How Having Gratitude and Hope Is Different From Having Goals
Inside each of us is a desire to be more or different or better. This is a good thing, usually. While there are brief moments of a respite when we are exhausted or have achieved, our internal motor eventually nudges us to what’s next. We are driven by goals, their achievement, and our success in attaining them.
If we are lucky and achieve more goals than ones we don’t achieve, experience more wins than losses, we should be happy, fulfilled, and thankful. But this isn’t necessarily the case. Striving for more, different, and better makes us dependent on achievement and accomplishment to feel good.
The goals become ends unto themselves. We celebrate the moment of achievement and then sink into the rhythm and familiar grind of moving toward the next goal. And then the next and the next and the next. Having goals is good. Only having goals isn’t. Balance is what is missing. In striving to be happy, we miss the essence of being.
Let me say that one more time: in striving to be happy, we miss the essence of being.
Being okay with where you are
This is the delicious space of being okay where you are and leaning into what’s next. Most of us focus on the outcome to determine our satisfaction. If we get the job, the relationship, the money, the grade, the invitation, the opportunity, the agent, the body, the book deal, the diploma, etc., etc., etc., we’ll be okay because then we’ll be happy. Yet our very lives, high and low points, tell us a different story. Sometimes, the things we thought would make us happy, don’t. Or, if they do, it is short lived. In contrast, the things that happened as a side effect of us doing what makes us happy and what we were meant to do are the things we prize the most.
For example, on the way to a job interview for your dream job, you pass an ice cream truck that has your favorite kind of ice cream. Because you’re worried about running late for the job interview, you don’t stop. But after the interview, you treat yourself to the ice cream. While eating the ice cream and coming down off the anxiety of the interview, you start chatting up someone with a shared hobby of yours. Perhaps you don’t get the job, but you exchange numbers with that person and become lifelong friends. In this example, you didn’t achieve the ultimate goal of getting your dream job, but you enjoyed a beautiful moment with someone who later became your friend—and friendships are often much more fulfilling in our lives than jobs.
The problem with focusing only on goals
When achievement and goal setting become central to your way of being, the process of striving starts to look like depression. All the time you haven’t achieved the goal, it is as if you are deprived of something you want —but cannot have. Wanting and not having erodes our wellbeing. When we believe having something will be our salvation, disappointment is waiting for us on the other end of that. It sets us up to not be happy until we achieve it. Then, of course, the satisfaction of reaching it only lasts a short time, or it wasn’t what we expected. Or, even still, something bigger and better comes along that catches our attention.
Hope is about what we are doing to extend our happiness. Things are okay, and there is room for improvement. You might think, There are good things in life, and I want more of them. Hope is about what you can do to expand what is good already, not what you think is missing. It is a derivation model when you believe something is missing in your life. But when you have the seed of what you are looking for, you nurture and grow it.
If a certain amount of money were a goal, you can move toward it by believing you don’t have enough and won’t be happy until you do. This is a deprivation model. In this model, you’ll never have enough because the desire for more comes from what you think you do not have. But if you begin with the good feeling that comes from the times you had enough, the spirit of your intention is different. In this case, you are adding to the joy you’ve known. Instead of wanting what you do not have, you seek more of what has brought you joy in the past.
Big life goals are, however, different from setting micro goals. Micro goals can feel different to us in that they can ground us into mindfulness and gratitude for following through with our promises to ourselves.
The secret of cultivating hope
The secret of keeping on the path of hope is cultivating gratitude. Gratitude for what you have that is related to the goal you want to move toward. Thinking about what you already have to be grateful for stimulates the positive emotions necessary for the determination and creativity needed to attain more of what you want.
A daily review of three things you have gratitude for in the last 24 hours is a great way to water the seeds of hope. It will ensure that when you set your next goal, it will be about having more of what you want, not searching for something you don’t believe you have.
