The Paradox of Pursuit
How Chasing a Goal Can Get in the Way of Achieving It
Nearly all of us want to be better. We want to be better at relationships, better at our jobs, better at doing the right thing. For those of us that have such an impulse, it’s a blessing. But it can also be a curse. The thing is, as with many goals that we pursue, we need to be careful about whether focusing relentlessly on the goal is getting in the way of actually achieving it.
The Problem with Happiness
To explain, let me elaborate on a paradox that I learned about while studying and teaching philosophy. It’s called the Paradox of Hedonism. John Stuart Mill, in step with most Utilitarian philosophers like him, generally believed that happiness was the thing when it came to defining good. Things were good only because they promoted happiness for people or reduced their pain. That’s an over-simplification, but it gets me to my point, which is this: Mill came to understand a paradox in pursuing pleasure, which he lays out eloquently:
I now thought that this end [happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[….] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[….] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
Funny how that works, right? The best way to become happy is to stop trying to be so happy. It’s a bit more complex than that, though — it always is.
It’s really about doing something for the love of that thing, rather than doing it as a means to achieve satisfaction.It’s about caring immensely about something other than yourself and your own happiness.
When you have a great time playing a game of basketball, it’s probably because you weren’t spending every second on the court thinking about maximizing how much fun you were having. When you had a blast at a party with friends, it was probably because you spent time in interesting conversation — really caring about the topic at hand, rather than focusing on making sure you made this the best party ever.
We Get In Our Own Way
In short, when you focus on obtaining happiness, you get in your own way, and happiness becomes that much harder to obtain.
I wonder if the same thing holds true for self-improvement. I wonder if chasing self-improvement as a goal paradoxically makes it that much more elusive. What if the way to get better is not by keeping self-enrichment in focus, but putting concern for others and for subject matter at the front of your mind.
Try it. Try learning a new subject matter not because “research shows that it will make you smarter and more interesting” but because the subject is interesting and worth knowing.
A slightly different question to ask yourself is this: what other things am I pursuing where I’m getting in my own way? What other goals are achieved as a byproduct, rather than by direct pursuit?
I don’t have a list in mind, but I do suspect that personal growth is on it. My takeaway, then, is this:
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so obsessed with self-improvement and growth hacking literature that we don’t take time to read ideas that are just plain interesting.
Perhaps when we do that, when we pursue interests for their own sake, when we get to know people not for the sake of networking, but because we come to care about what they do — perhaps then, we can begin to grow.
I don’t have all (or many) of the answers, but I have a lot of questions. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter — Woolgathering, and help me comb through all of them. You may just come out the other end a slightly wiser person.
