I'm Dr Orion taraban and this is cycax Better Living Through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is there are only two goals the importance of goals cannot be overstated if we do nothing things get worse this is the law of entropy disorder increases inside of a closed system this law is baked into the fabric of reality it is not a product of our culture or our social systems as Shakespeare wrote tis an unweed Garden that grows to scorn things Rank and gross in nature possess it merely so we need goals because if we
do nothing life falls apart some effort is required simply to maintain the status quo and to counteract Decay disorder and dissolution and that effort can be directed in a myriad number of ways however I'm here to tell you today that there are really only two goals and before I get into this framework please remember to like this episode And subscribe to Channel it takes less than a second costs you nothing and it's a way that you can help Stave off the entropy inside this closed system so do the thing now as I said there are
really only two goals here they are the first is that you can start doing something that you're not doing and the second is that you can stop doing something that you are doing that's it all goals can be subsumed into one of just these two categories now just because this is a simple framework doesn't mean that there's no substance here most importantly this framework clarifies that all goals regardless of whether they seem related to external phenomena are really self-directed action all goals are properly Behavioral a happy marriage isn't really a goal changing how you respond
to your partner so that you fight less is a bank account with 10 million dollars in it isn't really a goal building a side hustle that earns a significant passive income is and this is helpful because to the extent that you localize the goal in your own behavior you simultaneously begin to develop a plan of action for attaining that goal and this will make it more likely that you get what you want faster and if you want to see the fastest Improvement it's best to prioritize the latter goal that is to stop doing something that
you are currently doing it's better to stop doing the one or two things that are hampering or obstructing your progress and this is because in this world Pleasure and Pain creation and destruction are not really equal one or two bad actions can counteract tens of good ones it's not a one-to-one equivalence generally bad things are more bad than good things are good for whatever reason reality is such that bad things are overpowered so rather than screw up all this discipline and intentionality and effort to do things that you're not currently doing in order to get
more good in your life First Direct that discipline and intentionality and effort toward things that you are currently doing in order to get less bad in your life this is because even if you succeeded in the first attempt which would be hard to do anyway your progress might be counteracted by the Decay that you've left unaddressed and this will corrode your discipline and intentionality over time with respect to the good actions because you won't really be seeing a lot of improvement or progress for your efforts and it's very difficult to maintain consistency which is a
requisite of progress under these circumstances finally if goals are behavioral that is if there are things you either do or don't do then you can really only have one goal at a time because you can really only do one thing at a time this is really important sometimes folks fall into this kind of mania for goal setting often around New Year's and they try to work on too many things at once and this generally leads to sub-optimal outcomes and self-recrimination why do that to yourself pick one thing and work on it until it kind of
becomes routinely integrated into your lifestyle it could take several months but that's okay once it's there it's stable and you can turn your attention to the next goal a successful life is like spinning plates you have to give a plate enough attention and energy for it to kind of hum along for a while while you attend to something else otherwise it'll wobble and crash as soon as you take your eyes off it hopefully this all makes sense to you what do you think do you have any tips for goal setting let me know in the
comments below and thank you for listening
