How to understand whether you are striving for your goal or for one imposed by society? How to distinguish your true desires from those imposed by other people.

More on Imposed Goals:

1. Thesis 1 "Strict protection of intellectual property is not so important, because it cannot be imposed by force."
2. It should be said right away that a deposit for short-term purposes is not recommended to be used simultaneously as a deposit for a reserve fund, since these are fundamentally different purposes.
3. Step to Change: Verbal Programming Awareness. Write down the most common expressions about money, wealth, and rich people that you heard as a child. UNDERSTANDING. Write how they have affected the financial side of your life so far. SUSPENSION. Now do you understand that these ideas are imposed on you, that they have nothing to do with your habits or your sense of self? Now you see that you have the opportunity to become different? DECLARATION. Put your hand on your heart
4. A step towards change: imitation Awareness. Think about the lifestyle your parents led and the money habits each of them had. Write down how you are similar to them and how you are different. UNDERSTANDING. Describe how imitation has affected your current financial situation. SUSPENSION. Now you understand that this logic is imposed on you, don't you? Isn't it true that you have the opportunity to become different? DECLARATION. Putting your hand on your heart, say: “The manner of handling money was on me

Many people have a habit of setting some kind of Mercedes as their goal, then saving up for it for several years, and a week after the purchase, they find that the car is almost not happy, and not really needed.

How to determine your real goals, so as not to waste time and effort on nonsense?

Method one

You need to present your goal and ask the question at least 15 times: “Why do I want this?”
For example, the goal is to buy a very expensive phone.
What for? To have a beautiful expensive thing.
What for? to raise the status.
What for? To be envied by others.
What for? To feel better.
What for? Because I'm tired of the fact that all my friends have it, but I don't. I'm embarrassed and envious.

So it turns out that the phone is needed not for yourself, but for friends.
And you can deal with resentment in a less expensive way.
If, after all the questions, we understand that we are doing it for pleasure or this goal will make us more efficient, we can achieve it.

Method two

It is necessary to evaluate how interesting it is to move towards the goals. Do you enjoy the process of achieving them?
If yes, everything is fine.
If not, there is a chance that the body does not produce endorphins quite correctly. Most likely, he understands that this is superfluous.
This should not bring special pleasure, but you also don’t need to force yourself out from under the stick.

Method three

Living goals in the long term.
There is, for example, the goal of becoming a psychologist and accepting clients.
You need to imagine that the goal has been achieved, the diploma is hanging on the wall and you are already there.
Monday morning, we begin to work and deal with people's problems.
Tuesday - work with problems. Wednesday - work with problems. Thursday Friday...
Not tired yet? And in a month? What if six months?
When a goal is lived in this way, it comes to understanding whether I really need and like it, or whether I want it simply for the status itself.
The difference is the same as between wanting to be a writer and wanting to write books.

Method four

Take a notebook and write out at least 10 pages of your goals, desires and wishes. It is unlikely that you will be able to write all the pages at once, so you can do it for several days.
After you write everything, the first 5-6 pages can usually be thrown away, with a probability of 90% there is all sorts of socially acceptable nonsense.
The deepest desires appear towards the end, after about the sixth attack of "I don't know what else to write about."
This is a difficult exercise, but the most useful on this list.
In addition, we must be aware that not all goals should be our own and cause delight in their implementation.
For example, restoring visual acuity will not always be “real and intimate”, but this does not mean that it does not need to be done. Good vision just doesn't lie on the road.

You just need to learn to distinguish where the goal is real and necessary, where it’s ordinary, but it doesn’t hurt, and where it’s someone else’s, and I’m just trying to convince myself to move there.
Then it will be easy to prioritize and not have to regret the time spent on something that will never come in handy.

Editorial

Have you tried making wishes according to all the rules? So, to visualize your dream and believe that you are worthy of it? Psychologist and business coach Olga Yurkovskaya tells whether there is that very magic formula for the fulfillment of desires and how to find it. Read the article in full in the January issue of our magazine:.

