What happens when we achieve goals ?

You become free of them. You experience the feeling of freedom. That is all. You can be happy and have fun without any goals. In fact, it’s entirely possible that your goals bring you difficulties – more work, more uncertainty, less time for what you used to be. And yet, you cannot go back. You are compelled to move forward. That is life. The achievement of goals is not an obstacle to overall freedom either. It’s only freedom from the goal. Like eating frees you from hunger and sleeping frees you from tiredness. Goals free you from wanting. That is all. Neither good nor bad. In the same way, you can satiate hunger with food that is bad for you.

What’s a better way to achieve goals then?

First, depersonalise the goals. The mind is a fertile soil and it does not choose what grows in it. I didn’t choose what I want and so it’s not personal what has arisen as a desire for me. Could you choose not to want food or sleep? Or is it merely that you can choose not to feel that you want food or sleep to avoid eating or sleeping? The desires are natural and the nature of them is not a source of personal identity. This also means that the achievement of those desires, or the lack of achievement of them, should not define you. Whether you were hungry once before, does not define you as a hungry person – the desire comes and goes depending on how you’ve eaten. The achievement of it and the lack of achievement of it are not a source of personal identity.

This helps remove the story associated with the desire which often prevents us from achieving the goal. If you said to yourself, I’m hungry but I can’t eat right now because you’re working, the mind has a funny habit of turning actions like that into a story if it happens a few times. “I never eat because I’m a busy person” as a way to create an identity; “I always work too hard and so I never eat” as a way to punish yourself. And this story recurs till it changes your actions. Eating here is just an example of any other desire – it is used as an example since it’s universal and so easy to understand.

When you depersonalise the goal, you remove the story, you remove the “should” around it. I “should” eat but I work too hard.

Second, see the nature of wanting as a mere feeling. The stories around our goal help us push the feeling away or convert wanting to something else, like a feeling of shame (for wanting something) or sadness (for not having it). When there is no story, you can see the desire as a feeling of wanting only. And the point here of seeing the feeling is not remove it but to be okay with it existing. All desire, contrasting desire, wild desire. All can be felt without needing to be achieved or being pushed away cos it cannot be achieved. It’s just a feeling. And you can look for it like you can with all other feelings, now that it’s not a story: where is wanting in your body, what is the discomfort of it. Can you hold it.

The ultimate skill of wanting something is the ability to hold the feeling of wanting without letting it torture you – without torturing yourself to get rid of the feeling by achieving the goal. Can you just say “I want xyz” and sit with it. Find the contours of the feeling within you. See the depth of it. And move on. And whenever jr arises just feel it again. Not as a means of achieving it but also not as a means of avoiding it. Simply being with it like you can be with other things in your body.