Aimless life and lack of purpose. The best goal is no goal

Psychologists and business coaches unanimously insist that it is necessary to set and achieve goals in life. Not everyone can do this. Moreover, some do not understand why all this is needed. So, if you tried in vain to achieve something, you made a mistake - you did not bring the task of moving towards the goal to the fore. Let's figure out why you need to have a goal in life. We will tell you what this will give you and the dangers of aimless existence.

Purpose is part of the meaning of life

Every person searches for the meaning of life and his place in this world. The lack of purpose creates the impression of futility of existence on this planet. And it is extremely important for a person to realize his own importance. Otherwise he will be unhappy. If a person has clear goals, then he has somewhere to move, and he clearly understands the meaning of life. Plan everything thoroughly and you will feel that you are not living in vain.

Having a goal imbues every detail in life with deep meaning. The beauty is that a person perceives as satisfaction not only the fact of getting what he wants, but also experiences tremendous pleasure in the process. Therefore, he is happy in his work on himself and movement towards achievements. Serious goal setting is something that everyone must go through, since this factor gives many gifts of fate and causes a sea of ​​​​vivid emotions.

Purpose helps you control what is happening

Our life is like a huge stormy river. And a person’s mission can be compared to transportation from one shore to another. A man without a goal goes into the unknown and floats chaotically on the waves, waiting to see where fate will take him. He believes that he is at the mercy of external factors, and he himself prefers to remain inactive.

A purposeful person confidently travels from one shore to another. Despite the storm, a person will strive to cross the river - try and show strength, swim against the current, think through his path and possible risks, row hard with oars and hands.

Determination is a way of self-expression

A person who cannot find and express himself in life suffers greatly from this, as he feels inferior. In fact, everyone has hidden talents, they just need to be awakened and worked hard in the right direction. Then you can become successful in any field. A person who chooses to exist without a goal, prefers to deal with everyday problems and does not dare to take extraordinary actions, therefore may never learn about his enormous potential.

As soon as a goal appears, a person can break out of the gray, monotonous everyday life, he leaves his comfort zone and works tirelessly to get what he wants. If you want to get something you never had, you will have to perform unusual actions, master new knowledge and skills, and be prepared for significant changes and development. This will allow you to open up and explore yourself better.

A goal-oriented person is effective

Train yourself to clearly set and definitely achieve goals - from small to large. This way you will be as productive as possible. Once you understand what you really want, a plan of action will gradually be created in your mind. Try to divide complex tasks into several small parts to make it easier to move towards the finish line.

It is important to set not only long-term, but also short-term goals. Think about what you can do immediately to be successful. When you start moving according to step-by-step instructions, life's difficulties will be invisible. The habit of going towards a goal increases a person’s effectiveness in various areas of life.

Having a goal boosts self-confidence

Many people deprive themselves of life's benefits due to self-doubt and lack of self-confidence. They become insecure for various reasons, but their mood can be improved. If you learn to quickly realize, formulate and achieve goals, you will absolutely gain many positive qualities.

A very useful habit is to write down all your achievements in a diary, draw up graphs and fill out tables. Looking at this data, you will not doubt yourself and will feel important and strong. Recording your plans and victories allows you to analyze your actions and, if necessary, rebuild your strategy.

It's great if you use coaching. The support of a specialist motivates, helps to believe in yourself and significantly increase self-esteem. A self-confident person knows what he wants and will never quit the job he started in the middle of the road. Your merits will definitely be noted by others, and this is a strong reason for self-confidence and healthy self-esteem.

Purpose gives inspiration

If you give up and don’t want anything, don’t give in to apathy and depression. You need to find something that inspires you and fills you with vitality. Purpose will help you live and work calmly. When a person moves towards the coveted final reward, he already enjoys the process, he is constantly in an elevated creative mood, and it is pleasant to communicate with him.

Purposeful people are happy with life

Without goal setting, it is difficult to be satisfied with your life. Work on yourself and see that you can achieve anything in life, you have enough strength. When a person moves towards a goal, he does not notice the negativity and is completely satisfied with his own life.

The fact that purpose in life helps you feel pleasure from your existence is not just words, but the result of research. For example, look at athletic and fit people - their lives are good.

When a person knows what he wants, the impossible is possible for him. Start setting goals and you will be able to believe in your unlimited possibilities. It is very important to make a plan correctly, act clearly and not lose faith in a brilliant result.

What does a lack of purpose in life lead to?

(direction “Goals and means”)

Life is suffocating without purpose.

