I just ran into an intriguing blog post where the author seems to essentially bring stability and predictability into his life by deliberately pursuing an impossible goal, and remembering this comment, got curious about what you’d think about it:
Fear of success. At its root this is a fear of change. If I succeed in the thing I am setting out to do, what then? What if I actually become the person I wish to become, who am I? My solution to this was to set up my school and my training in such a way that success was impossible. There is no end goal or end result. There is only process. My mission in life is deliberately unattainable: to restore our European martial heritage to its rightful place at the heart of European culture. Of course that cannot be achieved alone, and there is no reasonable expectation of it being accomplished in my lifetime. There is no question that European martial arts have come a long way in the last decade or so, and my work has been a part of that, but another excellent aspect to this goal is even if we could say it was accomplished in my lifetime, nobody would ever suggest that I did it. So fear of success is not a problem, as success is impossible.
I saw that on your Facebook before I saw it here, so already had thoughts on it.
1) I can see how it’s less scary to think about, as a goal.
2) Picturing it in my head, I can’t imagine myself using this and actually feeling motivated to work really hard because of this goal. But that may be less because it’s impossible, and more because it’s big and vague–my brain has an established problem with big vague goals.
I just ran into an intriguing blog post where the author seems to essentially bring stability and predictability into his life by deliberately pursuing an impossible goal, and remembering this comment, got curious about what you’d think about it:
The first thing this makes me think of is the Babylon 5 episode “Grail.” The concept appeals to me in a romantic sort of way.
I saw that on your Facebook before I saw it here, so already had thoughts on it.
1) I can see how it’s less scary to think about, as a goal.
2) Picturing it in my head, I can’t imagine myself using this and actually feeling motivated to work really hard because of this goal. But that may be less because it’s impossible, and more because it’s big and vague–my brain has an established problem with big vague goals.