The Reason Why Goals Set for More Money, Fame, and Beauty are Bad
Having money, fame and beauty is obviously not a bad thing. However, focusing too much on goals to attain more money, fame, or beauty is bad. In fact, research suggest that these types of goals lead to poor mental health, unhappiness, and depression.
Psychology professor Dr. Edward Deci, one of the world’s leading researchers on goals and motivation, states the following in his classic book Why We Do What We Do:
The researchers found that if any of the three extrinsic aspirations–for money, fame, or beauty–was very high for an individual relative to the three intrinsic aspirations, the individual was also more likely to display poorer mental health. For example, having an unusually strong aspiration for material success was associated with narcissism, anxiety, depression, and poorer social functioning as rated by a trained clinical psychologist…
…Part of the difficulty posed by extrinsic aspirations such as wealth and fame is that people fear they will never be able to achieve them, and some psychologist have suggested that these negative expectancies are what cause ill-being.
Deci goes on to also state that goals for money, fame, and beauty focuses one emotional satisfaction on having rather than being. Since having is only satisfying at the moment of acquisition, the emotion is fleeting and temporary. Furthermore, only being able to attain a temporary feeling of satisfaction causes extrinsic goals to be insatiable. You can never really have enough money, fame or beauty because there is always more to have. In short, this is why goals like this are bad.