Means Goals Vs End Goals
Hi everyone,
Welcome to Nishant’s newsletter, name to be decided soon :D, I’ll be sharing what I read with you all every week.
This is a baby step towards an end goal, let’s go together towards it!
This post is inspired from the book “The code of the Extraordinary Mind” by Vishen Lakhiani.
A good goal should scare you a little and excite you a lot. — Joe Vitale.
Often we confuse mean goal with end goal. We choose college majors, career paths, life paths as if they were ends in themselves, when in reality they’re a “means to an end”.
End goals are the beautiful, exciting rewards of being human on planet Earth. End goals are about experiencing love, travelling around the world being truly happy, contributing to the planet because doing so gives you meaning, and learning a new skill for the pure joy of it. It speaks to your soul. It brings you joy.
How to Identify Mean goals:
Means goals usually have a “So” in them. For example: Get a good GPA so you can get into a good college, so you can get a good job, so you can make lots of money, so you can afford a nice house, car etc.
Means goals are often about meeting or confronting to brules. Is your goal one you think you “should” meet as part of achieving your ultimate goal — for example, thinking that you should get a college degree in order to have a fulfilling job or that you should get married in order to have love in your life.
How to identify End Goals:
End goals are about following your heart. Time flies when you’re pursuing them. You may work hard toward these goals, but you feel it’s worth it. It genuinely makes you happy or gives you meaning.
End Goals are often feelings. To be happy, to be in love, to consistently feel loving, feel joyous are all very good end goals.
The three most important questions we should ask yourself to find your end goals:
What experiences do you want to have in this lifetime?
Your love relationship
Your social life
Your financial life
Your quality of life
How do you want to grow?
Your health and Fitness
Your Intellectual life
Your emotional life
Your spiritual life
How do you want to contribute?
Your career
Your character
Your family and Parenting life
Your life vision
Let’s explore these questions in more detail:
What experiences do you want to have?
“If time and money were no object and I did not have to seek anyone’s permission, what kinds of experiences would my soul crave?”
Your love relationship: What does your ideal love relationship look like? How you communicate, what you have in common, what moral and ethical beliefs you share?
Your social life: What experiences would you like to share with friends? Who are the friends you’d share these experiences with? What are your ideal friends like?
Your Financial life: What experiences would you like to be able to afford?
Your Quality Of Life: In this amazing life of yours, what would your home look like, what would it feel like to come back to this place? When you go out, what kind of restaurants and hotel would you love to visit?
How do you want to Grow?
“In order to have the experience above, how do I have to grow? What sort of man or woman do I need to evolve into?”
Your health and fitness: How you want to feel and look every day? What about five, ten or twenty years from now? What eating and fitness system would you like to have? Are there any fitness goals you’d like to achieve purely for the thrill of knowing you accomplished them?
Your Intellectual Life: What do you need to learn in order to have the experiences you listed above? What would you love to learn? What books and movies would stretch your mind and taste? Are there any languages you want to master? What skills you need to develop to make your career thrive? Remember to focus on end foals — choosing learning opportunities where the joy is in the learning itself, and the learning is not merely a means to an end.
Your emotional life: How you want to feel on a persistent basis. More humble, more blissed, happier and positive.
Your spiritual life: Where are you now spiritually and where would you like to be? Would you like to move deeper into spiritual practice you already have or try out others? would you like to learn things like lucid dreaming, deep states of meditation, ways to overcome fear, worry or stress?
How do you want to Contribute
“If you want to be happy, make other people happy” — Dalai Lama
“If I have the experiences above and have grown in these remarkable ways, then how can I give back to the world?”
Your career: What are your visions for your career? What level of competence you want to achieve and why? What contribution to your field would you like to make?
Your Character: What traits and values do you want to embody. Bravery? Honesty?
Your family and Parenting life: What wonderful experiences are you having together? What values do you want to embody and pass along? What can you contribute to your family that is unique to you?
Your Life Vision: How would you like to contribute to your community? What is the mark you want to leave on the world that excites and deeply satisfies you?
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference.”
- Steve Jobs
An Exercise for you All
Ask yourself these three important questions, begin it by keeping it simple, just have a place to write down your responses.
For each category, don’t take more than three minutes, set a timer for this. It helps to shut down your logical mind, so your intuitive and creative mind can come out and play. Don’t overthink it, trust your intuition to know the answers to these questions.
Here are my end goals:
You can also find it here: https://nishant-bansal.notion.site/End-goals-c501b12a92ef4ed082be1f443a42f94b
You can copy this template and write down your end goals too.
If you liked this post, then try reading the book which is the source of it:
Peace ✌️
Nishant Bansal
My favourite books:
Rich dad, Poor dad
Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life
Psychology Of Money
Atomic habits
How to win friends and influence people
The code of the Extraordinary Mind
Book I am reading currently
Zero to One by Peter Thiel