Goals We Should Be Striving For In Life
Overview
In this article I have, I discussed just one of the ways in which one can understand life goals.
One can look at one’s goals in life from a number of different perspectives, and the list can be endless, starting from achieving worldly success to developing intimacy in relationships, acquiring virtues, knowledge, and wisdom, helping others, seeking personal growth, and working towards spiritual goals for self-actualization.
What goals we should be striving for in life?
One can look at one’s goals in life from a number of different perspectives, and the list can be endless, starting from achieving worldly success to developing intimacy in relationships, acquiring virtues, knowledge, and wisdom, helping others, seeking personal growth, and working towards spiritual goals for self-actualization.
In this article I have, I discussed just one of the ways in which one can understand life goals in general terms that will apply to each one of us. This concept is borrowed from the ancient Indian understanding.
According to this philosophy, the goals in one’s life can be understood in terms of the following four broad categories:
1. First – Earning money – I do not have to explain it further as everybody understands that earning money should be a goal in life. It is important to note that it should not be seen as a fixed thing, as the need for money keeps changing and that should get reflected in our priority list. Money is earned at the cost of something else; time, effort, energy, quality time with our loved ones, pursuing hobbies, working on inner development, etc. When young and short of money, we may be willing to make all those sacrifices, but after a certain stage in life and achieving reasonable success in the material sense, our attitude to money should change. Otherwise, we may end up having regrets about not doing the right thing in our quest to earn more money which may not add value to our lives as a proportion as other things will do.
2. The Second is about seeking sensual pleasures that are, enjoyment of all the five senses. This is also not difficult to understand that we want to have good experiences in life in terms of tasty food, music, pleasing visual experiences, the experiences of touch, warmth, sex, and friendship. The age of wisdom handed down to us tells us that there should be moderation there, we are neither depriving ourselves of all the good things in life nor at the same time not overindulging in them.
3. The third goal would be – Doing your duty and doing the right thing. This goal in life can go against the first and second, as we may have to make some sacrifices in terms of money and our enjoyment for the sake of performing our duty and doing the right thing.
One must ask oneself what my duty to my parents is, to my spouse, to my children, to my siblings, to uncles, aunts, grandparents, neighbors, fellow citizens, and the international community, and am I doing that duty? If you are not doing your duty, it may come back to haunt you and cause more stress later as it can create an upset that lingers on. One might realize, on balance, it would have been better to fulfill that duty rather than ignore it. I had a client whose father had suffered from alcoholism and due to some of his wrongdoings, this client of mind had cut his ties with his father. He did not see his father for about ten years although his father had lived in a nearby town. One day a client of mine came to know that his father had passed away. During the therapy, when describing his feelings towards his father, he was inconsolable, and he had already contacted several psychics, who he thought, would be able to put him in touch with his father’s soul. This happens to us all the time, not keeping in touch with people who were very close to us at some point in time in the past, like our grandparents or uncles and aunts, due to our busy lives, can be a source of stress later on, and when looking back we may realize that we had lost an opportunity to do the right thing. Doing the right thing is along the same lines as doing one’s duty. If you are in a position where you have to make a decision that is going to affect others’ lives, and if you do the right thing irrespective of what pressures you are under from others and also from within yourself, it may cause some upset in the short-term but at a deeper level and in the long run, it will be helpful. Doing the right thing also includes speaking the truth even if it means causing some distress to oneself. Truth comes with its own force, and people initially may not agree with you but will eventually come around to understanding that you were right and be on your side. In a discussion on one’s duties, I would like to mention that one should also reflect on one’s duty to oneself in terms of taking care of one’s physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs.
4. The fourth goal in life should be acquiring the ability to undo your suffering or negative emotions and seeking inner bliss. I can give you several examples of celebrities, and the general population as well, who have been successful in amassing wealth and they have enjoyed all sorts of pleasures in life and may have also fulfilled their duties to their family, friends, and fans but what they were lacking in was that they did not have the ability to undo their suffering, their inner pain, the loneliness and sadness, and their existential anguish, and as a result couldn’t come out of the negative downward spiral.
Worldly success cannot help us there, in fact, it can come in the way of undoing the inner pain. They start relying increasingly on alcohol, illicit drugs, and unhelpful relationships and end up having suicidal thoughts and psychological issues.
It is therefore important that one learns how to manage negative emotions. This is something that is not taught in schools and colleges, and many parents don’t know how to help their children in this area, they simply say, “don’t be a cissy boy, pull up your socks, be brave and face the world, this is how it is, you have to take on the challenges, seize the day, etc but nobody teaches us how to do it. This should be the most important subject to be taught in schools and colleges before they start teaching physics, geography, or history.
The six-session stress management program that is on offer at the Emotions Clinic in Staffordshire, England offers an opportunity to learn dozens of coping strategies that can be helpful in undoing one’s suffering.
In addition to acquiring the ability to undo suffering, one can tap into the inner bliss and joy that one starts experiencing in a proportion equal to their own suffering that one has been able to work on.
From the above discussion, we can infer that there are two broad categories of life goals.
The first three will fall under the category of external life goals and the fourth one in the category of internal life goals. One can argue that to some extent the third one if consider our duty to ourselves also as a goal, will fall under the category of inner goals.
One needs to work on both external as well as internal goals simultaneously. Some devote too much time to their external goals to the exclusion of their internal ones, not realizing that working on their internal goals will also help them achieve their external goals. This results in stress piling up inside and reaching a breaking point at some stage.
On the other hand, some devote a lot of time only working on their internal goals to the exclusion of their external ones, assuming that the external goals will be achieved automatically once they have started working on their internal goal. That outside circumstances are a mere reflection of our inner state of affairs. That also may not be true.
