What is it about meeting a goal that is so seductive? Is it a sense of accomplishment? Maybe it can be a justification for suffering through hardship to receive a happy ending. But what if the goal did not matter? What if the journey to reach the goal ended up being more satisfying than reaching it?

The problem with getting tied up in trying to reach a goal for it's own sake is that there is so much tied up in the final result. If the desired result is not achieved then everyone gets disappointed. It only takes a few times for this to happen before your mind will start working against you.

How does your mind work against you? First of all realize that your brain will do everything it can to keep you from pain. That's part of the reason we don't go around walking into doors all the time. It's also why we have a bit of trepidation using heavy power tools for the first time.

Failure is painful and the brain will learn that when we don't meet goals there is pain involved. So instead of even doing the work that would require us to say "no" when it comes time to measure the goal, we just don't do the work.

And the work can bite back.

A common example would be for a person who does phone sales. This job has one of the highest hiring rates around. It also has one of the highest firing rates. Why is that? There is a daily measure of whether a number of sales were made in a day. If that number of sales was not made, then it's a failure.

It's very difficult for most people to make the sales numbers on a daily basis, so the people working the phones have a tremendous amount of failure in their lives. So rather than facing failure every day, they just stop showing up.

How's that for avoiding pain?

You will notice in this example that the only thing going for the worker was making the goal. The process of achieving the goal was painful. That is, they were trying to make sales on the phone. This is an unpleasant experience and the sole reason for doing it was to achieve the goal. Since the goal wasn't being met in most cases, it became a totally unfulfilling experience.

Let's switch that around and place an attainable goal along with an enjoyable process.

Many people enjoy playing sports and it's pretty easy to measure results and goals. Cycling is a great sport, so that will be our example. Imagine you have the goal of riding 20 miles through beautiful countryside on a Saturday afternoon. You've done a lot of riding, so 20 miles is within your reach.

From the beginning you are enjoying yourself. The warm sun feels nice against your skin and the wind plays with your hair. The aroma of Rhododendron fills the air and the ride is brisk with little elevation gain.

This sounds like a bit of fun, doesn't it?

Before you know it, the twenty miles are up and you feel great! You've accomplished your goal, and you even felt great doing it.

But what if you didn't finish the goal? What if you saw a friend along the way who asked you to stop in right then at one of your favorite restaurants. Then you ended up spending the rest of the afternoon there talking. You would have missed out on the goal, but everything up to that point had been enjoyable, so there's no reason for you not to take it up again.

This shows some of the reasons why goals should be guides for where we want to go, but we must be sure that the ride along the way is going to be as much fun as getting there.