Goals are Dangerous

Set them VERY carefully

One of the hardest lessons I learned in life came from not knowing how to set goals properly. Granted, I was young, immature, and quite inexperienced, but still, it was a tough lesson.

I naturally assumed that goals are good, so even having a bad goal is better than no goal.

Wrong.

I want to lay out what makes a goal work and how the same force that allows goals to dramatically change your life can also be turned against you. If you’re not careful, you might end up like 18-year-old Austin, chasing the wind with a butterfly net in full confidence.

Most powerful forces have the potential to harm our pursuits, and goals are no exception. Instead of being afraid of them or being unsophisticated in our approach, let’s learn how to use them properly. To do that, we need to understand goals a bit.

What makes a goal… work?

First, a misconception.

A goal is not a thing.

We talk about goals as if they were a thing or tangible. They aren’t. A goal is an aim and nothing more. For example, when I think to myself that I want to go eat a Klondike bar (a very bad idea, but delicious), I’m determining an aim. I am looking and identifying the end result (Klondike bar). From there, my brain works backwards to where I am and shows me the necessary steps to achieving that goal (getting a Klondike bar).

On my way to the store for my unhealthy snack, I may pass by the health aisle, but because my aim is on delicious chocolate squares, I won’t even notice.

So what makes a goal work? Perception. Your aim determines what you see. I cover this in depth in this newsletter, but I’ll give a quick recap.

When you aim at something (aka setting a goal), your perception narrows to only show you the things pertaining to that goal. Your brain filters out the unrelated information.

This is no mystery; in fact, our brains are doing this all the time, because there’s simply too much information being thrown at us. The same thing happens with our focus and visual perception. There’s some fascinating scientific research on this, but I won’t cover it here. Read the other newsletter for that.

All we need to know for now is: Your aim determines what you see, and your brain filters out almost everything else.

What makes a goal (setting an aim) dangerous?

It should be obvious how this could be dangerous.

Don’t aim at the wrong thing.

Ok, duh, because you’ll move in the wrong direction. But it’s more than that. Not only will you be moving in the wrong direction, but you could get stuck there because your perception will narrow and filter out opportunities around you. It also makes it much harder to notice if you’re going in the wrong direction and catch yourself. Me breezing past the health aisle, for example.

When we get our aim wrong, it can cause a lot of frustration as we fixate on something. Especially if it’s something outside our control. Either way, it requires a lot of evaluation, because when you set an aim, you’re making your best guess as to what your future self will want. We don’t actually know, so we need to be willing to adjust.

Do you actually want your boss’s job, or do you want more autonomy?

“I want my boss’s job” and “I want more autonomy” will produce very different opportunities and results if aimed at. What you notice will be entirely different, so it’s good to figure out what you truly want before setting your aim and fixating on it.

If you don’t know how to go about finding what you truly want, read this newsletter. It covers the 3 things we can use to take our lives to the next level, no matter where we are. Most of our lives aren’t a wreck, but perhaps we’ve plateaued and need a bit of guidance to keep moving upward.