Doingness Goals can produce more Happiness than Beingness or Havingness Goals.
That’s it. In the physical universe, one must Be something, in order to Do something, with the result that one will Have something.
For example:
One chooses to be a surgeon, so one can do surgery, and then one will have the respect, money, and lifestyle of a surgeon.
One chooses to be a ditch-digger, so one can do the labor of digging ditches, and then one will have the muscles, money, and workday of a ditch-digger.
One chooses to be a car salesman, so one can do the selling of cars, and then one will have the wardrobe, commissions, and lifestyle of a car salesman.
Can you imagine somebody being a ditch-digger, so that he can do the selling of cars, so that he will then have the respect, money, and lifestyle of a surgeon?
Nope. Because it just doesn’t work that way.
And this knowledge leads us to something very, very useful …
In these examples, it’s clear that one could set a goal of any one of these things. For example, one could choose the goal of being a ditch-digger, or one could choose the goal of doing the digging of ditches. They’re not the same goal. In the first one you’re choosing who you are; in the second, you’re choosing something to do.
If you had a house and you wanted to dig some ditches around it, you could set the digging of some ditches as a doingness goal without your having to permanently become a ditch-digger. Or … you could choose the beingness goal of being a ditch-digger, and go through your whole life that way. It might be a little limiting, unless you really, really love the life of being a ditch-digger.
Similarly, you might choose the havingness goal of having a doctor’s office. Now you might be the surgeon, or you might be the landlord. Either way you could have a doctor’s office.
So you as a human get to choose your goals in life. And the goals you choose may be Beingness goals, or Doingness goals, or Havingness goals. But these three types of goals are not equal when it comes to providing you with a happy life.
When I went off to college, I first decided that I wanted to be an engineer. However, I’d not thought much ahead to what an engineer would do. And when I found myself studying engineering, I discovered at that moment that I didn’t enjoy doing what an engineer would do. The prospect of a lifetime doing those things was pretty boring to the wild guy I wanted to be at that time.
So the first thing we can do is to look past the Beingness goal to what we will be Doing, because that’s what’s going to fill up your life. Therefore, choosing Doingness goals may be generally wiser and more productive than choosing Beingness goals. Although Beingness is senior and probably more important than Doingness, the Doingness part determines whether you perform surgery or dig ditches or sell cars.
Now, if you listen to the television or if you read the advertisements online, you’ll notice that our world has the intent to ensnare you with Havingness goals. If you are to believe them, they claim you will be happy if you have this car to drive at illegal speeds down deserted roads, or you will be happy if you have that razor to make you handsome like the guy on television, or you will be happy if you have this bank to guard your financial affairs and make you wealthy when you are old and fat with white hair.
And you know that most of that is all baloney. This is our first clue about Havingness goals.
For you notice that they’re all Havingness goals. Are there any advertisements urging you to adopt a Doingness goal such as to save up $10,000, or to repair the storm drains of your house, or to practice dancing the tango? Not really. The closest they will come is to urge you to have a savings account at the bank, to have a power tool for the storm drain work, or to have lessons at Durango’s Dance Studio.
Always Havingness goals.
And let us ask the question: Do Havingness goals make you happy?
The answer is: Yes, they do, for about three minutes.
You may enjoy your new toaster for months, or even for years if you engage in the wise practice of gratitude. However, the flush of pleasure that comes when you first open the box and plug the toaster into the wall, and the flush of pleasure that comes with your first slice of toast will diminish rapidly. After a while, it’s just another slice of toast. A big ‘So What?’
But compare that to a Doingness goal.
Suppose that you really, really love dancing the tango, and you really, really enjoy teaching the tango to other people. You love the Doingness of dancing and teaching the Tango more than anything else in the world.
Now suppose you adopt the doingness goal of dancing and teaching the tango. And you start doing that.
How long will the pleasure last?
For the rest of your life.
You see, what happens in our world is that spirit or life (beingness) appears in the physical universe and does this and does that (doingness), thus bringing about the natural consequences or the inevitable effects (havingness) of such action.
Spirit –> Action –> Effect
Be –> Do –> Have
Life doesn’t really have to ponder much what it is being, just as you don’t have to ponder much what you are being when you focus on how you just love to dance and teach the tango. And you will have the natural consequences of the actions of a person dancing and teaching the tango.
The before and the after parts (being and having) are the premise and the natural consequence of the part in the middle (doing). The part in the middle is the part you most get to choose, and if you choose doing something that makes you happy, you can be happy your whole life long.
Now, within that, you can also make choices of whether you just get by, or whether you have riches untold while doing the thing you love. For example, you could squander your tango salary on red wine and drift from tango job to tango job, or you could own a national chain of Tango Studios and bring the joys of tango to the masses, or you could write startling and popular books on Tangercise and sell millions on television. So the havingness could vary tremendously. But in any of these cases, whether its the giddiness of red wine or the fame of Tangercise, you’d spend your life dancing and teaching the tango, and your entire life can be happy.
And the reason you can be happy for your entire life is that, when you choose Doingness goals, you are expressing what a spirit is designed to do in this physical universe.
You are fulfilling your destiny.
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