Should we distance ourselves from positive emotions such as those coming from achievement?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Should we distance ourselves even from positive emotions like which come from achievement then we would lose the joy.
We would lose the happiness. Distancing ourselves does not mean denying it. There are goals which you want to achieve and there are values which you want to live according to.
A goal is a destination. A value is a direction. You cannot ever say that I want to be a committed person.
I cannot say now I have become committed. Every day is a new day when I have to exercise commitment. So commitment is like a direction.
Say if I am in a relationship and then I decide to formalize that relationship. I get engaged, I decide to get married. That is like a destination within that.
So when we talk about goals or achievements, they are more like specific destinations. And they are significant landmarks. And when we cross them, we can celebrate.
It’s not that we have to distance ourselves and not experience the emotion. But we don’t want to again get totally carried away by that. In the sense that this is not that I have achieved the whole world and there is nothing more to do in my life.
That okay, this is the direction in which I want to go and while going in that direction, I have crossed a significant landmark. So I will celebrate that. Goals, if we become too obsessed with them.
There are two ways that can affect us negatively. One is if we don’t achieve it, let me say my whole effort was wasted. If we achieve it, there is an elation.
But what next after that? After I achieve a goal, then there is a sense of anticlimax. What do you do next? What next after this? Unless I set up some other goal. So goals themselves can be pointers to a direction in which we want to go.
But if goals become our purpose in life, so if my purpose is say, I want to become a good writer. As a part of becoming a good writer, I will write this many articles every month or I will publish a book every year or whatever. Now if I achieve it, I will celebrate that.
But I have to keep moving forward. So if we focus on goals, then there will be dejection if we don’t achieve it. There will be temporary elation when we achieve it but after that there will be anticlimax.
When I was studying for my engineering, at that time I had a plan to come to America. So I gave my GRE exam in my third year. So that time it was 2400.
So I got 2350 out of 2400. I was the first in the whole state of Maharashtra. I was the first in the history of my college.
And till that time I had always been among the toppers but I had never been the topper. I joined first, second, third but I was never the first. And here I was way way above everyone else.
The second student was 2250. So I was elated. But after that elation, somehow three of my close friends forgot to congratulate me.
And maybe they thought everybody knew that it’s an occasion for the elation. So when the first time it happened, I just felt annoyed. Second time I was irritated.
Third time I was almost enraged. How could they forget this? At that time, it’s almost like I had an out of body experience. Not literally but I started seeing myself from above.
I felt, I thought that becoming a topper is going to make me happy. But here, what has happened? Actually I have become more dependent for my happiness on others. And earlier I could just normally interact with people.
But now I am so dependent that they congratulate me. And they don’t feel, they don’t do that, I am feeling so much more agitated. And how long, anyway if I achieve something, how long are people going to congratulate? Congratulation will be over after that.
So, it’s not that people should not congratulate or we should not accept the congratulations. But the goals, even if we achieve them, they have a euphoric high, they bring. But after that there is a letdown.
So, we can focus more on the values that we want to live according to rather than the goals we want to achieve. And yes, living according to values also means setting some goals. But sometimes, despite our best efforts, some goals may just not be achieved.
But if you live according to a value, then we have great progress and eventually we will achieve some goals. So, we can celebrate success, but we don’t get carried away by that success. We see this as a landmark in our journey to live a value-centered life.