneficial to your health. I can’t stress enough how having a routine mentally refreshing, assuring and unbelievably stress-reducing. When you have a daily routine, you won’t have to make much decisions during your day because it’s already planned and scheduled, therefore, you will have more mental energy on focusing in increasing the quality of the things that you’re doing and really matter to you more than spending this energy on trying to figure out what to do in the first place. This smart and right investment of your mental energy will vastly reduce your stress level during the day. In addition, we all know that sleep is so important and crucial for good health, having a daily routine that serves a future goal, will automatically and implicitly motivates the person to have a perfect sleeping schedule; and it’s mainly because his Circadian Rhythm will become more well-regulated and balanced (click here to know more about it). Lastly, you’ll be able to reasonably and healthily plan for leisure time and you will even enjoy it more than ever; because at first, the heavy feeling of guilt (that you’re not doing anything with your life) will be removed and so, you will feel lighter and will actually experience the “doing nothing” or “just having fun” more pleasurably and happily.
A roadmap of Life: having a goal provides you with a direction and a sense of knowing what life is, it gives a clear map of your life; it limits the uncertainty, mysteriousness and infinite choices; and gives you sharp and profound roads that guide you through this big forest that’s called Life without getting lost or getting eaten by monsters.
A buffer to Life: having a clear set of goals wash off all the wastes and toxicity that are poisoning your time and energy. You will gain a profound focus that will enable you to actually feel and measure your time more accurately (time is subjective and depends on how you’re regulating your life) Also, this focus will enable you to use your energy more beneficially and for the things that actually matter. When you’re without goals, time is vague to you, you don’t have a real sense of how passing of a second feels or a minute. A minute to you might feels like an hour and other times, a day might feels like a minute. Your energy will be inconsistent and unmeasurable, you might feel tired for no reason or you might feel suddenly excited and filled up with unreasonable enthusiasm. You will also be wasting it on trivial and stupid stuff most of the time.
The Neuroscience of Goals
Let’s take a look at the Brain areas that are involved with goal-dedicating behaviors, I think it’s really fun and interesting to take a close look on how our brain physically and tangibly pursuit our goals; these areas are:
Amygdala: this part is mostly associated with fear, we should avoid punishment while achieving a goal and therefore, you will normally feel anxious while pursuing your goal. A reasonable amount of anxiety is necessary to keep you alert and aware of dangers and fouls, and that’s the amygdala’s job.
Ventral striatum part of Basal Ganglia: this part generates initiation of action and inhibition of action, also what we call “Go no Go - action and inaction”. This part creates a spark that launches you into doing what you should do to reach your goal, it also works as breaks and immediately stops you from doing what you’re doing.
Lateral Prefrontal Cortex: it’s a part of the outer shell of the brain, and it’s the most important one because it’s responsible of executive functioning, planning and thinking at different time scales. Meaning that this is the part of the brain which helps us in predicting the future and imagining our behaviors across time and how they will affect us in the long run.
Orbital Frontal Cortex: this is another and very interesting part of the outer shell of the brain, it has the job of meshing and mixing emotions with current state of progress, and compare that mesh with the emotions of what it might be like when we’re closer to our goal. In other words, it adds life, feelings and drama to your goal pursuit journey; it links emotions with action and it gives you a sense of how would it feel when you finally reach your goal, for the sake of motivation and making sure you’re keeping up. Wonderful, right?!
In the following paragraphs, I’ll present to you a scientifically proven tools and concepts that will significantly help you in efficiently and optimally use the aforementioned parts of the brain in reaching your goal.
Psychological concepts and Tools for the pursuit of goals
First of all, it’ important to point out that despite the different types of goals that you could have, they all have the same process of pursuing; so, these tools that I’m going to present are universal to all kinds of goals.
Peri-personal space vs External personal space: first and most important tool is to let those two concepts sink in your mind and understand the difference between them.
peri-personal space: it’s all of the space that’s within and inside of your body; and in your immediate and close environment. While you’re engaged in this space, your brain secretes Serotonin that gears you towards consummatory behaviors (the automatic behaviors that doesn’t require much energy and thinking), meaning using things in your immediate peri-personal space.
Extra-personal space, everything that is beyond the confines of your reach, in space and time. while engaging in this space, your brain secretes Dopamine and Adrenaline that gear you towards goal chasing behaviors. Most of the time, the things that really matter to us, are all in the extra-personal space.
If we’re to be good at setting, valuing and pursuing goals we have to be able to toggle back and forth between clear understanding of our peri-personal space (what we have and how we feel in the immediate present) and our ability to understand what’s out there in the extra-personal space and our ability to move into that extra-personal space.
Do Multi-tasking: it’s really fascinating how multitasking is immensely helpful in reaching your important goals; what is highly crucial to know, that it works under one condition, which is to treat multi-tasking as a mean not an end by itself, meaning you should multi-task before doing any activities that are related to your high important goals, and this multi-tasking is just for the sake of doing these activities more optimally. You might ask yourself: how does that make sense? Well, multi-tasking has a beautiful and magical signature in the brain; it activates the secretion of Adrenaline, which excites out body, increase our blood pressure and makes us more alert, active and focused. Therefore, after multi-tasking you will be more ready to actually start doing the “really important” tasks.
Visual Focus: this is an astonishing technique; before doing any important task choose any fine and small point in your visual surroundings and lock your vision on it for at least 60 seconds, when you do that, when you tunnel and narrow your vision into one detailed thing and just keep that gaze, you’re switching your mind into goal seeking behavior and your warming up your cognition abilities, just like you warm up your muscles by stretching and lifting up light weights before getting into the heavy stuff; that’s because that the cognition of the brain is strongly emphasized and anchored on your vision, your cognitive abilities and your vision have a direct and subtle relationship; tweaking on one of them affect the other. Therefore, it’s really smart to take advantage of this relationship in reaching your personal goals. An amazing study was made which proved this point. It involves physical exercise; they had a group of people to exercise wearing 15 pounds’ ankle weights, and they had to run a certain distance to reach a goal line. One group was visually focused on the goal line; the other group was not told to visually focus on the goal line. What they found that group that visually focused on the goal line were able to achieve reaching that goal with 17% less effort and they got there 23% quicker than the other group with the same workload and same distance; visual focus has a beautiful remark in making you produce less effort with quicker achievement.
Make Errors: making mistakes through the journey of achieving your goals is beneficial in succeeding to the extent that sometimes you should do it on purpose. A study about the effects of making errors in learning a foreign language, found an evidence that “errorful training produced superior learning of the meaning and grammar of the foreign language sentences.” And this is mainly because making errors during learning a skill activate parts of the brain that make you more attentive and enhance your working memory. At the same time, you shouldn’t be making errors to the extent that your bored out of the task, it should be balanced that it makes you learn and solve the problems; and at the same time you’re engaged and having good time; errors in 15% of the task is optimal.
Results or Roses
I love to end my blogs with poems, there’s nothing more profoundly impactful than utilizing words and orchestrate them in way that encapsulates rich meanings and emotions in a thin strings of lines. The following peom is by Edgar A. Guest, enjoy it.
The man who wants a garden fair,
Or small or very big,
With flowers growing here and there,
Must bend his back and dig.
The things are mighty few on earth
That wishes can attain.
Whate'er we want of any worth
We've got to work to gain.
It matters not what goal you seek,
It's secret here reposes:
You've got to dig from week to week
To get Results or Roses.