Vishen Lakhiani critiques traditional goal setting as often driven by societal programming he calls the "culturescape" and argues people should instead aim for "end goals" that directly produce happiness. He defines end goals as falling into three buckets—beautiful human experiences, personal growth, and contribution—and recommends asking: What experiences do I want? Who do I need to become? How will I contribute?—to bypass societal clutter and set fulfilling goals.
Chapters
So the biggest problem with traditional goal setting is that rather than pick goals that truly speak to your heart, that truly speak to human happiness, people tend to pick goals which are coming from what, in my book, Code of the Extraordinary Mind, I call the culturescape. The culturescape is that tangled web of beliefs, habit, practices, mythologies, how things should be that the world infuses on us as we're growing up. So rather than set goals for things which are truly exciting, unusual, that speak to your heart, you set goals for things which society says you should do. You should get that college degree, you should get that 9 to 5 job, you should get married. You should have 2.5 kids and two cars and a garage. So the problem is people are setting goals for a life that society has programmed them to live, rather than a life really, truly worth living. The best way to choose goals which are most aligned with your happiness is to ask yourself these three most important questions, right? So first you got to understand that there's a difference between an end goal and a means Goal. Means goals are what society says we need to do to. To get to someplace else. You need to get a college degree so you can get a job, so you can save up some money so someday you can retire and then have a vacation. Get rid of that. All of that is rubbish. What you want to do is go straight for the end. End goals are goals that truly lead to happiness. And the thing is, all end goals fall into one of three buckets. Beautiful human experiences. Growth or contribution. So when you're looking to set goals for yourself, what you want to ask yourself is, what are the most gorgeous, beautiful human experiences I could have that would really make my heart sing? And this could be falling in love, travel, raising kids, creating something, pursuing a particular path of learning for the sake of the learning itself. These are beautiful experiences. Then you ask yourself, well, to be the person who could have these experiences, who do I have to grow to be? Who's the man or woman I need to become? And here you come up with a list of how you want to grow. The skills, the ideas, the growth in your health and fitness and intellectual life. Growth is a goal in itself. Now, the third category is contribution. Here you ask yourself, well, if I could have all these beautiful experiences, if I could grow to be this incredible man or woman, how would I give back to the world? You see, contribution is one of the surest parts to happiness. So we should have goals for how we are going to leave a mark on the world to contribute, whether it's through our work, our companies, our families, our community, it doesn't matter. But contribution is a shortcut to fulfillment. So by asking yourself these questions, what experiences do I want? How do I want to grow? How do I want to contribute? You get yourself to bypass all the clutter, to go straight to those end goals that really, really make you happy. That's what life is about. That's what goal setting should be.
