Are your goals getting in the way of your well-being?

In conversations with friends and clients about life and surrendering to the moment I run into this recurring challenge. When they’re close to realizing on a deep level that life is just a series of standalone moments that will perish as soon as they ever got there, I often see a fear emerging.

A fear that if you surrender to the moment, surrender to life, and just enjoy doing more of what inspires you in the moment, and less of what you don’t want to do in the moments – a fear emerges. A fear that if you do that, you lose yourself, and start to like things you don’t want to like.

Can you see how crazy that sounds?! We are afraid of liking something else than we’re currently liking. We’re afraid to not want the things we think we want now. We’re afraid of not having the motivation to achieve the things we’ve been taught by society that we’re supposed to like.

So we keep holding on to our superstitious goals. Also because we are accustomed to them. It’s the only thing we know. There’s a certain kind of false conviction to following the norm. The system. Because, at least there is a system, right? Someone out there must know that getting X and getting Y will make us happy, right? We keep believing this because deep down inside we’re confused as fuck to what the hell all this is.

Life never came with a manual, so we’re confused, and we cling to the closest thing to a manual we can get – what seems real to us – like our goals.

I’m not saying that you will lose your desire to reach your goals if you explore this deeper understanding more. What I am saying however, is that you’ll get more clarity on what you do actually like, and what you don’t like. And you may be surprised that some things you have been working on for years, might not be something you like, and other things you haven’t done in years emerges as things you want to do more.

To me this showed up in my work as me and my colleague Knut started the Morten Hake Summit back in 2009. It was a purely inspired action. We had experienced some deep connections with women, and saw that this dating game we play is entirely unnecessary. And we wanted others to experience the same deep connection – and just enjoy the dance of seduction instead of worrying and over-thinking about what to say or do.

We did do just that for a long time, and we actually made it into an annual thing. Though instead of continuing to following my inspiration, I thought I was obligated to do this every year. I thought about the expectations from others and fell into the ‘should’ trap. I started to take decisions (small and big) based on what I thought I should want instead of what I really wanted, and before I knew it, the Summit was just another job.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE arranging the summit, and I am glad we’ve been doing it for 4 consecutive years, but when I finally got clarity I realized that I could easily put the Summit on hold for a year, and get back to it when I feel inspired again – then the work I’ll do will be so much more effective and fun as well.

You were already born with it…

In times of clarity, I continue to experience unexpected opportunities, and in this case, my good friend Bjørnar Kristensen got inspired to create a conference this upcoming fall, so we have decided to merge the Morten Hake Summit with his conference this year (because they align SO much), and I will have a more passive role, but still be a part of creating positive change and raise money to The Anjera Foundation. And I LOVE it! That opportunity might not have showed up – or I might not have been open to it – if I was in my head stressing about running ‘my own’ conference, just because I thought I SHOULD be.

Getting more in tuned with what you really like, will not destroy your life and your ambitions, goals etc. You simply LIKE more of the moments you have. You simply LIKE life more. It’s that simple. It’s nothing to be afraid of – quite the opposite. I promise you, the things that are really important to you, will become even more important, and the things that are actually not that important (the things you know deeep down inside is not that important) will drop in it’s priority for you.

All this results in more LOVE for life.  Love for other people and maybe most importantly love for yourself, because you were born with that love. No-one got born and instantly worried about reaching their goals. You just did the things you really wanted to, and you achieved SO much being a kid enjoying the process.

“But what about work and money, Morten?!”

Listen, if you WANT money, then this deeper understanding will only give you more clarity on that, and you will spend less time on other stuff you don’t REALLY want and MORE time making money. It’s really that simple.

If you don’t REALLY want money (which would be rare I assume), or maybe you have loads of money, but you continue to stress about it, and try to make more money based on some fear, you’ll get clarity on that, and start doing more of your hobbies or whatever you LIKE and enjoy – in the moment – and worry less about your financial situation.

Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this) I’m going LIVE online with three of my friends to talk about this. It’s going to be 100% interactive, so we’re going to need your questions before and during the online live-cast.

If you have ANY questions regarding this article, or anything else you’re struggling with, curious about or just something positive you want to share, please leave a comment below, and I’ll make sure we address it on the live-cast.

<3

Morten