One of my key takeaways from Stephen Coveys 7 Habits book was this quote:
If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.
I doubt Covey was referring to ones spiritual path but I feel the quote is totally applicable to our obsession (me included) with material ambitions.
Let me unpack this further.
I bet youve been there. You set yourself a stretch goal. You plan, set aside time, and devote your energy and effort into achieving it. Days, months, or years later you achieve your goal. Yay! You feel pumped, excited; you celebrate. A few days (or hours) later, the high is over. You start to think…cool, whats next?
Can you relate? Yes, I believe we have all been there, it’s like an endless cycle, a bottomless black hole of goals. It feels like having a carrot constantly hanging in front of us, placed carefully by our ego to distract us from the present moment. Dont get me wrong, Im a goal-setting junkie myself (I am a coach after all!) however, I believe it is crucial to hold our goals lightly and refuse to allow our happiness or perception of success to depend on them alone.
Shawn Achor, a Harvard professor and leading expert in Human Potential, conducted decades of research on happiness for his book The Happiness Advantage. In it, Achor points out that most of us suffer from the “I WILL BE HAPPY WHEN” disease. There are different versions of that syndrome, but it usually goes like this: I will be happy when I buy my first car, finish uni-postgrad, land my dream job, go on that big holiday, get that promotion, get married, have kids, grandkids, retire… etc. It’s scary and sad how often we postpone our happiness and miss out on the gift of NOW.
As Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests, establishing and achieving materialistic goals is important and in fact a pre-requisite, in my view, for someone to be truly ready to invest in and embrace their spirituality. Often, after smashing a bunch of material goals (the quantity will vary from person to person) we finally wake up and realise that those materialistic ambitions can only give us so much joy. Then the search for meaning or a higher purpose begins.
So, in short, I think Spirituality matters because sooner or later we realise that our material goals and achievements are impermanent, unstable, and unable to give us sustainable inner joy. Therefore, it is wise to invest in a Spiritual path while pursuing our material goals.
These are my 2 cents. Your turn…
Why does spirituality matter? Share in the comments below ?
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#happiness #harvard #goals #goalsetting #holidays #flow #transcendence #zenhighachiever
