I had an epiphany the other day. It was very simple, total common sense, and it hit me in the middle of brushing my teeth. It had to do with setting goals- something I have done so many times and yet never really thought about. Why do we set goals? What is the purpose?

I am someone who is always setting goals. Or, perhaps more accurately, I always have ideas. I have a sense of what I want my life to feel like, what I’m capable of, and various things I hope to someday have: a love, kids, a nice house, the ability and freedom to travel, a successful career, and a dog, to name a few. My perpetual challenge with goals is my ability to achieve them. Maybe I’m not picking goals I want bad enough, maybe I’m giving up too soon, maybe I just get bored. I am sure I could write a lot about the fact that I fall asleep several nights making myself promises about tomorrow and wake up those mornings apathetic about keeping them, but I will save that post for another time. My epiphany was not that grand. Instead, I focused more on how setting goals tends to make me feel.

The way I see it, there are two paths that emerge when I set a goal. The first is one of confidence, assurance, and total determination. I get excited, I feel ready, and I cannot wait to attack the journey. The euphoria is usually subdued quickly when I realize that this path involves eating a lot of chicken and broccoli and not enough brownies, but if I push through it comes back. If I can keep myself looking ahead, there are glorious things along this path: self-love, happiness, the feeling that I’m unstoppable, and the comfort that everything is going to work out exactly as it is supposed to and even greater than I could have imagined. It’s not an easy path- neither of them are- but traveling it makes me a better person. The true me exists on this path.

The other path is full of self-doubt. It manifests itself in anger and frustration, the assumption that I am going to fail, and it makes me detest goal-setting. I have traveled this path often but I haven’t seen much on it. There’s not much of a view, no excitement. It’s dreadful. The true me only exists on this path long enough to make the decision to turn around and go back to other one.

Still, I come to this fork in the road every time I decide to set a goal. It can be overwhelming. So much so that I sometimes find myself wandering aimlessly at the trail head refusing to set goals at all, avoiding entirely the potential of failure. I don’t have any specific goals right now. I am just trying to make decisions that help me enjoy life. That’s what I tell myself. It’s true but it’s also bullshit. True bullshit. Because the fact of the matter is, if I was actually making decisions that helped me enjoy life, I would be on path #1 making goals and smashing them. Instead, I’m resorting to being a passive participant in my own life. I’m standing still. In my opinion, the only time to stand still is if you’re perfectly happy where you are. And if that’s the case, I have the feeling the last thing you want to do is stand still. You probably want to dance.

And so I finally come back to my point, my epiphany. Why is it important to set goals, to face this fork in the road, and to pick a path? I think it’s because goals force us to live intentionally. Goals make us active participants in our lives, and put us in the mindset that every decision we make has a purpose. In turn, the more intentional decisions I make, the more intention I insert into my day- my life- the more I feel like I have a purpose. Isn’t that one of the ultimate goals? To live a life of purpose? I think so.

Thus, I have come to a new place, a new trail. I’ve realized that it is not so much about what goal we set and whether we eventually achieve it. It’s about living intentionally. It’s about giving purpose to your daily decisions and feeling like you’re headed in a certain direction. I want to feel determined to get somewhere. I want to actively participate in my life on a minute-by-minute basis. I want my thoughts, decisions, and actions to be focused on getting myself somewhere, progressing, getting to that life that has that feeling and those things. It all starts with me deciding where it is I want to go, i.e. setting a goal. OK, I get it now.

Like I said, this wasn’t a grand epiphany. It was very simple and total common sense. Maybe it’s so simple that it proves comical. After all, what else would be the purpose of setting goals, right? Well, until the moment I was brushing my teeth and planning a workout routine in my head to ensure I could get the good arms I want, I didn’t make the connection. Suddenly, my morning had purpose. I was heading in a deliberate direction, which, on this day, happened to be towards the free weights at the gym. I was living on purpose and that is a path worth staying on.