The content of our future depends entirely on what we think and what we say out loud. This idea is developed in his book by the doctor of chiropractic and neurophysiology, the author of a unique life transformation program, Joe Dispenza. The book talks about the endless possibilities of the human brain and the reprogramming of our thinking. According to the author, there are no limits to human possibilities.

We are constantly told that we must change. If you are dissatisfied with something, then the reason is in you. I often hear the phrase: "If you want to change the world, start with yourself."

Once I caught myself thinking: “From what, in fact, walrus, I should change.” They screwed up, honestly. Born as it is, for which I suddenly have to jump above my head.

But then I cracked this chip. It's all about being dissatisfied with something. You are constantly pursued by some other people's goals and imposed opinions. That is why you have to make extra efforts in working on yourself, and influence others in achieving these goals.

You lose everything - strength, money, health, and most importantly time. It all starts with another phone, then another car, then another apartment. Any suggestions are welcome. It's embarrassing to show a cheap phone in front of people. You need a fur coat because it's cool. You definitely need a Mercedes car, because on the road you look cooler, and he drives fast. It is profitable to take a mortgage, because you overpay for a rented apartment and because inflation is rampant in the country.

Nothing that the iPhone goes out already at -15 degrees and does not catch where the phone catches for 700 rubles. Nothing in a mink coat, piz..c, how cold. Nothing that the Mercedes needs to be washed and refueled every day to keep it looking cool and driving fast. Nothing that traffic lights and traffic jams in the city are the same for everyone and go faster, one hell, it doesn’t work. Nothing that you took a kopeck piece on the outskirts of a Siberian village on a mortgage, but this is your own apartment. Now you won't get out of this village for 20 years. You have your own house.

People are buying fake iPhones and expensive watches. Borrow expensive cars. And all this is just to deceive yourself and others.

Even if you decide to give up all this, then every day from TV, from the Internet, on the street and at work, you will be forced to do this again and again. Someone got new car, telephone. Or one of the acquaintances began to earn an unrealistically large amount, because he grabbed a gold mine. You also want automatically.

Everything is in the furnace. Stand back, gentlemen.

I began to take care of myself and control myself so that my desires do not exceed my capabilities. For my 30th birthday, my wife gave me a bicycle. Very well guessed with the gift. It started a new worldview. When you drive around the city, you see what people are doing. They smoke quietly behind stops. They kiss on the benches. It turns out that there are people in the city who go jogging without clothes in winter. You see how crowds of students go to the institute in the morning, and back in the afternoon, hungry. And the biggest discovery is how people envy the fact that you don’t go to a hateful job in the morning, but ride stupidly and get high. Damn, who does not give you.

The one who knows the "why" to live will overcome almost any "how".

Nietzsche's words are the motto of any successful person. By the word "successful" I mean not only success in business, but also personal success. Life without a goal has no meaning; a goal without meaning has no life. Finding a meaningful goal, and not a desire to do something, is difficult. But probably.

I approach the issue of finding goals from different angles: personal and work. In this article, we will discuss the boundaries of thinking, personal goals and their meaning.

At the end of the article - tasks. They will help you choose from daily activities those that lead you to the goal.

Limits of thinking

The first thing that gets in the way of goal setting is basic existential position. That is, how a person feels the world: perceives it as favorable or hostile.

According to the hypothesis of the American psychologist Timothy Leary, the attitude to the world is formed from birth until the moment when the child begins to actively move around. If pregnancy and childbirth were normal, a person comes into the world in a balance of mental resources: positive and negative. It's like a white sheet.

Interacting with the outside world, primarily with parents and objects, a small person receives the first experiences. They are fundamentally imprinted in memory. Negative experience puts a black blot on a white sheet. Even if the experience is well-deserved.

For example, a parent hit a child who broke an expensive vase. From the point of view of an adult, this is justified: if you messed up, you were punished. For the psyche of the child there is no difference. The event is imprinted in the memory as a negative experience.