F. M. Dostoevsky

Life is movement along the endless road of existence in pursuit of a specific goal. Someone sets this goal clearly and achieves it, getting confused, making mistakes, suffering or rejoicing, reaching the pinnacle of truth. And someone lives life carelessly, aimlessly, without thinking about its meaning. However, both of them sooner or later ask the question “Why did I live? And for what purpose was he born?”, like Lermontov’s Pechorin. That’s when you come to understand those actions and actions that you did or didn’t do on your life’s path.

The lack of a goal in life in all religions is considered one of the mortal sins, because it leads a person to moral and physical death: either a person wastes his life (“Eugene Onegin”), or rushes to his favorite sofa to hide from the storms of life (“Oblomov” ).

In fiction, the search for the meaning of life by heroes or the lack of such actions is one of the main themes. No less interesting for writers are studies of the human soul in the absence of a goal in life: what are the consequences of such an existence of the individual, that is, what does it all lead to?

Here, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin is a vivid example of such a purposeless existence of a personality. And why set goals for a person who practically “has everything”: it was not the poor father who “gave two balls every year” who hired tutors for the education and upbringing of his son. And his uncle died “on time”, leaving Evgeniy a considerable inheritance. A young, educated, “very nice” man, according to the opinion of the high society. He sleeps almost until lunchtime, “walks on the boulevard.” He visits fashionable restaurants and goes to the theater just to attract attention - this is, perhaps, the range of the main “activities” of the hero. A.S. Pushkin shows what this aimless existence of the hero leads to: apathy (spleen), loss of friendship (and even unjustified murder of a friend in a duel), loss of true love (Tatyana Larina), absence of family. And even a trip abroad does not save Onegin from mental suffering.

No less interesting in terms of research is another literary hero - Ilya Oblomov from the novel by I.A. Goncharova. His existence, as he himself explains to his friend Andrei Stolts, began “with extinction”: well, it was not customary in the Oblomov family to work, much less set goals. Ilyusha was formed in this “Oblomovism”, like a chick in an egg. Even love couldn’t get him off the couch (Olga Ilyinskaya succeeded briefly). Neither family later nor

a born son - nothing revived Oblomov to life, did not become the purpose of existence. The writer, exploring the hero’s state of mind, shows the reasons for this, and most importantly the result - death is not only mental, but also physical.

A person who does not set goals in life is like an uncontrollable boat sailing to nowhere. And there is a risk of being thrown ashore or running aground. Only conscious existence with clear goals, according to psychologist Nikolai Kozlov (book “Correct Clear Life”), makes us get up from the couch, give up useless things and run to fulfill our plans and dreams. Otherwise - spiritual and physical death.

457 words

Reasons for failure: lack of purpose Incredible, but true: many people do not know that the concept of “goal” exists, nor do they understand how important its role is in the process of achieving what they want. Planning is a necessary thing both in everyday life and in the workplace. You know, there are only two ways to make purchases: either go to the store with a list of what you need in your hands in order to buy exactly what you need, or go at random, and then, rest assured, under the influence of persuasion rushing from all sides, you will buy a lot of unnecessary rubbish, having spent even what served as an emergency reserve. It’s the same with vacation: when planning a route, we try to create a schedule in such a way that we don’t experience boredom even for a short time. So, goals are our plans that we want and try to implement. And this is not an ordinary desire, this is a dream come true. Lack of purpose similar to football without necessarily rolling the ball into the goal.

Individuals refuse to have goals due to fears that they may not be able to achieve them, or that others will misunderstand such a goal, or that someone will mock both the idea and the performer. Fear takes deep roots, and to overcome it, you need to learn to remain silent about your goals. By the way, silence is a very good way to remain extremely honest with yourself. Often people set goals for themselves not to improve themselves, but solely out of a desire to impress others. If you translate the intention into phrases, it sounds something like this: “Look at me! It doesn’t matter what I really am, the main thing is that this is how others see me,” or “Look, this is exactly how I present myself” - in a word, people adapt not the image to themselves, but themselves to the image. But goals should correspond to the final results that you strive to obtain, and not be a list of points for yourself, the main goal of which is to impress others.

There are people who have no goals due to an acute lack of time. In fact, they simply do not have time to put them in front of them at least as a first approximation, because they are too busy making money. And, of course, there is no time to really make money! There are people who are simply afraid that they will fail, constantly lamenting “I can’t, I can’t!” And behind these plaintive laments, they completely forget that failures are a necessary life experience and a very important milestone on the path to successful activity.

Every person should have a goal in life. By nature, people need to strive for something that will lead them to what they believe is a better future. But what happens when a person does not have a specific goal in life? This is very dangerous for his soul, his inner world, because without aspirations, human development stops and degradation begins. Let's look at examples from fiction to prove this.

