Toxic Goals, Flow, and the Pursuit of Excellence is my latest book project. It is informed by 45 years of practicing Yoga, Meditation and Pranayama. But the real influence is my experiences over the years in teaching Yoga to others. In that journey I came to realize that most of the suffering in our world is a result of the pursuit of toxic goals.
Everyone has goals, whether chosen consciously or unconsciously. Either way, the goals we choose define the shape and quality our lives. Choosing and pursuing goals are two different skills. Although we need to develop both skills, the more important of the two is choosing goals. It’s better to fail to manifest a beautiful dream than to succeed in manifesting a nightmare. Most people spend vast amounts of time and resources pursuing their goals. Few give any thought to the quality of those goals or how and why they chose them.
Toxic goals generate boredom and anxiety, destroy concentration, suppress performance and ultimately sabotage their own ends. Healthy goals banish boredom and fear, help us achieve deeper states of concentration, improve performance (sometimes miraculously) and maximize our chances for success. More importantly, healthy goals increase our enjoyment of the process, regardless of outcome. Goals that fail to do this need to be identified and replaced.
Goals are sticky. They are easy to pick up but difficult to set aside. The best time to recognize a toxic goal is before embracing it. The problem is that sometimes we pick up a toxic goal by mistake. Other times, we choose a good goal that becomes toxic over time. Therefore, it is not enough to avoid picking up toxic goals, we must also learn the art of releasing goals that no longer serve us.
Our culture has a blind spot regarding goals. We consistently praise those who cling to a goal against all the odds and persevere through to final victory, regardless of the collateral damage. On the other hand, those who give up on a goal are often met with embarrassed silence. Quitting and failure are confused in the minds of most people. Quitting is often seen as worse than failure! How many times have you heard someone say, “At least they tried”? Few pause to ask if those goals are worth all the effort, or if they might actually be toxic.
Aiming for a goal should be a conscious choice, not result from habit, addiction or a lack of imagination. To the degree that we cling to a goal that no longer serves, we are a slave to that goal. It’s much better to spend our lives as we wish, rather than forever dancing on invisible strings.
Perhaps the most original and important insight contained in this book is that all goals become toxic at the moment we achieve them. In the pursuit of such goals, we might experience deep flow. However, once we attain our goals, if we continue to hold onto them, they become the source of boredom when the status quo is not threatened, and fear when it is. This is why so many people are destroyed by their own success. We must be willing to constantly release attachment to the past in order to move freely and purposefully, into the future.
One who masters the skills outlined in this book will be in possession of a prize beyond the reach of even the wealthiest – a life free of boredom and fear, a life of flow.
At a time when Americans are faced with an increasingly uncertain future, Toxic Goals, Flow and the Pursuit of Excellence, with its emphasis on fluid goal setting and strategies for staying in flow, is more relevant now than ever.