As a kid and in my career as a golfer, I would set really specific goals, and I set those very high. I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve. I had short and long-term goals written down and up on the wall. Having goals like that did a couple of things for me; my expectations were extremely high, and my acceptance of failure was really low. I overemphasized what I wanted to achieve and underemphasized the journey that I was on. I valued the future over the present.

The problem I see with goal-setting, especially for highly motivated and ambitious people, is that the process becomes a medium to get what we want (or what we think we want- but that’s a whole different topic that I won’t get into right now). The process becomes secondary, and the goal is primary. The goal is the driver, the goal is why we do it. So we tie our satisfaction, contentment, joy, and happiness to a particular outcome. And that, I believe, is setting yourself up for failure; whether you reach your goals or not.

Take a close look at people that have achieved their goals. Are they happier? I don’t think so; many people who reach their biggest goals and dreams feel a big emptiness after because it doesn’t give them the happiness and satisfaction they believed it would. And usually, they are even more unhappy because the person that is still chasing the goal still has that illusion in his mind that the goal will give him happiness. The person that has reached it knows it doesn’t.

If we tie our happiness to our goals, we will drown in disappointment. Because if you don’t reach your goals, you will be disappointed and frustrated. But if you do, you will also be disappointed because it will never give you as much satisfaction, joy, or happiness as you think.

Instead of focusing on a goal to give you satisfaction, what if we created a process, created a system, that inspires you to show up daily, works on the right things, takes care of all aspects of you, and one that you enjoy doing. Let’s assume you didn’t set any goals, none whatsoever, and you focused all your attention on the process, the present, the task at hand, and “just” take it day by day, moment by moment. Would you improve? Would you succeed? Oh my, yes, you would.

Because doing something you love and getting so caught up in it, will take you further than any amount of goal-setting ever could. Being so into the process, so in love with the process that the goal becomes powerless. Powerless because you are not affected by achieving it or not achieving it. And when the outcome becomes powerless, you have created freedom in your performance.

Goals can serve as inspiration and motivation. But in many cases, inspiration and motivation are not the reason why people are not performing at their best. We perform at our best when we have little to no expectations and total acceptance. No expectations and total acceptance again create freedom, and on a subconscious level, they create deep trust.

Goal-setting is something we have adopted from our elders, our society, and modern-day hustle culture. It’s something we have been taught to do, something we believe we need to do in order to be successful, in order to achieve. But again, let’s take someone who shows up daily with joy in the process, inspired to see how good they can be, and no goals. Will they be successful? Oh my, yes, they will.

Goals are basically just fancy desires that come from our current way of thinking and our current state of being. Often, they come from a feeling of inadequacy, a sense of lack, and a void we are trying to fill.

I believe we can forget about setting goals. And instead, open ourselves up to see what naturally arises from putting in the work and trusting the process. If you have truly found a system that takes care of your entire being, you don’t need a goal because every goal you set would just be a limit.