- Why am I doing this? It is easy to get lost in a lot of activity without being sufficiently clear about the purpose of your journey. Have you considered other ways of achieving the same goal? For example, many people work extremely hard and burn themselves out in the hope that at some uncertain point in the future they are going to travel, practice their hobbies, and enjoy life. However, there are ways to enjoy life in the here and now that do not require much money and come without the risk of burnout. Moreover, travelling and practicing hobbies might also be better done now rather than later, since in the future you might no longer be able or interested in doing so.
- Who says that it is worthwhile pursuing? Is it really you who wants to undertake this project? Or is it a mere result of peer pressure / other people telling you what you should do? If your goal is in line with what everybody else is doing, you should at least be slightly suspicious :-)
- What will I do once the goal is reached? It is a common phenomenon that people become discontent shortly after they reach a goal. They have to face reality and can no longer hang onto the idea that everything is going to be better once their goal is reached. So how are you going to handle this situation? For example, Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, found it very hard to adjust to normal life after returning to earth. Moreover, achieving goals often has decreasing marginal returns, i.e. you need to achieve higher and higher goals in order to keep achieving the same level of contentment. Additionally, once a goal is reached many people find that they get over the initial excitement pretty quickly, and face the pressure to keep working very hard just to maintain what they achieved.
For your next or current project, how are you going to answer these three questions?
Based on: Niazi-Shahabi (2014), Ich bleib so s... wie ich bin - Lockerlassen und mehr vom Leben haben, p.221-224
