Goals vs Values

The idea that you could unleash your untapped potential is what sells self help books. I was having a nose around Amazon where I was looking for my next compulsive buy when I stumbled across the self help section. The first one that caught my eye was “10 minute successful self help secrets”. Bloody hell! Now that is fast. Another one that needs a bit more patience and if you’re ready to really put in some work you could try out “The 4 hour body: an uncommon guide to rapid fat loss, incredible sex and becoming superhuman”. So between lunch and tea I could apparently go through a metamorphosis that would put Kafka to shame.

It’s no wonder that titles such as “instant confidence”, “The secret” who is by the same author as ”The Power” can ensnare us. We really want to believe that we have some source of untapped power and energy that can help us achieve all our goals. You can be a go getter, you can achieve your goals, you can get stuff. You’ve already got stuff? Well get more stuff and be happier. All this and more is possible in selfhelpland. 

The problem is it has been shown that we are very poor at knowing what it is that we really want and extremely poor at judging how much something will be of value to us. It would appear that life has the annoying habit of moving the goal posts. Just when we thought that this is the car that we always wanted, or the house that will make us happy, it turns out that when we get it, it turns out to be a bit disappointing and not at all how we imagined it would be sitting behind the wheel of our new GTi xr3 mrk 20 car.

This is because we are dealing with goals; we seem to systematically be wrong in our judgement about what will improve our life and finally make us happy. Self help books of course cash in on this by promising us untold riches if we use the power of our positive thoughts. There does appear to be support that small stretch goals can push somebody to achieve a little better for a short period. But somebody who is unlikely to achieve spectacular results could just end up feeling frustrated when faced with a gap between unrealistic goals they set themselves and their present situation. 

In general people will only achieve their goals 10 % of the times that they try and continued failing can leave you burned out and frizzled. Of course if you’ve got a big mountain of money and the means to achieve then things are a lot easier. United States and Europe are the two places in the world where social mobility is least likely, if you’re born poor you stay poor and if you’re born rich you stay rich. So it turns out that reaching for the stars is only helpful if the stars are already within your grasp.

What appear to be much more helpful are values. Instead of living to continually achieve goals that are superficial shallow and leave you with an empty feeling and a need for more, we can live a life that is value guided. If my goal is to buy a house, there usually a value behind it for example the value of wanting to be a good provider, or protect my family. I can do this from day 1. I can use my values to guide me anywhere, even in prison where a value may be to become a role model for my children, or decide to become a good husband. I teach prisoners about values and how they are more about attitude than about achieving. Values are qualitatively different from goals in that a goal is achievable and once we have it we are looking for the next. A value on the other hand is a lifetime work and during the journey we may complete many goals, but that really is irrelevant, what is really important is to lead a life that is coherent with what we value as important.