Most likely, negative experiences are in all people. But if they go beyond the norms that the psyche is ready to compensate for, the surrounding world begins to be perceived as an aggressive environment.

From this moment on, the mechanism that I call mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecies: a person gets what he predicts.

A person predicts the future at all levels of the psyche all the time. Acts proactively and responding to something that hasn't happened yet.

Employees of the department Vadim and Oleg have a conflict. There will be a meeting with the manager. Vadim is afraid that Oleg will put him in a bad light, and he loses in his head in advance possible options protection. At the meeting, Vadim aggressively reacts to Oleg's every phrase, even a greeting. The altercation begins.

If the surrounding world is perceived as dangerous, the person regards most of the neutral facts as threatening.

Oleg was not going to set anyone up and spoke calmly. But Vadim could not judge adequately: he had already predicted the situation in which Oleg was trying to set him up. Vadim himself reproduced the forecast in reality.

The forecast came true and reinforced Vadim's model of the world: he will continue to predict just as negatively. So it turns out: the world is initially aggressive - I predict negatively - I get problems - I reinforce the model aggressive world.

When setting a goal, the model of an aggressive world becomes a boundary that cannot be crossed. You set a goal and predict a negative result in advance

The problem of self-intention

The basic existential position is the first thing that changes our intention and slows down the definition of the goal. The second and greater evil is the environment in which the child grows up, namely adults: parents, family friends, educators and teachers.

"Why do you need it?! You don't need it, come on!"

“Do you want to sing in the choir? The boys don't sing in the choir! Go Karate!"

Why are you sitting with a book? Look how good the weather is, everyone is walking. And you go for a walk."

"Do you want to be a lawyer? You go to the dentist! Why? Because I say so hall(s)!”

Children do things just because they want to do it. When adults do not like the desires of children, they grind the child with a file, sometimes adding it with a hammer, sometimes with a sledgehammer.

A person grows up who has been beaten off the ability and courage to want something. He absorbed with a spoonful of morning oatmeal that you can only want what is socially acceptable, what falls under the "filter" of other people (fits into their boundaries of thinking).

A person grows up with a “pre-set” set of goals, in which there is a standard path: finish school - get out of the army - go to college - get a job

This chain also has limits: you can’t jump above the head of a department without connections, you won’t be a worker - everyone in our family has a higher education.

With such attitudes in the future, we do not take steps that could lead to success due to the initial negative forecast.

A guy with little work experience has just arrived in Moscow from another city. He will not send a resume for a good position in a well-known company. Why, if it is known in advance that this is impossible? That's what everyone says.

We will not achieve most of the goals, because we predict a negative result in advance and stifle the intention

Rejecting our own intention, we act according to the template of socially acceptable goals: an apartment, a summer house, a car, a position, a family. When the template is exhausted, the crisis begins.

Target selection

A person has achieved socially acceptable goals, but there are no new ones. He does not know how to want something on his own. The absence of a real goal a person compensates with far-fetched ones. To understand which goals in your life are forced and which are real, we will break them into four types.

The first type is the "sharp stick". Most of the goals achieved by the time of conditional well-being are forced. Society imposed them. A striking example of "sharp sticks" is marriage and children. Boys and girls do not marry because they want to share life with him or her. They want to get rid of “you are already 30, it’s time to think about a family” and “all your friends have already given birth to the second”.

The second type is the lack of emotions. Do we buy new phone because the old one doesn't work well? What about a laptop? What about swimming with dolphins? What about a new bag?

The mass of what we want can be quoted. Because these are not the desires of a particular object or state, but the desire to receive the missing emotions.

- I want a red sports car.

- Why?

- Well, I can ride around the city in the evenings.

- Why?

- Well, I can easily meet a girl.

The machine itself is not needed. Not for work, not for the thrill of driving. You need to meet girls - this is the goal. The car has nothing to do with it.

The third type is a concrete object. If we use the definition of the goal “the desired object or state”, then this category is the goal in full. She is the simplest.

