Which Goals You Can Achieve—and Which You Can’t
When the author Terry Pearce tried to call his friend Gary, he heard the following message: “Hi, this is Gary, and this is not an answering machine, it is a questioning machine! The two questions are, ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you want?’” There was a pause, then the voice continued, “And if you think those are trivial questions, consider that 95 percent of the population goes through life and never answers either one!”
How would you answer the question “Who are you?” Most people give their name and say what they do for a living, sometimes followed up with a brief snippet of information about their family (“I’m the mother of two children”) or a personality trait (“I like people”). But what use is a response like that? None. You can’t hold it against them, though, because there is no single-sentence answer to a question about your own identity. Nor a single-paragraph one, for that matter. Nor ten pages. Regardless of who you are, you’d need a novel of Proustian depth to do justice to your life and being.
Because our lives consist of infinitely many facets, any one-line answer is by definition inaccurate. Yet we’re constantly reducing ourselves to that—not only when we call Gary but, interestingly, with ourselves, as part of our own self-conception. We construct an image of ourselves that’s like a comic-book drawing: absurdly oversimplified, completely without contradiction—and entirely too positive. As we’ll see in Chapter 22, we fabricate all the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, but here’s a sneak preview: you’re better off not answering the question of who you are. You’ll only be wasting your time.
On to the second question: What do you want? Unlike the first, this question is eminently answerable. Indeed, it’s crucial you should reply. It’s asking about your purpose in life, sometimes also referred to as the “meaning of life.” Now, the word “meaning” is somewhat confusing, so I recommend distinguishing more precisely between the “larger meaning of life” and the “smaller meaning of life.”
If you’re trying to find the larger meaning of life, you’re looking for answers to questions like: Why are we on this Earth? Why does the universe exist? And what does it all mean? So far every culture has responded with its own mythology. Particularly lovely is the notion that the Earth is the shell of an enormous tortoise—a myth that can be found in both China and South America. Or the Christian mythos: God created everything in six days, and on the Day of Judgment He will wipe the slate clean. Unlike the writers of mythology, science has found no answer to the “larger meaning of life” question. All it knows about life is that it will continue to develop aimlessly as long as there’s sufficient material and energy available. There is no discernable overarching purpose—not for humanity, life or the universe. The world is fundamentally meaningless. So stop looking for the “larger meaning of life.” You’re only wasting your time.
The question of the “smaller meaning of life,” however, is crucial. It’s about your personal goals, your ambitions, your mission—it’s about the second question on Gary’s answering machine. There can be no good life without personal goals. Seneca figured that out two thousand years ago: “Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in mind.” There’s no guarantee of achieving your end, but if you don’t have one, you’re guaranteed to achieve nothing.
Life goals are massively important. An example: researchers in the USA surveyed seventeen- and eighteen-year-old students about the importance of financial success, asking them to rate it on a scale where 1 meant unimportant, 2 somewhat important, 3 very important and 4 indispensable. Many years later they surveyed the same people about their actual income, and about how happy they were with their lives in general. The first result: the greater people’s financial ambitions in their younger years, the more they earned by middle age. Turns out goals work! That only came as a surprise to the psychologists, who had believed for a very long time that people merely reacted to external stimuli, like Pavlov’s dogs.
The second result: all the students who had set their sights on a high-income job after finishing their education—and who had achieved that goal—tended to be deeply satisfied with their lives. By contrast, those for whom money was important but who had failed to achieve their financial goals were deeply unsatisfied. Sure, you may be thinking. Money makes you happy. But that’s not it, because a higher income had no effect on the satisfaction of people for whom wealth was not a life goal. It’s not money that makes you happy or unhappy, it’s whether or not you realize your ambitions. The equivalent holds true for other life goals, too.
Why do goals work? Because goal-orientated people put more effort into accomplishing them. And because goals make decisions easier. Life consists of endless forks in the road. You could make each choice on a whim—or refer to your goals. No wonder students who described financial success as “indispensable” in the study chose well-paying jobs (doctor, lawyer, consultant).
Life goals, then, are recommended. Yet there are two potential problems. “One recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain,” as Daniel Kahneman has observed. In other words, you need to make sure your goals are realistic. If you’re short and squat and dreaming of becoming a basketball star, you’ve stymied yourself right off the bat. Ditto if you want to be the first person on Mars. Or the president. Or a billionaire. You can’t really aim for goals like that, because 99 percent of the various things that have to fall into place are beyond your control. Unrealistic goals are killjoys. My recommendation? Leave your goals deliberately a little vague (“well-off” instead of “billionaire,” for instance). If you achieve them, wonderful. If you don’t, you can still interpret your situation as though you had (at least in part). It doesn’t even have to be a conscious process. Your brain will do it for you automatically.
The upshot? Goals work. Goals are important. Yet most people don’t think clearly enough about the “smaller meaning of life.” Either they have no goals or they merely accept the ones currently in fashion. Sometimes, however, the path to a good life means adjusting the bar and setting achievable goals. What matters is to know where you’re going, not to get to any old place quickly.