Goal setting is highly Overrated

Until you know who you really are, you don’t know where you ought to be headed.

Not surprisingly, a Google search for “importance of setting goals” returns a whopping 347 million hits. Pages and page of articles, ALL of which insist–vehemently–that goal setting is essential to success.

I respectfully beg to differ.

If you set ambitious goals before you know who are, you will almost always end up in a place where you don’t fit. That’s why so many celebrities (a famously goal-oriented bunch) are often drug abusers. Overachievers also have a higher-than-average risk of suicide. 

You may have read or heard about the Harvard study that showed that the graduates who had written goals, decades later, were far more wealthy that those who didn’t. Maybe so, but shouldn’t college be about broadening horizons?

After all, if your identity is still unformed and you’ve grown up in a bubble, how can you possibly know what goal would be right for you?

I’ve met hundreds of goal-oriented people who are deeply miserable because they’re on a career path or life path that’s wildly inappropriate for them. Sometimes they make a lot of money but it never seems to make them very happy.

Without self-awareness, goal-setting puts you on a treadmill, achieving goal after goal, but continually asking: “Is this all there is?”

Being too goal-oriented also makes you vulnerable to being manipulated by employers who promise you’ll achieve those goal… after working hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime. Definition of irony: burning yourself out pursuing a goal that, if achieved, would make you miserable. 

It’s not that goal-setting doesn’t work; it’s just that many, if not most, people lack the self-awareness to select appropriate goals. Therefore, before setting goals, learn to listen to the “small, still voice” that tells you who you really are.

Read more: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/goal-setting-is-highly-over-rated.html?cid=search