Yesterday, I wrote a short blog post on having clear goals. I'd like to follow up on that today. The great novelist Dostoyevsky wrote:
Without some goal, and some effort to reach it, no man can live.
You certainly know the old story: Two college friends had moved to Los Angeles on a quest to become actors. But they couldn’t find work. Sitting around their dingy little apartment, hanging out with friends, they finally came to the conclusion that they needed something worthwhile to structure their days. Since no one would cast them in a movie, they decided they’d write their own screenplay. That goal, and their daily effort toward reaching the goal, put Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on the road to movie stardom, a life they continue to enjoy years later. Their film, Good Will Hunting, launched it all. They used their power of will, did some hunting, and good resulted.
And, of course, the great comedian and actor Robin Williams totally changed their lives by agreeing to act in the film, and thereby also gained for himself an Oscar.
So, yeah, Ok - it doesn't always go like this. Stardom, wealth, and fame don't lurk around every corner of goal-oriented activity. And some people preach the virtues of what they call "Goal-less Living" - as if it's their goal to convince the rest of us not to have any.
We need times of structure and times of no structure. We need time to just be, as well as time to do. But the doing should be congruent with our being, and it should be structured as such.
It’s often said that there are three kinds of people in this world - Those who make things happen, those who just watch things happen, and those who go around wondering “What happened?” Do whatever you can today to place yourself in the midst of that first category. Focus your day and your week around some worthy goal or goals and the effort it takes to move in the right direction, making useful things happen as the result of your energies. It's indeed good hunting for the will.
