Goal-Free Student in UAE

I recently received an email from Salah, a computer engineering student at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.

A few months ago he wrote an essay entitled “Individual Success: Made of Goals or Sudden Awareness?” for his advanced English Communication course in 2nd year college. He provides his own spin on Goal-Free Living.

You can read it at http://www.metaltear.com/Success.html

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Quote of the Day

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” — E. B. White

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Time is Not a Factor

I was recently having a conversation with two friends of mine, Sean and Joe. They both work for the same company. They both work crazy hours. But Sean has managed to live a full and complete life. He has a boat, has his pilot’s license, goes scuba diving, knows lots of people, has a girlfriend, and has an extremely active social life. Joe on the other hand spends most of his spare time watching television. Joe admitted that maybe he needed to apply some discipline and watch less TV. But he said that when he has tried to do that, he has not been successful. The problem is, discipline is not always the answer. Sometimes you need to find a passion that will pull you off of the sofa. Another friend of mine from the same company had a similar problem as Joe. She was busy with no social life. So she decided to take up horse riding. She quickly found that her life became fuller with more pleasurable activities, new social events, and a better outlook on life. She does need to make time for horse riding. Somehow there is always plenty of time for that, and for hanging out with the new friends she has made from her hobby.

In life, it is always difficult to stop a bad habit. I used to be a coke addict. Well, actually a Diet Coke addict. And every time I tried to stop drinking liters of cola a day, I would focus on it so much and want to drink more. Instead, I decided to let myself drink as much cola as I want, as long as I drink at least two liters of water a day. I now find I rarely drink much soda.

So although we may have convinced ourselves that we are busy, there are often huge opportunities to doing things we love to do even with a hectic schedule. It’s just a matter of taking the first step of finding something of interest, and then committing to doing it.

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Becoming a Success…The Goal-Free Way

I am putting the finishing touches on a chapter in Goal-Free Living entitled, “Use a Compass, Not a Map.”  And yesterday I had the great pleasure of interviewing Preethi Nair whose story is a perfect example of this lesson.

Like many people, she was very goal oriented early in life. “Within my family, everything was measured in terms of how successful I was; academic qualifications, my job profession, my salary. However, I always had a strong desire to be a writer. Not a goal as such, but an intention. But I buried those dreams. After graduation, I went into management consulting for 4 years. I know that 4 years is not a very long time, but every single minute of those 4 years I was deeply unhappy. I knew clearly it was not what I wanted to do. And also knew equally clearly what I wanted to do. I wanted to earn my living from writing.” So one day she decided quit her job to pursue her passion.

The problem was, she was in the process of buying a condo, so she was living with her parents. “I couldn’t suddenly say to them that I had no job to go to and that I was going to be a writer. So I decided to continue the illusion of work, putting on my suit and pretend that I was going to my job. I created a double life.”

After rejection letters from nearly every publisher, she wondered if she could really make this work. Undeterred, she decided to try different paths. She created her own PR agency. She established her own publishing house to publish her books. She got a booth at the London Book Fair. She visited 250 book stores to sell her book. She stumbled her way through the entire process, making mistakes at every corner. But she followed her dreams without plans, and eventually landed a three book deal with Harper Collins. And the BBC just recently acquired the rights to turn one of her books into a 90 minute television adaptation.

Preethi concluded, “I could never ever have planned any of this. I never could have said, this is what I am going to do and this is how I am going to do it. I was bumbling in the dark. I had a sense of direction, but had no plans. Some people may hear my story and think, ok, she had a goal. But for me, I am clear it was not a goal in the traditional sense. It was truly an intention; a sense of direction.”

Her full story appears in the book.

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