Passing by the “lost art of golf” website I was grateful to read this paragraph:

“We all want to shoot lower scores and get sucked into believing that the fastest, shortest route to low scores and happiness can be achieved by hitting 330-yard drives. That’s all well and good if you are an elite athlete who works out and trains every day but if you’re not, be careful you don’t injure yourself in the process.”

It makes me think yet again about the way we define goals, success, or happiness.

Who are the role models people take up, and how do they relate to them? Do they want to copy what the role models achieved? Or do they learn from their philosophy? Or do they learn from the journey their role model had towards becoming a role model for others?

What is it, that a role model can give you?

But also, what is society telling you about goals, success, or happiness? How are they defined? How is status won in society? And what is the correlation between having a status allowing one to be very visible in society and the personal sense of success, happiness, or having a worthy goal?

A trap, when comparing oneself with others, is to only see the visible results and assume they are accessible to everyone. Setting one’s goals according to the achievements others have or what society seems to expect is a way to injure oneself. It leaves all the aspects of where you are starting from and what it requires to achieve the goal out of the equation.

Goals need to be challenging, but they shouldn’t be exhausting. There needs to be some space for satisfaction. It can come through some visibility on the progress being achieved, the ability to see oneself reaching the goal, feedback from others, and their cooperation in helping to reassess the journey.

It also requires developing a sense of self and an acceptance of self.