How to choose your way of achieving goals to be both happy and successful?

We all use different motivations to reach our goals.

*Some of us always compete with our selves and some compete with others.

*Some of us put milestones related to ourselves and others prefer mile stone directly linked to others.

*Some of us think success means happiness, others think it means others unhappiness.

Both can be used achieving goals but they have some side effects.

Philologists divide goals in two; mastery goals and performance goals. Mastery goals help you improve yourself. Your approach is like breaking your own records each and every time. You compete with yourself and don’t care about who is better than you. If you can overcome these milestones then you become successful.

Performance goals also help you to succeed but this time you compete with others not yourself. You always try to outperform others. You adjust your mile stones to others success. You always search for others who are better than you. If you can overcome these milestones then you become successful.

As you can see, no matter which way you choose you become successful. But, as I said before there are side effects. If you haven’t decided which way to choose to achieve your goals yet, you should also consider about happiness. I guess you have already found out the relation with happiness and these two goals.

Mastery goals don’t require competition with anyone but you. Others success don’t put barriers in front of your goals. So;

*You can be helpful to others.

*You can share your knowledge and experience or you can help others take steps.

*You can get help back from these people whenever you need.

*You can open the doors much more easily with this attitude.

*You can be surrounded with people who are thankful to you.

*You have better relationships, you have more friends, and you socialize more.

Guess what, you become both successful and happy.

Unlike mastery goals, performance goals require a different kind of attitude, because you become surrounded with competitors.

-You cannot share your knowledge

-You cannot help anyone

-You cannot make things easier for others

-You can cheat

-You can be deceitful if needed.

Anyway you become successful and outperform all your competitors. But, there is something missing, you have no friends left-except who never stood on your way- to share your success and you feel a little unhappy.

Researchers P. Marijn Poortvliet, of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and Céline Darnon, of France’s Clermont University studied on mastery and performance goals and their affects on relationships. They found out that people with performance goals has weaker relationships than people with mastery goals.

Source: SAGE Journals Online

Unhappiness is the side effect of performance goals. If relationships are important for you, you should choose your way wisely. Though competition is a powerful source for motivation, it shouldn’t be carried out to deceit and putting barriers to others. Competition should be done without affecting others unethically.

You should always keep in mind that happiness is another resource for success. You can read more about the relation between success and happiness in this article. How to socialize and be happy?