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Visualizing and revisiting goals; benefitial or detrimental?

8:01 PM, Thursday November 28th 2024

I really enjoy thinking about how to think regarding learning in general, and would love to hear your thoughts on the subject of goals. Do any of you dedicate time to think about or visualize goals? Maybe you even avoid it because it feels like burdening yourself with expectations?

I've read that visualizing goals can confer benefit, but I don't recall experiencing this first hand. Personally, it almost feels like taunting myself, as it seems to implicitly highlight just how long and arduous the coming journey must be, as I struggle not to compare it with my current ability. However, my goals are becoming more multifaceted, which led me to reconsider. My goals now include; I) Increasing visuo-spacial ability, II) Fulfill long-sought ability to draw antropomorphic animals capably, and III) Explore my creativity. Since my primary and tertiary goals are now largely unspecifiable, I doubt my self-critical mind would be able to use it against me. I've not tried to visualize I) and III) yet, but will try to do it in the coming weeks as part of my warm-up routine as an experiment. It is interesting to try and figure out how to even visualize them, as they are a form of continuous benefit from practicing illustration, and not strictly completable. I suppose you could call it a continuous goal.

Do you feel that any benefit or detriment from goal visualization depends on the type of goal? Do you have goals on learning to draw well that you feel is helpful to visualize? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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2:36 AM, Saturday November 30th 2024

That's a really cool question! The answer is very dynamic, as it does not have 1 size fit all answer and it is also how you can tolerate something intangible such an ideal. But isn't ideal and goals the same?

Ideal and goals are similar but two different things as well. Ideal is something intangible that you cannot reach that often, while goals are basically an ideal that is tangible and broken into a bite size that is achievable. In a metaphor for drawing; an ideal is like the imagination you have that before you draw, when you finally sketch the imagination you find yourself drawing things different like it has the same vibe from the imagination but the look is something else. When you sketch, line art, color, etc... What you're doing is creating a goal to reach the ideal.

TLDR: Goals are something can be achieved, and ideal is something that is difficult grab because it's abstract. Only when you make an ideal something like a goal like task, daily practice, monthly goals, statement of purpose, etc... can an ideal can manifest into something tangible

From your question, yes it can be helpful visiting goals. It is detrimental if you compare yourself to an ideal, because you cannot track your progress and that's the reason why people feel bad for not feeling like they improved. While if we compare ourselves to a goal we can say, "Crud! So this is the reason why I'm not improving, it might be painful to move forward but I can say that when I do this goal I can see myself improving tangibly/objectively". And lastly comparison is a bane of improvement, you can take inspiration from others but try not to compare yourself to them, one healthy way for comparison is through your goals and your past self. That way you can see what you have improved.

(This was taught in my highschool Personality development class when explaining Carl Rogers 's theory on the self. My teacher wanted us to have tools how to bridge the ideal-self to the self which is the present/now)

12:11 PM, Thursday December 5th 2024

Thank you for a well thought out response and apologies for the late reply. Despite being intelligent and well thought out, your reply didn't stir much interest. This juxtaposition between what I would expect to feel and what I actually felt was in itself quite interesting to me.

I have extensively read self-help resources and various frameworks to try and overcome what I perceived to be personal flaws. I had a strong desire to be able to produce meaningful work, but somehow I wasn't able to turn it into action. It was only after my deepest struggles of anhedonia and reaffirming that no external solution would work, that I started to make meaningful progress. This includes the self-help books and any frameworks of understand the self or otherwise. None of them helped me.

In retrospect I believe this might be because the frameworks people create, although they may feel universal, are actually based on numerous axioms that we call biases. Biases are not inherently bad, they are a highly effective way to utilize the mind. They are like shortcuts. Simplifications that enable further thought, but also inadvertently introduce problems when we aren't able to perceive them and consider them a part of reality itself rather than a construct of our mind.

One such axiom or bias is the assumption of free-will. I don't believe it, but when I look back at my experiences with self-help books it's quite clear that the authors do believe in it. This creates a problem because when the axioms are different, the resultant proverbial proof is meaningless. The books were meaningless to me because my understood and felt reality was simply too different from the people who wrote the books.

I have rejected external frameworks of understand the mind save for neuroscience, which is very different in that it doesn't seek to solve any problems people may have in their daily life. And in rejecting these frameworks I have actually grown a lot. I feel the frameworks create more limits of thought than they are helpful. For me that is. So that is likely why I didn't feel enthused about your response despite being intelligent and well thought out. Thank you for inciting this introspection.

Do you in contrast feel that the lesson from your personality development class has helped you? If so it would be interesting to hear in what ways. Don't feel obliged to respond though.

5:28 AM, Friday December 13th 2024

Sorry for the late reply just got back after a break

Your reply reveals a deep thoughts of self-help frameworks and their limitations. It’s clear that your personal experiences and the realization of the influence of inherent biases in such frameworks have shaped your perspective significantly.

About the lesson from my personality development class, I think it has been helpful, but in a nuanced way. The key takeaway was understanding the concept of the ideal-self and the real-self, and how bridging the gap between them can lead to personal growth. For me, this subject has been about recognizing the importance of accepting and integrating my current self while striving towards my goals, without getting overly caught up in comparing myself to an ideal that may not be entirely attainable.

In practice, this has meant focusing more on setting achievable goals and appreciating the progress I make day by day. It has also been about avoiding self-critical comparisons to external standards and finding a more internal and personal measure of success. The concept has helped me develop a healthier perspective on personal growth, especially when faced with the challenge of self-doubt or the feeling of being stuck.

What's interesting, your reply highlighted a crucial point about the limitations of many self-help frameworks. They often operate under a set of assumptions that may not align with individual realities, leading to frustration rather than clarity.

3:28 PM, Friday December 13th 2024

Not too long ago I made progress in celebrating smaller achievements and incremental progress, and not being overly focused on the future, but to try exist more in the present. Your personal growth journey reminded me of my own in that sense.

It's a bit unfortunate for me that I can't gain this wisdom from others through their frameworks. When I read about the ideal and real self I simply don't have an understanding of the world which supports such a concept. It doesn't carry meaning or reason to me - to create these abstractions of the real or ideal self. Not to speak of ideal on its own. That I can't really intuitively grasp either. It feels like gibberish to me, like someone is speaking another language. You being able to understand it and extract value from it is a strength.

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