If you’re thinking, did I read that right? You did.
It’s not a typo.
But your favorite gurus say, “Having goals that are the “key” to success.”.
The problem is not having a goal, the problem is having too many of them.
How many times have you tried to improve your life?
Eat healthy
Trying to stay away from websites you shouldn’t be visiting.
Working out
Trying to start a personal brand.
You’re motivated for a week or two, and then you’re back to square one.
And then, you repeat it over and over again.
If you can relate to this on any level, today I’m going to help you get out of this shitty cycle and gain control over your life.
Carl Jung saved my life
I used to go through cycles of ups and downs so frequently that it didn’t allow me to work on anything with consistency.
For example: I’d start a new project. All excited. I’d read and research and sit at my desk all day.
I’d meditate. Work out. Eat healthy. Stay away from alcohol. Sleep on time.
But a few weeks or sometimes months (if the project really interested me) into it, I’d destroy everything I had built.
Go back into patterns of self-sabotage.
I’d make up all kinds of shit. This is not gonna work. This is just stupid. I’m wasting my time. All that negative stuff.
I’d stop meditating, eat junk, drink, sleep at 4 a.m., and do everything that could help me escape.
And a few days later, I started working on a new goal.
And this went on for years.
And then one day.. I discovered Carl Jung.
Now I’m not going to go into a lot of details because it’s dark and scary. And it would take me a 10,000-word letter to explain everything.
(If you’re interested, let me know in the replies, and I may do it)
So today I’ll share with you the core of his work that helped me understand this cycle and get out of it.
I won’t say I’m out of it completely. Because these self-sabotaging behaviors come out of your unconscious, over which we have zero control.
And it takes years of inner work to completely gain control over them.
But I’m aware enough now to not let them destroy what I’m building.
Alright, so pay attention now. This is how it works:
Carl Jung explained that you are not your body, your name, your religion, your titles, or your work.
All these things are given to us from outside. We pick them up from our environment and the people that surround us while we’re growing up.
You are a collection of identities. And there are thousands of these identities living in our unconscious.
For example:
There’s one identity that wants a peaceful life. It wants to be successful and emotionally stable and live a healthy lifestyle.
And there’s another identity that wants to drink, watch Netflix, and enjoy life.
Now, if you notice, they are completely opposite of each other.
And when there are two parts of you that want opposite things, it creates mental conflict.
It becomes hard for us to decide which part we want to feed.
It’s because of this that we get stuck in a cycle of ups and downs.
Like a curve that goes up and down.
The peak is the identity that wants you to be successful.
The trough is the identity that wants you to destroy yourself.
It may sound crazy, but the sooner you accept this truth, the faster you can break out of it.
Here’s how:
Have a single Goal so huge that you may never achieve it
Now, this may sound stupid, and you may think, Well, if I can’t achieve it, what’s the point of having one.
But hear me out. This will start making sense. And this is going to blow your mind.
Imagine you have set multiple goals for yourself.
Let’s say, in 2024, you want to:
– Start meditation
– Walk 10,000 steps
– Start a personal brand
– Quit drinking
– Read more
– Eat healthy
You can add endless things, you get my point.
Now what happens is, when you have multiple goals for yourself, each of these goals comes from a different identity.
For example:
You want to start meditation because a part of you wants to be more focused.
You want to start a personal brand because you hate your job and want to become financially independent while doing something you love.
You want to eat healthy and work out because you’re overweight.
And sometimes these identities may conflict with each other.
You need discipline to meditate consistently, but there’s another part of you that wants to enjoy and have fun.
And when two identities have different wants, they create chaos, and you end up breaking your streak of self-discipline.
You’ll be consistent for a week or two with one identity, but a month later, the other identity (that wants to have fun) will take over, and you’ll eventually start feeding the other one.
And eventually destroying everything that took months to build.
The way to end this conflict between multiple identities with different wants is to have a ONE SINGLE BIG GOAL.
Let me explain.
Imagine you want to make $100 million.
And trust me, it’s achievable. If you do what I explain, there’s nothing that can stop you.
For you to reach such a big goal, everything in your life has to be aligned with it.
Once you zeroed in on it that this is the final thing. This is want you want. And you want nothing else.
And you’re ready to dedicate your life for this one goal.
Everything in your life will automatically align with it.
For example:
You’d automatically stop drinking every weekend, because you know it breaks consistency and gives you mental fog.
If you have mental fog, you cannot think clearly and take action in order to reach that goal.
You’ll start going to bed early because your big goal requires you to be well rested to work long hours.
You will stop hanging out with people who distract you from your goal.
You will start meditation to have better focus and to be able to concentrate for long hours.
You will stop wasting your time watching TikToks because it reduces your attention span.
You will stop watching porn because it drains the energy you need to reach your goal.
You will start working out daily because you need a strong body and physical strength to work throughout the day.
I hope it has started to make sense now.
Having one big goal seeps into every part of your life.
Now you’re not feeding 10 different identities with different wants.
Now you’re feeding just one single identity that is aligned with one single goal.
It doesn’t matter whether you achieve that goal or not.
What matters is that it will keep you focused and give you the motivation to jump out of bed every day and have something to live for.
It will keep you stable in the head and healthy in the body.
It is not a means to an end.
Like you’re not doing it to get something (like a Lamborghini or a 7 bedroom house).
The goal becomes an end in itself.
Elon has a big goal: to colonise Mars.
It doesn’t matter if he reaches the goal or not, but he has chosen such a big goal that all his thoughts, actions, and behaviour have to be aligned with that goal in order to make it a reality.
That’s all, my friend.
You don’t need 10 different productivity apps.
You don’t need 20 goals for the week.
You don’t need a $999 self-improvement course.
All you need is to set a goal so huge that you may never achieve it.
And everything else in your life will automatically align to make it a reality.
Stay blessed,
– Karun
P.S: If you’re interested in learning more about how our unconscious beliefs control us and how you can change them to live the life you want, I’ve given a step-by-step blueprint in my book ‘Born to Stand Out’.
Get it HERE.