When thinking about a person who has a goal in life, we often recall the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment". But the work shows not only purposeful characters, but also heroes who exist aimlessly. The brightest of them is the father of the Marmeladov family. He is a rather kind person, not stupid, but his way of life is a consequence of the fact that he has no goal. He drinks in cheap taverns, drinks away the last of what his family has. But he once served and earned good money.

He was given a second chance, the opportunity to start his career again... But all his wife’s efforts went nowhere. He quit his job, drank away his suit and died drunk, crushed by horses on the road. This is the end to which Marmeladov’s aimless existence led. A person without a goal “decays” spiritually and turns the life of his loved ones into a disaster. Of course, all this does not happen immediately, but gradually, but the result is the same.

Where does lack of purpose lead? To the bottom of life. In such places and conditions from which it is almost impossible to get out. This is exactly what Maxim Gorky shows in the drama “At the Lower Depths”. Vaska Pepel has been at the bottom of his life since birth, because he was born into the family of a thief. He thinks that because of the pressure of his surroundings, he had no choice in what to become, but in fact, if he had a goal, he could have avoided the fate of a thief. After consoling Luka, he begins to think about it. to go to Siberia with his beloved woman, but this is not destined to come true. Dreams and goals are completely different concepts. If he really wanted this, he would have left. But in the end, following Vasilisa’s lead, he kills Kostylev in a fight. His aimless existence leads to the commission of an even more serious crime, for which he will be punished.

Everything in nature develops one way or another. And if this is not a movement forward, then it is a gradual simplification. The same thing happens with the human soul. Without a goal, or at least a search for it, a person’s spiritual development is reversed. This is why aimless existence is so dangerous. It destroys and destroys not only the person himself, but often his loved ones who depend on him.

Effective preparation for the Unified State Exam (all subjects) -

Good afternoon. I am asking you with such a strange question. What should I do if I can’t find new important goals for myself in life? At one time, I read a lot of popular science literature on psychology and self-development. This experience has helped me a lot in my life - now I work in a fairly large company as the head of a department. I'm 27, and everyone says that for my age this is a very good start. But the problem is that after getting this job and moving up the career ladder, all my goals and dreams came true!! And now I am in a rather apathetic and ambivalent state. On the one hand, I have an excellent income, which is especially valuable during this difficult time for many people. On the other hand, the way I live now no longer makes me happy, I’m just used to it. All my friends, when I talk to them about this, look at me with bewilderment: they say, what else do you want?! But for me this is a real problem. Igor.

Hello, Igor! I have the impression that you consider this problem of yours to be unique! Characteristic only for you. You write yourself: " I am writing to you with such a strange question."Perhaps this problem seems unusual to your friends and acquaintances. I come across it all the time, including at the trainings I conduct. Just like the authors of the literature you read, I believe that in any endeavor It is important to decide on the desired result, what you want to get.

A well-set and written goal immediately structures our psyche and sets us up to achieve the desired result. It often happens that goals end. Everything seems to have been achieved. The peaks have been conquered. And the state that you describe in yourself occurs. Apathy, not happy, I’m used to it.

Just now I was thinking about how to answer you, and this spontaneous thought came to mind. Tell me, Igor, what do you live for? What are you working for? What are you working for? I ask this question because in your letter you listed only material values ​​as goals - career advancement, income, friends' ratings. All these parameters are certainly important. And many people in our country miss all this so much. Right now! But if you put only this at the forefront, then apathy is inevitable. Because one way or another, if you don’t eat a lot of sugar, you will become satiated. You won't be looking at your new car for more than a month - you'll get tired of it. And so on...

But in fact, the lack of goals in life is a hidden reluctance to live! Dejection, which in religious views is considered one of the worst sins. You write: "... the way I live now no longer makes me happy..." Think about it. Not HOW to live? But FOR WHAT? ?

I think the following technique for working with yourself will help you. In August 2008, at one of the weight loss groups in Minsk, she went with a bang! We talked to a group of people who had already been losing weight for some time. Everyone was successful. But it’s different for everyone - more, less lost in kilograms. I talked about the importance of continuing to set new goals to continue losing weight. For what? continue to lose weight? And it turned out that for many participants, the weight slowed down as the goals ended and calmness and contentment with the current situation set in. But with new goals there is tension.

And so we did the following. I suggest you do the same:

Take a moment to step away from everything. Be in solitude. Allow yourself to dream. Imagine as if it happened that all its important components are consistently disappearing from your life. One by one all the parts of life. I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe work, family, vacation.. Imagine it in as much detail and detail as possible. How you consistently, one after another, lose important aspects of life. It may not be easy, but go for it!