GOALS AND EPIPHENOMENA

In the last Meta Reflection, I noted that there are some goals are not to be pursued—least not directly. That’s because some experiences are not responsive volitionally to our goals and intentions (e.g., sleeping, happiness). I mentioned happiness because happiness is an epiphenomenon, that is, a by-product of doing and achieving something of importance. So what other goals could you set that are actually epiphenomena?

When a goal is a result of something else and only emerges after you first achieve certain conditions, it’s those conditions that you should set as your goals. About this Maslow mentioned this insight in his study of self-actualizing people: “The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.”

So to effectively pursue happiness, set as your goal that of working well at something important. You’ll then more likely experience happiness. So set a goal to work with more excellence at the things you do. Or set a goal to improve your ability to give importance (meaning) to things so that you make they become more important to you. The emotional epiphenomenon of happiness will more likely then come your way. Searching for happiness directly is inherently self- defeating because you are going after something but missing the conditions that actually create it.

If this is the case with goals, what other goals should you not go after directly? I hinted at another whole range of goals when I mentioned the foolishness of pursuing any “emotion” in the last Reflection. This is how I ended that Reflection: “Emotions are derivative rather than volitionally responsive. While we can anchor a state and use our body to elicit an emotional response, emotions generally are functions of the relationship between our mental maps about things and the experiences we have.”

Another experience that is an epiphenomenon is confidence. Too many people simply want to feel confident as if that is a legitimate goal in and of itself. It is not. Confidence without competence is fool’s goal. Even if you were able to get yourself to “feel confident” at will, if you are not competent about the desired skill, the confidence will be wrong-headed and patently false. You may feel good, but your good feeling will be empty and when you attempt the skill you’ll look like a fool. In fact, it will only be a matter of time when you’ll be seen for your foolishness. Plus, there are too many incompetent people already on the planet who foolishly think they are competent in some skill when they are not! Yet because they feel confident, they don’t sense any need to continue learning and development! Talk about a feel-good stuck state!

To pursue confidence, first identify the skills necessary to be competent in your chosen area. What competencies do you need in order to successfully operate in that domain? Then set your goal to learn and practice those skills—set your goal to accept and be with the discomfort, awkwardness, stress, and strangeness. Those feelings are just epiphenomena emotions of your incompetence state and are the stepping stones to competence which will later reward you with legitimate feelings of confidence. So similar to Richard Bandler’s comment that “confusion is the gateway to learning,” feeling awkward and uncomfortable are the stepping stones to confidence.

When you become competent in your skills, you’ll feel confident. Confidence will be the reward of your development. It will result from achieving the immediate goals of targeting a skill-set that will enable your performance.

Goals like these—seeking happiness or confidence are “paradoxical” because they are legitimate only when they result from certain conditions. Skips the conditions and you create shallow and empty version. That’s why the inner game alone is insufficient. Imagination is important, but not more important than action. Mere imagination creates the inner game, but if you don’t act on it, it is just a dream, just fantasy.

Several years ago I made several presentations at various bookstores in the central business district of Sydney Australia. It was a promotional tour for one of the new books and for some trainings that we were doing in Sydney at the time. At one bookshop the subject was Wealth Creation and I mentioned the inner game of having a good strategy as your game plan and talked about vividly imagining it. When time came for questions and answers, a backpacker asked, “If I can create a great mental movie in my mind of the end result of creating wealth, imagining myself on the beach, reading and talking with friends, and enjoying myself and then step into that movie and fully experience it, why then go to all the bother of actually following the plan? Why not just enjoy the mental movie and feel great?”

When people do pursue such paradoxical goals directly, typically they find upon reaching their goals, the experiences are empty. That’s because the emotion of happiness or confidence will be a pseudo-expression and not substantially grounded on something that will give a solid sense of these emotions.

So, what do you want? What’s your goal? Is it a real and legitimate goal or is it an epiphenomenon of a goal, a secondary effect that comes from reaching your goal? Merely to experience an “emotion” is the simplest and cheapest thing. You can get that through drugs. Or hypnosis. Or a shallow use of NLP. And it’s fast. And it saves you all of the work and effort and discipline and planning and development and growth and learning and unleashing of potentials! Just take the drug, get hypnotized, or anchor a state. But, of course, the “emotion” will not be as legitimate expression as what you’ll experience if you meet the required conditions for confidence and happiness in your area of excellent.