This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 397, an excerpt from the audiobook essential, essays by The Minimalist by Joshua Fields-Milburn and Ryan Agademis, and I'm your host, narrator and friend, Justin Molick. Thank you for being here another day of optimizing our lives. This is where I read you from the best blogs I can find, mostly covering personal development and minimalism, and some of the authors I got permission from, including Leo Babouta, Zen Habits, Mark and Angel, and The Minimalists, who I'm reading from today. I'm not really reading from them, I'm playing more from their audiobook.
I'm so close to finishing another of their audiobooks, and this is helping my productivity. So with that, here's a little more from their audiobook as we optimize your life. An excerpt from the audiobook essential, essays by The Minimalists by Joshua Fields-Milburn and Ryan Agademis. Direction by Joshua Fields-Milburn.
People have all sorts of clever words to describe what they want to do. Objective, target, plan, endgame, outcome, goal. If you know me, then you know I was the goal guy when I was in the corporate world. I had financial goals, health goals, sales goals, vacation goals, even consumer purchase goals, such as you're not.
I had spreadsheets of goals, precisely tracking and measuring and readjusting my plans accordingly. These days, life is different, and I no longer have goals. Instead of an arbitrary target, I prefer to have a direction in which I travel. If you're searching for a sunrise, it's important to be headed east, for Sunset West.
I do, however, believe there was a time in my life when goals were direly important. When I was in a hole, I needed to get out. Truth be told, most of my goals were ridiculous or irrelevant purchasing and accumulation goals, but a few of my goals helped immensely, getting out of debt and losing 70-80 pounds. I liken these louder goals to escaping a crater in the middle of the desert.
When I was fat and up to my eyeballs and debt, lingering that bowl shaped cavity beneath the ground, my goal was to break free from the sun's storage basin and find the Earth's surface. I couldn't even fathom a direction from down there. I simply needed to get out of the hole, and my goals helped me do that. By the way, I don't want to give too much credit to the goals, since it was actually my consistent actions over time that got me out of those fat and decorators and other goals themselves.
Once I found the surface, though, I no longer needed goals. I simply needed to look around and pick a direction in which to travel. It was Lao-Sou who once said, quote, "'A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intended on arriving,' unquote. For me, there were mountains to the west, flat plains to the east, sand dunes to the south, and whispering pine forests to the north, all blanketed by the complete sum of endless blue heavens above.
If I wanted to be on the mountain, I'd travel west. If I wanted to get lost in the forest, I'd head north, and so on. The nice thing about choosing a direction is you never know what you're going to get. You might head west and search for the mountains on the horizon, but along the way find a beautiful river instead.
You might traverse the sand dunes, only to find a village a few miles from the crater. You never know what's around the bend. Once I got out of my craters, I didn't need goals to enjoy my life. My daily habits helped me do that.
I discover sometimes it's okay to wander in the direction of your choice. If you get lost, so what? Would that be so bad? Once you're out of the crater, you simply need to stay out of other craters.
You can always change your direction if you're unhappy." Moving Beyond Goals by Joshua Fields-Milburn. You can't manage what you don't measure. This was the corporate mantra by which I lived for a long time, and it's total bullshit. We used to measure everything in my old job.
There were 29 metrics for which we were responsible every single day, even on weekends. There was morning reporting, 3PM updates, 6PM updates, and end-of-day reporting. I was consumed by numbers. After a while, I even started dreaming in spreadsheet format.
Then I realized something. It didn't really matter. The goals were never as powerful as someone's internal motivations. People work hard for two reasons.
They are externally inspired, or they are internally motivated. Sometimes it's a combination of both. Some people can be momentarily inspired by goal attainment, but that kind of inspiration is impermanent, and it doesn't last beyond the goal itself. Conversely, intrinsic motivation, such as the desire to grow or contribute, carries on long after the goal is met.
It often carries on in perpetuity. External inspiration can be the trigger, but internal motivation is what fuels someone's desire. When you discover your true motivation, you don't need an arbitrary goal. Goals are for the unmotivated.
This is one of the reasons I got rid of mine, so I can focus on what's important, so I can focus on living a life centered around health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution. I don't need goals to focus on these aspects of my life, because I'm already motivated by these values. Having goals for these things would be irrelevant. I simply need to live my life in accordance with these principles.
The discomfort zone. You know that dream when you're buck naked at school? Terrifying, isn't it? Everything is unsheltered, out in the open, nude.
A nakedness, where thankful to wake from, and ease back into our world of comfort and safety. We often feel an underlying trepidation whenever we do something new, something that makes us feel exposed. Joshua notices this trepidation with his writing students whenever he asks them to do activities that are outside their comfort zone. When he asks them to tell a stranger about their passion for writing, when he asks them to write an essay or story that other classmates might read.
Likewise, when Ryan asks the people he mentors to publicly proclaim their goals or to find an accountability partner, these proteges often wins with foreboding, at first at least. We refer to this uneasy consternation as stepping into your discomfort zone. We want these people, people we truly care about, to feel temporarily naked. When you're naked, you're most vulnerable, and when you're vulnerable, that's when radical growth happens.
Next time you feel naked, next time you feel defenseless, no, you're simply operating from your discomfort zone. A place from which you'll experience growth as long as you're willing to sit with your vulnerability long enough to grow. You just listen to an excerpt from the audiobook, Essential, essays by The Minimalist by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. And I believe that's from the chapter on priorities, and almost all of their essays from this audiobook are also posted on their site in blog form, so you can check it out at theminimalist.com.
I've almost played this entire book on the podcast already. I don't know what I'm going to do in the future when I want to take a short break from reading live. I guess I'll have to figure that out. But anyway, thank you for listening and being here.
I really appreciate it. You can visit me online at oldpodcast.com. It's OLDpodcast.com. That's all I'm going to say about that for now, so have a great rest of your Wednesday.
And I'm going to play some more from the minimalist tomorrow, so I'll see you there, where your optimal life awaits. Hey, this is Dan from the Optimal Finance Daily Podcast, which is a lot like this show, except more focused on personal finance. Justin handpicks the best posts he can find from blogs and authors like Remit Safety, Mr. Money Mustache, and more, and I read them to you five days a week.
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