Here’s one of the long but insightful comments of reddit. This is probably buried somewhere deep inside the reddit forest, not visible on the front page, and the post is from 3 years ago.
In short: pick one “goal” that interests you, and keep moving towards it. Because we can’t just imagine what makes us happy, or what our dream job will gonna be. Just keep moving, pick one goal, use it as a direction to “travel”. If it turns out that you don’t like your goal, that’s okay, just pick another goal.
This seems like a common sense, but please do read the original comment below, I’m sure it is worth a thing or two.
by Maoman1 – 4.3k points – 3 years ago – edited 3 years ago
Ok, this is a little out of the ordinary and no one’s probably said this before to you (I doubt many say this), but your goal is not what you actually want to do.
No really… bear with me.
In one of Tested’s podcasts, Adam Savage (of Mythbusters) was talking about something a family friend (I think) told him when he was a teenager. She had asked him, as adults typically do of teenagers, what he wanted to do when he grew up. He of course had a prepared response because he’s asked that a lot. She waited patiently for him to finish and said flatly “No you’re not.” She continued past his surprised to say “You won’t do any of that. You’ll be doing something interesting and cool and probably something you love, but it won’t be anything you could possibly imagineright now.” And of course she was right – no way he could have expected to be doing something like the Mythbusters or Tested.com.
You see, a Goal isn’t your destination… it’s a direction to travel in. It’s something to get you moving, somewhere, anywhere, just as long as you aren’t stagnant. I know this isn’t the “usual” way to think of goals, but it’s a much more useful and accurate way to think of them.
Don’t sit there and try to think up something you’ll be good at and you’ll enjoy doing for the rest of your life. Very few people can correctly figure that out. Instead, pick something that sounds interesting to you and just go for it. Does being a Disney animator sound interesting? Go practice drawing, animating, and modeling. If you like it, keep going, and a few years from now, you’ll find yourself doing something that’s only marginally related to that, but uses the skills you learned from practicing in ways you never imagined – maybe designing magazine covers or CGI work in commercials.
Don’t like doing that? That’s alright. It’s okay. Don’t feel bad for changing your mind, whether you’ve been doing it for only hours or even if you’ve been doing that for years. Just pick something else that sounds interesting. Maybe racing cars? Maybe you’ll end up reviewing sports cars or commentating superkart races.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what your goal is, it only matters that it interests you, and that it motivates you enough to move. That’s all you need to do: move.
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3vxb2e/whats_your_main_goal_in_life/cxrr5co/