Remember the feeling of being in love. Have you had questions about what you want and why? No. You knew exactly what object of passion you have and what you want to do.

This type of goals is the key to successful actions. When you clearly imagine the desired state or object, it is immediately clear what needs to be done. And success often comes with clarity and real desire.

The fourth type is intention. Intention is an impulse of the soul, interest, desire, awakened by the contact of objective external reality and our individuality.

When a child wants something, the power of sincere intention is visible. He wants this particular toy, not another. He does not need it for a specific purpose. He just wants her and wants her badly. Why? He just wants to. He is interested. He pushes another child who takes away the toy from his friend, not because it is necessary (the parents just at that moment shout “you can’t push”), but because he wants to. And this is his intention.
The intention has no explanation. It is a reaction to what exists in the outside world.

Perhaps the intention is strong, the problem you want to solve is large, and the daily action itself will arouse interest. Maybe it's a mission. One of the important markers by which a mission can be defined is disinterestedness. If you are ready to realize your intention for free or for your money, there is a high chance that this is a mission.

All four types of goals have a right to exist. The first two usually end up on the lists of "100 goals for the year" or "wishes that I want to achieve for the rest of my life." There is nothing wrong with spending your life reaching your 100 goals every year. But the question is different: Are these 100 goals worth your lifetime? Life is shorter than it seems. There must be something more than a template, something important, something worth living for.

In addition, goals like "sharp stick" or "lack of emotions" are short-lived. Motivation from discomfort is strong but short-lived. If we do not get success for a long time, then it is easier to change the attitude, to abandon the goal - and the discomfort will dissolve.

Goals "desired object" or "intention" do not divide life into work for the sake of goals and life itself.

You don't go to the office for a purpose. You don't go out on Friday because the week is behind you and the weekend is ahead. You don't stay up past midnight because it's time for yourself. You don't grow bad habits because habits are a way to drown out inner anxiety.

Instead, you live, realize intention and interest every day. Read what is interesting. Do what is interesting. Think about what is interesting. And you are ahead of others in this area, because you voluntarily invest time in intention.

Search for meaning

In working towards a goal, one cannot do without perseverance and a strong desire, which will provide fuel for new and new attempts. This is possible if the goal makes sense to us.

Most cannot answer the question: "Why do you need your goals?" For personal purposes, the question of desire and its boundaries (more precisely, their absence) is the first. Without it, it is impossible to acquire at least some goal, except for the "sharp stick".

The question of meaning will help to arrange the hierarchy of your own life. But it is impossible to answer it without realizing that life is finite. As soon as awareness comes, we understand that there is a time of life, a year and a day, which is a pity to waste aimlessly.

Ask yourself: What is worth the time of my life?

It's hard to answer right now. Start small: every day, when you do something, ask this question. If the answer is no, remove everything that is not worth it.

Goals of a forced nature, "sharp sticks", are justified. These are the first and second levels of Maslow's pyramid. We need to ensure the survival and protection of our own (children, company). But further goals are needed.

Mass culture forces us to set utilitarian goals:

new clothes are the goal of the season, new experiences are the goal of vacations, and holidays are the goal of half a year. We need new clothes and new experiences. We need a safer car. But all these are means to work towards the main goal.

You may think that I am talking about purpose. I don't believe in him. A person changes, and what was interesting a year ago will not be interesting in a year. You don't have to put your life on one thing. Moreover, you do not need to be a hermit and be in asceticism. You just need to understand the meanings: why do we do what we do every day, and is it worth the time of our lives?

Meanings are of three categories:

• I can’t put up with it → I can’t exist in the same world with this;
• I want to receive → I cannot exist without it;
• I just love the process → I can't exist without doing it.

They refer to the goals "object" and "intention". The meanings are unfounded. It is impossible to justify why you are interested in what is interesting, why you cannot put up with what turns everything upside down inside, and why you want what you want. I want interesting and all.

