The Future, on Purpose

Many people believe that goals are a good thing. Actually, they are an absolute essential for a fulfilling life. You see, goals sit at the very essence of who we are. Without them, we wander from moment to moment, seemingly without purpose. We enjoy the moments, when they cross our paths more by accident than anything else. With goals, we take the “by accident” out of life, and multiply our chances of truly living.

Humans are teleological beings. In other words, we think in terms of purpose and end-results, and we are naturally goal-oriented. A teleological nature means that it is absolutely critical for us to have goals. For us to change and grow, we need something tugging at us from the future, something to, quite literally, look forward to.

When you give up on your goals or when you have no goals at all, your whole system slows down and eventually shuts down. You become depressed and sluggish, and you may very well become seriously ill. Remember, your mind runs your body, not the other way around.

Prisoners of war have been known to simply curl up and die when their hopes for the future died. Who knows how many suicides or terminal illnesses have been directly or indirectly influenced by lack of goals? Thus, having goals seems to be absolutely essential to our existence.

Keep in mind, too, that we move toward and become like what we think about. So, if you don’t deliberately think about how you want your life to be, you’ll just repeat the past or the present over and over again, with minor variations. You’ll end up, at best, in a rut. Now, it may be a comfortable rut, but it’s still a rut.

We want to move beyond today, and we want to do that on purpose – not by accident. Once you have a clear picture of where you want to go, your end-result, goal-seeking nature will take over and help guide you to realizing your goal.