You don't have to be goal-oriented

Crushing your goals

There's a near-endless stream of life coaches, fitness instructors, and self-help influencers on social media teaching you to “crush your goals.” They implore you to set your sights on some ambitious accomplishment and tirelessly will yourself to it.

The formula is pretty straightforward: set a goal, work hard, keep working hard, accomplish your goal, bask in your accomplishment for a moment or two, and repeat, forever. This path, they seem to insist, is the path to success and fulfillment. 

This mindset has seemingly become ubiquitous across Western cultures, even among purpose-driven leaders. Nearly every job description out there requires someone to be "goal-oriented." We all seem to be striving toward some goal: a more toned body, more income, a fancier job title, a bigger house, better relationships, a deeper meditation practice, or a more bigger impact on the world.

For many, our goals have become a primary structure of our lives and a core measure of progress, success, and even self-worth. When we accomplish something, we feel incredible. When we don’t, we feel defeated and empty.

Prisoners to the external

In fairness, this goal-oriented mindset has its merits. By setting and dedicating ourselves to goals, we can more easily focus on and realize what’s most important to us. We offer our lives a narrative arc that keeps us on track and staves off stagnation, laziness, and aimlessness. Perhaps most potently, achieving our goals gives us a metaphorical (and perhaps literal) dopamine rush. The satisfaction of finally achieving an ambitious goal is alluring, almost like a drug, pushing us ever forward to new heights. Goals offer us not only focus and direction but also forward momentum.

However, I believe this approach also has some fundamental flaws. 

First, there is always another goal to crush, another mountain to climb. We become addicts chasing that next high, each success less satisfying than the last, each new goal merely an attempt to ward off feelings of inadequacy and emptiness. Our very identity and self-worth become deeply entangled in what we accomplish. And enough is never enough. The craving always comes back. 

Second, we almost always set goals at least partially, if not mostly, out of our control. We don’t decide whether we get that promotion, whether someone votes for us, or whether the economy will offer our new venture strong headwinds. We don’t even really control whether we attain a new level of meditation or better relationships. Through a goal-setting mindset, we so often give away our power, either to the opinion of others or to the randomness and volatility of change.

Through our fixation on goals and destinations, we become prisoners – to our insatiable appetite for that next high, to external forces beyond our control, and to our need for something beyond us to validate our existence.

Instead of being goal-oriented, try being journey-oriented

In an earlier post, I contrasted purpose to profit as a motivator, what inspires us to action in the world. As purpose-driven leaders, we eschew a sole focus on personal gain and instead prioritize service to the world. Our reason for acting shifts from being (solely) self-oriented to (largely) service-oriented.

We can also contrast purpose to goals as a validator, what ultimately causes us to feel successful and fulfilled. What many label as “goal-oriented,” we might also think of as “destination-oriented.” We are driven primarily by arriving at someplace different from where we are right now. Satisfaction, validation, and fulfillment come when, and only when, we arrive, sometime in the future.

But as purpose-driven leaders, at least insofar as I think of this term, our sense of fulfillment comes much more from our internal sense of progress. We feel successful and fulfilled when we take meaningful steps forward in the direction of our values. Our sense of worth shifts from being destination-oriented to journey-oriented.

To be sure, goals are often vital to this journey. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone being particularly purposeful in practice without setting some goals. However, purpose-driven leaders acknowledge goals as tools to help them focus and align themselves. Actually achieving them is fairly unimportant to their sense of success, because it is so often out of their control. In other words, for the journey-oriented, goals are means, not ends. They help steer the path of the journey.

By becoming journey-oriented in this way, we can access a much more sustainable, stable, and reliable sense of fulfillment and self-worth. We no longer rely on someone or something beyond our control to feel successful. We control our sense of success. And maybe most vitally, the sense of success and fulfillment we yearn for is always accessible right here and now in our very next step, not weeks, months, or years in the future, and dependent on the winds of change.

We will never arrive at change

Purpose-driven leaders, by definition, seek tangible, positive change in the world around them. We often want to see a more prosperous, equitable, sustainable, and beautiful world for all. And we want to grow into the version of ourselves that can most help make that world a reality.

But through that, we often fall into the same trap as the goal-oriented leader. We measure our sense of worth by whether we personally are able to enact meaningful change. We judge the world and our society by whether it fully arrives at justice, sustainability, prosperity, etc.

I’ve used the metaphor of the hero’s journey to describe leaders’ relationship to change. The purpose-driven leader is the hero. Their genius is the power that fuels them, helps them to traverse the terrain, and orient themselves to their true north. Change is the intended destination of the journey.

But in truth, there is no destination, not really. We never actually arrive. The change we most want for ourselves and the world will never fully come to be. Even if we can summit the highest mountain in sight, another will appear along the horizon. There will always be a higher, fuller expression of truth, justice, harmony with Earth, peace, and prosperity. There will always be new values to dream up and strive toward.

The only fulfillment truly available to us does not come from arriving at our intended destination. It does not come from fully enacting the world our hearts most yearn for. Fulfillment comes from answering the call, embarking on our journey, letting go of any illusion of or need for a final destination, and earnestly pressing forward along our path.

Leadership coach

Bellingham WA USA / Lummi & Nooksack lands

he / they

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