Be aware that many goals are figments of your imagination.
Let’s say your goal is to own your own private jet. Nevermind the idea of whether this a good goal or whether it will “truly fulfill you” – simply look at the goals reality and purpose.
The goal of owning your own jet has the reality that you can travel places fast and more easily than a public airport. Would you have the same goal if there was a teleportation device? Maybe not. Perhaps then the goal is traveling fast without being around the general public. Also, maybe you want a plane because then you know you’ve “made it big.” But what if you could afford to rent the plane instead? Your reality of “traveling fast and privately” isn’t different at all when you own vs rent a plane.
The reality of having $1,000,000 in the bank vs $100,000 is no different at a given moment besides reading different numbers on a screen.
The reality of having enough money to go on an African safari does change your reality.
The reality of driving a nice car is definitely different than driving a crappy uncomfortable car. But owning it vs leasing it is a mental construct, granted, you may realize you have more cash in the long run with owning vs leasing, but at least you know that your goal of ownership is fake, and the goal of “nice car” is real.
The reality of owning 100 acres, if you have no plans on using it and simply just want it to be “yours”, vs owning 1 acre is absolutely no different in reality. Your mind can only “possess” so much in reality.
If proving the fact that you’ve achieved a goal isn’t related to the actual goal at all, then you’re chasing vapor. If you wanted to own and drive a Ferrari, and you drive around town in it, that’s easily proven that you drive the car and you’re in it. If you prove the part about you owning the car isn’t related to the car, which it’s not, because you prove that by showing paper with ink splatted on it in patterns we call letters – this has nothing to do with your experience of the car, and you’re chasing vapor.
A goal might not seem like a concrete ‘real’ goal at this moment in time, but some of those ‘fake’ goals turn into reality later on. A $5M bank account and a $5K bank account may not change your current moment besides looking at pixels on a monitor telling you your balance, but it may turn into something very real when in a month the $5k bank account forces you to trudge into a job you hate, vs the $5M account still doing whatever they wanted.
Seeing goals as physical things (a car) or experiences (going on a trip) is probably better than goals like “making it”, or owning more than you can comprehend like earning a billion dollars. Therefore, you have internal and external goals. An internal goal of, “I’m a respectable person.” is valuable, but internal goals must be addressed as internal. Sometimes those internal goals can be fixed with some affirmations, therapy, etc. People often try to fix internal goals (eg “I want my parents to be proud.”) by achieving external goals (“Therefore my goal is to buy a yacht.”).
If you’re doing this, you’re on a path worth pondering before you move forward.
Therefore, it’s good to ask:
1) Is my goal internal or external, and if it seems external, consider if it’s actually internal, but you’re trying to solve an internal goal with an external goal?
2) If my goal is external (eg. own a plane), what’s the deeper point of it (private fast travel)?
2a) Are there parts of that external goal that are imaginary (eg. owning the plane, vs renting it)?
3) Should I still be focusing on the goal in it’s current form?
Opening your mind to see concrete reality of goals allows it to see creative solutions (eg. “What if I find a way to lease a car for ultra cheap vs only thinking about ways to save up and buy the car outright?”).
If you don’t separate your real vs imaginary goals, you’ll find yourself chasing smoke trails of imaginary goals far too much.
