Five things I achieved without goals

June 22, 2012

I was reading Leo Babuata’s site Zen Habits for a while now, and one of the things he recommends is the idea of living without goals. This is something I struggle with. I struggle with the idea that I should declutter my life of goals. I could argue that goals are how I’ve achieved what I have in my life. But when I think more closely, the reality is that the goals were a side note. In fact, some of the things I am most happy with or most proud of happened without any goal around them at all. For instance:

My son — When my husband and I got married, we planned to have no children. In fact, in some ways that was our goal. Then, about nine years in our opinions changed. We decided that while we weren’t going to do anything special, we would simply stop actively trying to not have a child. I was pregnant three months later, so, as my midwife said, “our birth control was really working before.”
Our house — We found this house with the help of an excellent real estate agent, Eric Johnson. But the decision to move from our previous home was sparked by me having a melt-down and driving away from our house into the country and realizing that there were options beyond “suburban hell” (as a friend dubbed our previous home). This house is a lot smaller (perhaps half the square footage), has only one bathroom (much to the dismay of my visiting relatives), and has almost no closet space. But it has a five-stall barn, two enclosed pastures, a fully-fenced house yard and nearly four acres of pasture and land in the back if we ever want to build a new house. I love this house.
My latest book, honestly, all the books I’ve written — None of them were planned, and in fact, all of them came about because someone else asked me to write them. Yes, you could argue that I’d had a goal to write a book, but I never did anything to further that goal beyond say “yes” when asked if I’d write a book for someone.
My marriage — I have never been one of those women or girls who dreamed of my wedding day. In fact, if asked, I probably would have said I didn’t see myself getting married. Before Mark, three people had asked me to marry them, but only one was serious. (And I know for a fact how funny a man looks when you say “yes, I’ll marry you” when he was asking you as a joke. It’s pretty hard to keep a straight face as he backpedals in abject panic.) In fact, I asked Mark to marry me a little over sixteen years ago, and our fifteen year anniversary is coming in August, and I am still in love with him.
My job — This is another area where I always wanted to be a writer, but I couldn’t say that I ever set a tangible goal to be one, I just wrote and still do. I am proud to be a full-time writer as it gives me the time and flexibility to be with my son, take care of my house, and be with my husband as well as write my books.

When I collect all these things together, it seems obvious to me that goals are not required for me to achieve what I want and be happy. The most important aspects of my life I achieved without setting any form of goal, so perhaps Leo is right and I should just do.