If there are such goals, it is higher meanings presently. Achieving such goals is a matter of individuality, the preservation of one's "I".

What is more important: the desire to make the world cleaner from garbage or new flat? It's a matter of boundaries and perceptions. We were brought up like this: first we take care of our neighbors, and then about ourselves. Nobody cares that everything inside you turns upside down when you see deposits in the forest plastic bottles. You never know what desires anyone has! There is a family that needs new house: it is not so light in the old one, and it became crowded when our parents moved in.

The lesson already makes sense if it is interesting to you. Sounds unbelievable, but it's a fact

Einstein spent 24/7 at work not because he dreamed of Nobel Prize. The scientist was occupied with riddles, which were interesting to solve.

With all this, it is normal to change priorities. Man is not a statue. The body is not an object, but a verb. We are constantly renewing ourselves, both at the cellular and spiritual and intellectual levels. What was interesting may cease to excite. What they could not come to terms with may seem unimportant. This is fine. Look for meaning for today, for the here and now.

Practice

Days, months, and maybe years may not have goals and meaning. And this has a special meaning. If now you cannot understand why this day was worth living for, this is not a pathology. Live it calmly, in the feeling of a flowing life. Watch yourself and the world, look for the boundaries that prevent you from deploying your intention. The following tasks will help in this search.

Square "want/should". This is an exercise in easily discovering your own boundaries. It releases oppressed intention.

Has it ever happened to you that you for a long time Do you try to achieve something, and when you achieve, you feel disappointed? Or does the joy of achieving a goal last for a very short time? These are the first signs that you spend too much effort in life on goals that are not really yours..

These goals are imposed on you. Society, parents, TV - other people. Watching the lives of some of my childhood friends, I see illustrative examples such imposed goals, and how they suck the energy out of a person. Instead of the opposite - energizing, because that's what your true goals do. Charge, inspire you!

For example, many young people, under pressure from parents and society, try to get married as soon as possible. This is a good thing, but if the desire for this is dictated not by the expectations of other people, but by yours own desires . And what happens, parents often "brainwash" on the topic that it would be time to start a family, children. And the person agrees and gets married. How long do you think this marriage will last? How much pleasure will he bring to both spouses?

Or another example, especially relevant for boys. Car. It is believed that by the age of 18 a guy must have his own car. That he needs it for success with girls, that it's cool and so on. Of course yes, but if the guy himself wants a car. In practice, it often turns out that a car is bought on credit, which is paid off for several years, and the guy does not fully understand why he bought this car for himself. I have seen such examples more than once.

I repeat there is nothing wrong with starting a family or buying a car. But in the event that these desires are yours, and not imposed by someone. If, in achieving these goals, you do what you yourself want and are filled with energy, and not trying to please someone.

Why distinguish your goals from imposed ones?

I think you already understand why you need to distinguish your goals from imposed ones. If a person spends a lot of effort on achieving goals that he sincerely does not want, then this will exhaust him. Achievement will not give energy, but on the contrary, it will suck it out, or give it for a very long time. And this is very bad in the long run, because the achievement new goal should charge us for new achievements!

Naturally, in pursuit of things imposed by TV and society, a person loses the most important thing in life - happiness. Therefore, before setting a goal for yourself, consider whether this is really your goal, or is it imposed on you by someone?

How specifically to distinguish your goals from those imposed?

To distinguish my goal from the imposed one, I use a simple technique. But for this you need to learn to listen to your inner voice, it will always tell you what we really need. It's kind of like intuition. You can think about some goal and ask yourself the question - “Do I really want this? It's me, not someone else?"

You can try to imagine what you have already achieved and observe your feelings. If you practice, over time it will help you assess the situation, and you will be able to distinguish false goals from true ones, yours.

But still the most important thing is to listen to yourself, your heart. As banal as it may seem and as simple as it may seem at first glance, it takes practice and courage to live the way you want, and not someone else for you.

If you have any questions - write to me, I will answer you. Or just share your experience in the comments.

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