When NOT to be Goal Oriented.

A few posts ago I talked about goals and keeping them measurable, actionable, and inspiring. I believe in goals and the power of a goal oriented life.

There is just one thing I left out.

Goals should not be grasped at too strongly, especially when you have decided to attain mastery in a field. Let me explain.

In The Strategic Self Course (coming up in 2012!) will be talking about how invested we are in a particular thing, and how knowing our level of investment is important for crafting your strategy.

I divide up four levels:

• NOVICE: You can do it, but just well enough to say that you can do it. You know 5 chords and can sing a few songs, you know how a chessboard works and all the technical rules, you know how to cast a circle and do some candle magic. You can be a novice at a LOT of things because it does not take a lot of time investment.
• COMPETANCY: You are competant at what you do. You know the 20% of the field that gives the 80% of result. You can have most conversations in Japanese. You can play anything you find on az-chords.com, you can read and work with most books on magic or witchcraft and hold your own in discussions. Sometimes, this is as far as we ever get even in some things we love. I love playing guitar but I am merely competent at it.
• MASTERY. Now you know the 95% of something and have some ideas of your own. You are able to teach others.
• PERFECTION. This is never actually attained. It is defined by a life-long commitment to a field or endeavor AND a contribution that expands the field itself.

With these four in mind, we can see how being very goal-oriented at the novice and competance levels is beneficial. If I want to master eating well to lose 100 pounds, that is my goal and I want to be competant at eating well enough to accomplish that. If however I fall in love with eating well, I will want to know more and more about nutrition even after that goal is attained. If I want to dedicate my life to it, there will be many long plateau’s where I dont seem to make any great strides, but that is ok because it is now my lifes work. 

For many people magick is a social thing. They like belonging to a coven or an order, and perhaps they are talented enough to make some changes in their life. It is great to be goal oriented about those changes and about learning what you need to know to so what you want to do. For others there is a need to Master it. They have seen enough to know that the road is long, but that it leads to where they would want to go. There may be grades or levels that can chart progress, like Neophyte to adept to Ipssissimuss, but in the end it is the path that matters, and the higher you go, the less you can grasp at goals. K&C of the HGA is a goal that you can race to. Crossing the Abyss is less attainable as a hard goal to race towards. Breaking beyond that has to just sort of occur as you move along your path.

Same in Martial Arts. In Karate, a purple Belt (6th grade Go Shin Ryu baby!) is a Novice. They can “do” karate, but I wouldn’t exactly put on the superhero suit just yet if ya know what I mean. Black belt is something that many people think of as the pinnacle of success, but really it is a mark of the competency level – the point at which you can REALLY start on the path of mastery. At that point, it is not as useful to be goal oriented as it is to surrender oneself to the path, and make just being on the path, the constant goal.

Essentially those that have chosen to be a master of a certain art, are no longer driven by specific goals, but simply by love of the art itself. Practice itself becomes the goal.