It is also true that those who have chosen to devote themselves to a spiritual path may find that pursuing external goals will come in the way of achieving their inner goals.
One can look at one’s goals in life from a number of different perspectives, and the list can be endless, starting from achieving worldly success to developing intimacy in relationships, acquiring virtues, knowledge, and wisdom, helping others, seeking personal growth, and working towards spiritual goals for self-actualization.
In this article I have, I discussed just one of the ways in which one can understand life goals in general terms that will apply to each one of us. This concept is borrowed from the ancient Indian understanding.
According to this philosophy, the goals in one’s life can be understood in terms of the following four broad categories:
1. First – Earning money – I do not have to explain it further as everybody understands that earning money should be a goal in life. It is important to note that it should not be seen as a fixed thing, as the need for money keeps changing and that should get reflected in our priority list. Money is earned at the cost of something else; time, effort, energy, quality time with our loved ones, pursuing hobbies, working on inner development, etc. When young and short of money, we may be willing to make all those sacrifices, but after a certain stage in life and achieving reasonable success in the material sense, our attitude to money should change. Otherwise, we may end up having regrets about not doing the right thing in our quest to earn more money which may not add value to our lives as a proportion as other things will do.
2. The Second is about seeking sensual pleasures that are, enjoyment of all the five senses. This is also not difficult to understand that we want to have good experiences in life in terms of tasty food, music, pleasing visual experiences, the experiences of touch, warmth, sex, and friendship. The age of wisdom handed down to us tells us that there should be moderation there, we are neither depriving ourselves of all the good things in life nor at the same time not overindulging in them.
3. The third goal would be – Doing your duty and doing the right thing. This goal in life can go against the first and second, as we may have to make some sacrifices in terms of money and our enjoyment for the sake of performing our duty and doing the right thing.
One must ask oneself what my duty to my parents is, to my spouse, to my children, to my siblings, to uncles, aunts, grandparents, neighbors, fellow citizens, and the international community, and am I doing that duty? If you are not doing your duty, it may come back to haunt you and cause more stress later as it can create an upset that lingers on. One might realize, on balance, it would have been better to fulfill that duty rather than ignore it. I had a client whose father had suffered from alcoholism and due to some of his wrongdoings, this client of mind had cut his ties with his father. He did not see his father for about ten years although his father had lived in a nearby town. One day a client of mine came to know that his father had passed away. During the therapy, when describing his feelings towards his father, he was inconsolable, and he had already contacted several psychics, who he thought, would be able to put him in touch with his father’s soul. This happens to us all the time, not keeping in touch with people who were very close to us at some point in time in the past, like our grandparents or uncles and aunts, due to our busy lives, can be a source of stress later on, and when looking back we may realize that we had lost an opportunity to do the right thing. Doing the right thing is along the same lines as doing one’s duty. If you are in a position where you have to make a decision that is going to affect others’ lives, and if you do the right thing irrespective of what pressures you are under from others and also from within yourself, it may cause some upset in the short-term but at a deeper level and in the long run, it will be helpful. Doing the right thing also includes speaking the truth even if it means causing some distress to oneself. Truth comes with its own force, and people initially may not agree with you but will eventually come around to understanding that you were right and be on your side. In a discussion on one’s duties, I would like to mention that one should also reflect on one’s duty to oneself in terms of taking care of one’s physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs.
4. The fourth goal in life should be acquiring the ability to undo your suffering or negative emotions and seeking inner bliss. I can give you several examples of celebrities, and the general population as well, who have been successful in amassing wealth and they have enjoyed all sorts of pleasures in life and may have also fulfilled their duties to their family, friends, and fans but what they were lacking in was that they did not have the ability to undo their suffering, their inner pain, the loneliness and sadness, and their existential anguish, and as a result couldn’t come out of the negative downward spiral.
Worldly success cannot help us there, in fact, it can come in the way of undoing the inner pain. They start relying increasingly on alcohol, illicit drugs, and unhelpful relationships and end up having suicidal thoughts and psychological issues.
It is therefore important that one learns how to manage negative emotions. This is something that is not taught in schools and colleges, and many parents don’t know how to help their children in this area, they simply say, “don’t be a cissy boy, pull up your socks, be brave and face the world, this is how it is, you have to take on the challenges, seize the day, etc but nobody teaches us how to do it. This should be the most important subject to be taught in schools and colleges before they start teaching physics, geography, or history.
The six-session stress management program that is on offer at the Emotions Clinic in Staffordshire, England offers an opportunity to learn dozens of coping strategies that can be helpful in undoing one’s suffering.
In addition to acquiring the ability to undo suffering, one can tap into the inner bliss and joy that one starts experiencing in a proportion equal to their own suffering that one has been able to work on.
From the above discussion, we can infer that there are two broad categories of life goals.
The first three will fall under the category of external life goals and the fourth one in the category of internal life goals. One can argue that to some extent the third one if consider our duty to ourselves also as a goal, will fall under the category of inner goals.
One needs to work on both external as well as internal goals simultaneously. Some devote too much time to their external goals to the exclusion of their internal ones, not realizing that working on their internal goals will also help them achieve their external goals. This results in stress piling up inside and reaching a breaking point at some stage.
On the other hand, some devote a lot of time only working on their internal goals to the exclusion of their external ones, assuming that the external goals will be achieved automatically once they have started working on their internal goal. That outside circumstances are a mere reflection of our inner state of affairs. That also may not be true.
It is also true that those who have chosen to devote themselves to a spiritual path may find that pursuing external goals will come in the way of achieving their inner goals.
