100 days with no goals, inspired by Zen Habits

One of my very favorite places on the web is a lovely blog called Zen Habits.

If I could be anyone other than myself, I would want to be a female version of this guy; R and I both really enjoy his tips and I credit this blog for many of the positive changes I have experienced this year.

The last post was titled 100 Days with No Goals.

An intriguing title indeed since I am the type that makes goals, and then either flakes out on them, falls short or just plain beats myself up for making too many that I just cant keep up with. OR, I will just start over and over and over and over again, only to fail.. over and over and over and over again.

R and I both kind of giggled when the post popped up in my reader, I think R's very words were:

"That is so Buddhist" {btw, we love Buddhists.}


Well as Buddhist as it may be, I think the guy is right. Without goals, you are able to just make choices.

You choose to be happy.
You choose to live in the moment.
You choose to nurture your relationships.
You choose to exercise.
You choose to eat healthily.
You choose to tend to your craft.
....and you can also choose to ignore any and all of the above.

Becoming goalless leaves a lot more room for productivity since you aren't wasting so much time beating yourself up, planning, failing, etc; at least I think this will be true for me.


I spend waste so much time thinking about goals, planning how to accomplish them, trying to fit them into my schedule of other goals, that by the time I am done.. I have accomplished nothing, I am completely cross eyed, and the day has almost completely passed me by. THEN, 2 weeks later, when I have accomplished almost nothing.. I beat myself up, think I am a loser and all of that is followed by a week or two of depression, and then it starts all over again.

After reading this post, I realized that most of my stress and feelings of inadequacy are directly related to not accomplishing goals. The funny thing is, before reading this post I had been trying to think of ways to turn goals into habits so there would be less effort needed to accomplish said goals; in the end I just submitted to the fact that I am not a very goal oriented person, and my tragic flaw is lack of motivation and/or laziness; which makes me feel bad about myself..

Then, the other morning.. whilst checking my emails this post came in, and everything seemed to click.

I am a choices person. I like to make choices based off of what I want to do and where I want to go. Goals just seem so rigid and restricting; I've always had a hard time with them. I feel like goals really stifle my creative process, and they really distract me from being the kind of person I really want to be.. Footloose and fancy free. 

In fact, the time of my life where I was the most productive, was when I was 17-18 wanting to move to Chicago.. I didn't set goals to move to Chicago, I made choices that put me in the position to get there. I made an awesome portfolio which awarded me the Presidential Scholarship, I decided that any money I made from working on the weekends went towards plane tickets to visit Chicago and the rest of the money I made went towards bills, hanging out with friends and tattoos. While at the time I struggled with a lot of family problems, I was quite accomplished and incredibly productive; creatively, financially and socially.

As an adult, I have become more goal oriented, but less productive. All talk, little or no action. Goals turn me into a really rigid, unhappy (and hungry) recluse who only eats carrots and hard boiled eggs.

I've realized that goals leave too much room for one to dwell on the past; what they did or DIDN'T do yesterday that got them further away from accomplishing some goal that ultimately doesn't matter anyway because it doesn't in any way, shape or form contribute to ones happiness.

So... inspired by the Zen Habits post, R and I are both taking the plunge into a goalless life; moving forward we're making choices based off of habits we enjoy, lifestyles we dig, and places we love.

Choices that set us up for success and get us to the places we want to be. In the moment living at its finest.

Read Zen Habits, this blog is consistently awesome and it's one that R and I love to share with each other.

Namaste!
r