Goal Setting

The concept of connection and attachment is discussed in relation to setting goals. Connecting with something or someone is authentic, while attachment is driven by ego and the desire to possess. Writing down goals is beneficial but should be done in the right way. Being present in the moment is important, and goals should not consume our thoughts. Writing them down liberates us from constantly thinking about them. Once goals are written, they can be released into the universe, allowing us to be open to other opportunities and experiences. Living in the present while still having goals is the ideal balance. I just want to talk a little bit about the concept of connection and attachment, versus attachment if you like, and how this also plays out in setting goals for our life. I think to connect with something or somebody, to really experience it or have an awareness of it and connect with it is something fully authentic, but then the ego side to that is attachment, when we want to claim things and own things. You can see that ego is desire for attachment, even in the marriage system where we have to give our wife the surname. But I just wanted to talk about the idea of goal setting because there's so many things you read about how actually writing down your goals is just such an enormous benefit. I think that's completely true and it's consistent with the authentic self. So what basically happens here, but it has to be done in the right way, there's a little trick which I'm just learning. So what happens is, as authentic people, we really want to spend as much time in the present as possible. We go back to the past when we need to, when it's of use to us, and we want to think about something and reflect on it and learn from it. We go forward into the future when we want to actively plan and work out a forward looking strategy or goal or vision. But then once we've done that, we then get out of there quickly and get back into the present. I'll talk a little bit more about linearity versus being present and mindfulness, but it goes along those lines in that we really want to spend as much time in the present and engaged as possible. So goal setting is this wonderful thing because instead of always thinking about what we want to do in the future and having that taken up space in our unconscious and our conscious mind, we can liberate ourselves by just writing it down and putting it in paper. So we're thinking very authentically and clearly about what we actually want in our lives. We write that down on paper, so that captures everything. But here's the beauty of it, once it's written down and we've got it and we know where it is, we're actually liberated from it. It's done, wow, okay, I know what I want to do, it's written down, it's there in writing. I've thought, the act of doing that writing forced me to actually dig into myself and authentically draw out my goals. It's in writing, but here's the key. The other trick is that we don't then live with those goals necessarily right in our conscious mind. We're not waking up every single day going, how did I achieve against that? Once we've written down the goals, sure we'll check up on them, everything and have milestones, but once we've written down the goals we let it out into the universe. We've clearly articulated what we want, I want to meet a wonderful woman with these qualities and hopefully that feeds towards a happy marriage, that's what I want, and then we put it out to the universe. The reason we do that is because no matter how great our goals are that we write down and that we clearly articulate, it really only represents a slice, think of all the opportunities in our lives that will come to us in the future, the ones we foresee and actually write down as goals only represent a small slice of all those opportunities. If we're just fully focused on our goals and what we've written down, then we're not present, we're not mindful of all the other opportunities and all the other experiences of love that we can have. So it's really, if you look at two extremes, there's one person who never writes down any goals, and that's bad because firstly you don't draw into yourself an authentic self and articulate what you actually want, so you don't have a purpose. But then the other extreme is somebody who writes down the goals but then they track them obsessively, they measure every single day, and that's unhealthy too because you're not living in the present, you're living in the future, and you're missing out on all these wonderful opportunities. So there's this great authentic middle ground where as authentic people we go off and think what do we want to do, we dig deep, we clearly articulate our goals, we write them down, and we have the rules as society goes, whether there's tasks or milestones, that's all there, but once we write it down we release it into the universe, and it might be that the goal comes to us 25 years later, because it was the universe that decided that's what we want. So I think that's a very clever insight of how to actually plan and set goals in our life. Absolutely have them, great thing, but don't live every moment by them. Still live a mindful life in the present.