Failing Toward Success

i actually took this photo :)

OK. I admit I'm kind of an inspiring-article junkie. I.eat.this.shit.up. So, when I say that this is the most encouraging/insightful piece I've read this year, you best believe I mean it. Almost every sentence in it is quotable. But this is my favorite part:

To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. [...] For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. 

If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure. 

Had I been goal-oriented instead of system-oriented, I imagine I would have given up after the first several failures. It would have felt like banging my head against a brick wall. But being systems-oriented, I felt myself growing more capable every day, no matter the fate of the project that I happened to be working on. And every day during those years I woke up with the same thought, literally, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and slapped the alarm clock off. Today's the day. 

- Scott Adams