How hard that is to change our goal in life?
First, we human naturally resist changes. We are built to stay with habits, routines, schedules. We do want to change. Say, every day you wake up at 6am. It is not easy for you to change your routine to wake up at 5am instead. We only change when we have to. Most of us do not like changes. It is must more comfortable to stay exactly where we are; we know very well our current situation. It is very uncomfortable (and sometimes scary) to walk into a new road and face the unknown, the uncertain future.
That is why every time we talk about moving the country forward, we always have to talk about tu duy problem (thinking problem). People are used to think one way, they don’t want to change their thinking to a new way. (There is a psychology term to describe this change-resistant tendency in human behavior. But I forgot what that is).
Second, once we have invested so much effort in a goal, we don’t want to “take a loss” to abandon that goal. “I have spent three years in medical school. Now I just throw all that away and try to be a marketer?”
These two things make changing goal very difficult. That is why many people go through life afraid of making changes, afraid of goal changing. They basically stay at one place and feel miserable about their life.
However, my experience is that the above two (scary) factors have been misunderstood and exaggerated greatly.
First, the future, although unknown, is not more unknown and more risky than the present situation. We assume that we know today. Well, are you sure that you may not get into a car accident later today? Or something won’t happen today that may affect you greatly?
Moreover, when we think bout the future, why do we have to think about bad stuff only? Why should the future be any scarier than the present? The future may as well bring us as much happiness as, if not more happiness than, the present. Think positive! Think positive! Think positive!
In addition, if we are so unhappy with the present, i.e., we feel we are at the bottom, chances there is only one way for us to go: UP. (You can’t go down if you are already at the bottom).
Second, wasted investment. We feel that when we abandon an old goal, we waste all the money, effort and energy spent for that investment.
This is wrong. We never waste any experience in life. Say, you study three years in medical school, then you switch gear and study law. Do you waste three years in medicine? No, not really. Your medical knowledge may help you in trying court cases involving medicine and doctors later. Or you have been doing marketing for several years, now you quit and go to medical school. Your marketing knowledge may be helpful when you open your medical office or hospital later.
No experience is wasted in life. We build our experience one on top of another like bricks in a wall. So the thinking that when we change goal we waste the “investment” we have spent in the old goal is just wrong thinking. No experience is wasted in life.
So, we can see that the “difficulty” in goal changing is not real. It is in our mind. It is just a wrong way of thinking. It makes us negative, scared, and unmotivated. It is just in our head.
We just have to learn to think positively about changes. We have to love changes. Look at changes as new opportunities to open new roads into the future, which may lead to many interesting things.
The point is, we nay know what we have now. But we will never know what we may have in the future if we don’t try to open new roads.
At this point I need to bring in a balancing note, to make sure no one will read my message in the extreme. I am talking about changes and changing life goals and I am encouraging everyone to change life goals, BUT only when we feel the need to change. Meaning, ONLY when we find that our current goal is not good for us, doesn’t fit us,
doesn’t make us happy, meaning, only when we really feel in our heart that we should change goal.
Other than that, try to stay with the current goal and work at it and make it a success. If we change goal every three weeks, they are not goals. They are just scattered brain.
by Tran Dinh Hoanh, LLB, JD
Attorney of Law
Washington DC
