Can you be successful and miserable?
I’ve studied quite a bit of psychology.
Not academic psychology, but how folks think, change and function in the real world.
One of my many areas of study?
What my mentor called dirty goals – something we’ve all experienced. A dirty goal is when you tell yourself you want something and you go after it hard. There’s no lying to yourself, though. Maybe you study to be a doctor to please your parents, maybe you travel because that’s how you’re “supposed to” enjoy yourself.
But if you don’t actually want that, you’ll resist it. And your resistance will pop up in strange ways.
Your motivation might oscillate like a hyperactive child’s yo-yo.
You might find yourself being really unskilled at simple tasks. Key definitions slip your mind, your hand twitches at the wrong moment, almost as if you’re sabotaging yourself.
You could even develop health issues. I’m not a doctor so I can’t talk to that, but I’ve heard stories of that happening.
But if you avoid (or ignore) all the resistance that pops up on your way to success, then dirty goals tend to lead to one place:
Misery.
You might bust your arse for a decade to reach the summit… only to find it bleak, disappointing and unsatisfying. If you’re a doctor and find you hate your job, you can’t just quit. You probably have loans to pay off and, besides, that’d be embarrassing.
So how do you avoid this?
Ask your typical midwit life coach that question and you’ll get the same answer:
“Don’t listen to what other people tell you to do. Focus on what YOU want!”
It’s terrible advice.
Doing something because others want that for you doesn’t automatically make it a dirty goal. Your parents might want you to be a doctor because they know you’d thrive in that career. It’s common, though, to follow a dirty goal while trying to please others.
But doing what you want is no guarantee of happiness.
You might have a passion for drawing. So you turn that into your career! Etsy! Patreon! You make money doing what you want!
… only to find that doing it for work has killed your passion for drawing.
You’ve made mistakes before, even with the big stuff. Who’s to say you won’t make those same mistakes again?
It’s almost as if sometimes listening to others is a bad idea and sometimes doing your own thing is a bad idea.
Life’s complex and nuanced. There’s no decent advice that fits on a bumper sticker.
So… how does this help you?
If you can’t rely on yourself or others, who do you rely on?
One answer is to rely on God. Pray on the answer – that’s never the wrong choice.
If you still need some extra clarity or guidance, though?
Well, remember how I said you can’t lie to yourself – that your unconscious knows the score and will resist if you go against what you really want?
That doesn’t have to be a one-way conversation.
When you stop lying to yourself, you can then start to listen to your unconscious.
It’s not perfect but – between your unconscious mind and God – you’ll get the best answers to the big questions you can hope for.
That’s something I often do with my clients. When studying dirty goals, I soon learned how to keep folks from falling into them.
If you’d like extra clarity on your biggest questions, book yourself in for some coaching: