The Sad Truth About Happiness for Goal-Oriented People
Goal orientation is a mindset. Moreover, you can either be tasks oriented or ego oriented. Research shows that it’s better to orient your mindset around tasks than your ego. The main reason why is that you can control your execution of a task, but you can’t control outcomes that build your ego. So, having a task focus is really the only healthy way to be a goal-oriented person. However, even those who orient their goal mindset around tasks have a problem with happiness.
When it comes to happiness, both tasks and ego goal-oriented people aren’t happy until the job is done. In other words, goal-oriented people defer their happiness to the future, a future they have minimal control over. Therefore, on a day to day / moment to moment basis, goal-oriented people tend to not be very happy people.
The reason for this is pressure. Pressure to win, pressure to get to the next level, and pressure to make progress.
This is one of my personal struggles. Goal orientation is a trait of many athletes and former athletes like me. So, almost everything I do centers around achieving a goal.
How Goal-Oriented People Find Happiness
In my experience, one of the best ways to deal with this issue is to use what psychologist David Niven found in his research on the topic. Niven’s research shows that “life satisfaction is 22 percent more likely for those with a steady stream of minor accomplishments than those who express interest only in major accomplishments.”
Goal-oriented people achieve so many goals that they only focus on celebrating the major accomplishments and basically ignore achieving all their minor accomplishments. This is the reason why they don’t feel happy even though they have many reasons to celebrate.
The fact is the moment of accomplishment is temporary for goal-oriented people. It only lasts for a few minutes at best. So, if a goal-oriented person only focuses on celebrating the major accomplishments, their entire life will boil down to only a few big moments that matter. This is not going to help you live a happy life.
Therefore, if you are a goal-oriented person, the key for improving happiness is to celebrate all your many small victories. Don’t take what you achieve on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis for granted. Stop and taste the spoils of victory by viewing your minor accomplishments as winning with preparation, practice and persevering towards pursuing major accomplishments. It’s in these tiny moments of victory where you will find your happiness and thus be a happier person overall.