What Would Happen If You Let Go of All Your Goals?
The question keeps arising in my mind: What Now?
Debts are paid off, financial situation is stable, most of my time is free, and my body is mostly healed. The ego has a whole list of “goals” that I could set now. I could write a book or build my audience or date a bunch of people or focus on making a lot of money. But when the question comes …. “What Now?” … my intuition says “nothing.”
If you’ve been following my recent posts, you may have noticed that I have been questioning everything. Here are some of the questions:
– Do I want a husband and a baby? Not really. (Read more about this one here.)
– Do I want a larger audience? Not for the sake of having a larger audience.
– Do I want more money? Not for the sake of having more money without a clear purpose for spending it.
– Do I want to create more products? Only if I’m meant to create them for the highest good of everyone.
The truth is that none of these external goals feel compelling to me right now. I’ve been on enough hamster wheels in my life to know that they are all the same, and I’m not interested in stepping onto any new hamster wheels. There is no clear guidance right now, other than going to Costa Rica.
So I’m going to do something I’ve never done before, and we can all treat it as an experiment. I’m going to stop having goals. And we’re going to see what happens.
Here’s the problem with goals by the way. They prevent us from being fully present. A “goal” is always in the future, and setting the goal is often done by our ego self. And so the ego is trying to control future time based on past experience. Which is completely out of alignment with being fully present.
Lately after all the EFT tapping that I’ve done, especially with the passages from A Course in Miracles thrown in, it is truly clear to me that I don’t know my own best interests. If I set a goal of more money, how do I know that really serves me? If I set relationship goals, how do I know those really serve me?
It seems to me that it’s time for me to STOP deciding what I want, and start letting life happen the way it’s meant to happen. This world offers nothing that I want. Beyond this world there is a world I want. My purpose here is to pass this world by, by letting go of ego goals. And that is what I intend to do.
How will this look in practice?
Well, I’m just going to see what and who shows up in my life, and I’m going to practice being present with whatever and whomever that happens to be. Including men who want to date me. I’m just going to let it happen. I’m going to do my best to let go of my judgments about what should or should not be happening. And if something or someone is not present and available to me, it’s as if he or it does not exist at all. Because I’m going to be present here, now.
This is how the 30-Day Transformational Travel Challenge that I’ll be recording in Costa Rica is shaping up … it’s not going to be about achieving meaningless goals. It’s going to be about letting the goals go … I think … we are not going to plan that, either lol. We are just going to let it unfold …
Love,
Erika Awakening, High Priestess of Miracles at TAPsmarter
I love this blog post! Beautifully said. Goals are the future and they do take us away from the present. They also rarely give the level of fulfillment that people from reaching their goals. In fact, almost the first thing most people do when reaching a goal is start working on the next one. I remember once when I was talking to a client about goals. I asked her what she was going to do when she reached her goal. She replied, that she would make another goal and go for that one. It didn’t even occur to her to take time out of her day to celebrate her accomplishment. She had to look to the future once again.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Hey Brett,
Thanks for commenting. Yeah, exactly. I remember when I was on the law school hamster wheel, the work was hard and the celebrations brief or non-existent. And in the end it added up to nothing.
Websites also can easily become a new kind of hamster wheel, worrying about traffic and money and everything else. Time to step off for a while.
cheers,
Erika
I love this, Erika! This I resonate with whole-heartedly!
I read this entire section in A Course in Miracles today and I will post one section here as it seems to fit to me.
“Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. To seek a special person or a thing to add to you to make yourself complete, can only mean that you believe some form is missing. And by finding this, you will achieve completion in a form you like. This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. Only if you had sinned could this be so. For sin is the idea you are alone and separated off from what is whole. And thus it would be necessary for the search for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself.”
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on goals.<3