“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
There seems to be this common belief that unless you have a goal in place, you'll never know where you are going. This seems commonsensical but if you stop and think for a minute, having a goal in mind can sometimes be limiting.
Take some paper and black pen and draw a line of any style (straight, curved or wobbly) in any direction, then feel free to change directions and style randomly and lift the pen on and off the page whenever you feel like it. Feel free to just let your mind wander.
After 5 minutes you'll have a "Doodle" of some description, whether it be as simple as the one above or maybe it will resemble something more tangible like the image shown below. The point is not what it turns out to be, it's that you had no idea of what it would look like to start out with.
So what's my point?
I think we can get so caught up with thinking that things have to be a certain way and with this mindset in place, we set goals and work towards achieving them at all cost. However, sometimes I think we forget to stop and reassess our goals and question what it is we are actually trying to achieve.
If you are anything like me, sometimes things don't always go to plan for whatever reason and with that firm idea of what that end goal should look like, we can often get trapped trying to stay on that path we initially set for ourselves. We end up doing the same thing over and over, with little or no result. We start to become confused, indecisive and blinded to alternatives. We begin to enter this state of entrapment and wind up punishing ourselves for continually failing.
I use the doodling example above to demonstrate that sometimes you need to let go of predetermined ideas about how the end result will look and just go with the flow. You may set out to become a famous artist who will draw the next Mona Lisa but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way.
I'm not advocating that you should not set goals for yourself. I've certainly posted before about the importance of goal setting and celebrating our achievements and this most certainly has it's time and place. However now and then, I think we need to let our minds wander and allow them to go to unexpected places, explore new and unexplored territory, be open to possibility and learn surprising new things to be passionate about.
"The definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviours and expecting a different outcome." ~ Albert Einstein
My suggestion is not to throw in the towel and forget about having aspirations, in fact my philosophy here is quite the opposite. My point here is that we should be weary of becoming fixated and instead become more adaptable to change and allow the freedom to appreciate all that life has to offer with the goal of becoming a more authentic version of ones self.
Perhaps no goal is a goal in itself.......
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