Unfortunately, the happiness we feel when reaching a goal is short-lived. Dr Tal Ben-Shahar calls this the arrival fallacy. We give a big presentation, only to go back to our daily routines. We finish a project, then realize there are two more to work on. We receive a promotion, but still feel unsure about our career path. Life doesn’t seem that different after reaching a goal.
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- [note::Similar to the article "The Dark Side of Goals"]

Instead of a linear scale progressing from a present state to a desired outcome (the classic “up and to the right”), goals should be conceived as cyclical.
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- [note::This reminds me of an article (or maybe lecture?) I consumed about how learning is cyclical e.g. the first loop is a very high-level shallow understanding of a thing (e.g. Atoms are like a bunch of balls held together by rods) and you keep looping back on that same aspect of the thing, developing a deeper and deeper understanding everytime you revisit it (e.g. as you learn more chemistry, you begin to understand that atoms are actually a mass of protons and neutrons surrounded by pairs of electron clouds).
Now that I think of it, this may have been part of that Kurtzgesagt video about atoms and "not confusing the representation of the thing with the thing itself"]

Instead of ignoring ancestral wisdom and modern scientific knowledge by blindly pursuing goals at the expense of our mental health, we should consider going back to a circular model in which goals are continuously discovered and adapted — in conversation with our inner self and the outer world.
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(highlight:: Here’s how you can design your own growth loops:
Pact. Choose an action you want to commit to. It could be something you’ve always wanted to experiment with, or something you’ve just recently heard about. It could even be something you suspect you won’t enjoy, but don’t know for sure because you’ve never given it a proper try. Your pact needs to be Purposeful (something you care about), Actionable (something you can do today), Contextual (based on your current situation), and Trackable (a yes/no action).
Act. Now, just do it! You need to stick to that action for long enough so you can collect sufficient data. This requires monitoring your progress (a good old habit tracker can do the job) and taking care of your mental health so you can maintain motivation and momentum.
React. Once you have enough data (which will depend on the nature of your pact), you need to start regularly reflecting on your progress. Is your current pact having a positive impact on areas of your life you care about, such as health, well-being, or relationships? How does it feel to perform this action? Is it energizing or draining? Do you want to keep on going with this pact for one more cycle, or should you tweak it or abandon it?
Impact. Keep on going through the first three steps of the cycle (Pact, Act, React), and you will start noticing the impact on areas that feed into the ultimate goal: living a happy, healthy, fulfilling life.)
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- [note::An alternative framework to use with my Obsidian Goal template? I like that this is approach seems a lot more flexible than other approaches.]