Goal Mountains

"We are built to conquer the environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve. People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no worthwhile goals."
- Dr. Maxwell Maltz, The New Psycho-Cybernetics

This passage spoke to me this morning as I got out bed, mulling over the sort of sad mess that was yesterday and the pile of things that are on the plate today. This made total sense to me - but at the same time, I realized that I was missing these sorts of goals.

Dr. Maltz talked about a patient who had received a promotion and suddenly lost his confidence:

"However, once he got the promotion, he ceased to think in terms of what he wanted, but in terms of what others expected of him, or whether he was living up to to the people's goals and standards. He was like a mountain climber who, as long as he looked upward at the peak he wished to scale, felt and acted courageously and boldly. But when he got to the top, he began to look down and became afraid. He was now on the defensive, defending his present position, rather than acting like a goal striver and going on the offensive to attain his goal. He regained control when he set himself new goals and began to think in terms of, 'What do I want out of this job? What do I want to achieve? Where do I want to go?'"

Maltz's solution?:

"Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Decide what you want out of a situation. Always have something ahead of you to look forward to - to work for and hope for. Look forward, not backward. Develop a 'nostalgia for the future' instead of for the past."

Among many of the things listed above (they're good quotes - go re-read them) is the phrase "always have something ahead of you to look forward to." That resonates with me because right now, I really don't have that in a temporal sense (for salvation possibly - but even looking forward to Heaven holds some of the same difficulties for me). Every day to me seems like it will be like every other. There is nothing to look forward to to suggest that tomorrow will be any different.

But that's my fault, Maltz suggests. Nothing is going to magically appear to suddenly give me something to look forward to - that's job. Yes, it may be hard to see right now, but just because it is hard to see does not make it any the less important - if it is hard to see, then I need to do everything I can to make it real.

But that pre-supposes a first thing: one needs to have a goal or goals.