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Setting goals is necessary to make progress in life. But real progress, holistically speaking, can never be made until we know where we ultimately want to go. It’s important to know if the goal will lead us in the right direction, that is, will it get us to our final goal.

Here’s a true story from my life that serves as a metaphor on setting goals. In late August of 2001, I was traveling in India with my wife and daughter. At the time I was an employee of United Airlines, and at that time, United had flights in and out of New Delhi, India. Therefore, with my employee flight benefits, we were traveling on a standby basis. It was time to come home. We were at the Delhi airport and the supervisor at the United counter said we could not be accommodated on the flight to London. The flight was way overbooked and in a denied boarding situation.

To get back to the metaphor, London was a goal only because United flew from Delhi to London and from there we could catch one of several flights to Washington, DC. But I was being told we couldn’t get to London. And it didn’t look like we could get to London anytime over the next week. What to do? My wife Maggie and I had to get back to work and my daughter Kamilia had to get back to school.

I asked the supervisor if he had any suggestions on what to do. He said fly to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong we would have several options to find our way back to the United States. So we let go of our goal of getting to London and went the opposite direction to get to our ultimate destination. We got to the United States via the Pacific instead of via the Atlantic. We made it home because we let go of a goal, a goal that was only a means to an end.

This is the point I want to stress — getting to the ultimate destination. Is the goal you set a stepping-stone to a more important goal? If so, are you sure that the current goal is the best way to proceed?

In setting goals, it is always important to know what the goal behind the goal is. We don’t want to set goals on a whim. For instance, we didn’t want to fly to Hong Kong just to fly to Hong Kong. There was a higher purpose to it.

Also, in setting goals, if the goal is not a stepping-stone to a higher goal, then it is either the final goal, independent of any other goal, or it is a diversion.

Let me explain. Let’s say a man wants to own a red Corvette. Why? Is he living a boring life and a red Corvette might add some excitement? Or is he looking for a high performance sports car that has the lowest depreciation over five years? Or is he looking to impress business clients?

I met a wealthy man from California on that trip to India, the brother of a close friend, who wanted a very specific Corvette. He asked me if I would be on the lookout for this car on the East coast, as I was living in Washington, DC at the time. I don’t remember all the specifics, but this was a very important goal to him. Money was no object. If I found it on the East Coast, he would fly across the United States and drive it to California.

A few years later I asked his brother (my friend) if his wealthy brother ever found the Corvette he was searching for. He laughed. His brother, with all his money, was driving what I was driving — a Scion XB. It turned out that this very economical Scion was the perfect car for him because it was great for transporting the high-end stereo equipment that he frequently was installing in rich people’s homes. He wouldn’t be able to do that with the Corvette. He didn’t really have a need or a reason to have a Corvette. Just an impulse, seeking stimulation.

But say a man wants a red Corvette just because he wants to have a more exciting life. Excitement is really the main objective The Corvette is a stepping-stone to excitement. Are there other ways to get excitement? Of course there are. Maybe the best way to add excitement is to get an exciting job, or read an exciting book, or get in an exciting relationship, or climb a mountain like K2, or volunteer at a soup kitchen on skid row and try to make a difference in someone’s life.

I knew another man, a friend of mine when I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s. He wanted a more exciting life. He bought a new Corvette. He went broke and the car was repossessed. Instead of excitement, he ended up with loss and heartache. Then he was diagnosed with cancer and he died.

But lets take this further. If you are looking for more excitement in your life, what is the goal behind that? Perhaps it is the need to feel more alive. So much of the drive that prompts people into setting goals in the first place is an addiction to outer stimuli. The desire for something new, the desire for accentuating separateness, to fill a void of emptiness.

When setting goals from an addictive need, success in their attainment does not take us towards wholeness and true happiness, even though that is why, on some level, that we do everything we do. We think the attainment of our goals will bring us happiness. But they don’t. They don’t because lifelessness is the state of being for those who are disconnected from their inner life, from their source of being. They don’t experience the fullness of existence. Their sense of fulfillment is as short-lived as a drug addict who gets a fix. At best, it is only a temporary solution. So what to do?

Lifelessness is primarily an issue of consciousness. As human beings, we all have full consciousness, but yet we have different states of consciousness. The problem is that most of us have layers of impressions from our experiences which curtail our perception. These impressions are the bricks and mortar of our ego. It is what forms the identity of the false self. It is why it is so hard to let go of the past. We identify with what has happened and what we did and what people think of us. This is all the domain of the mind, which lives either in the past or in the imaginary future, dreaming dreams that never materialize because nothing ever happens in the future. Life only unfolds in the now. And consciousness is only accessible now. Anything else is just the play of the mind and the false self.

So, if consciousness is the issue, how do we access it with all of our impressions keeping us tied to the past and the future?

It the same way that someone recovers from an addiction — by realizing that the only way to be free is through the grace of their higher power. This is most often attained through surrender. By letting go of the past. By discovering the possibilities of love. By opening the heart.

Anybody who is oblivious of the reality of an inner life is addicted to the outer life. Whether it is the stimulation of material success, sex, sports, excitement, world news, politics or watching the Weather Channel, it doesn’t matter. It is nothing but a temporary fix to the soul’s need for fulfillment. What is needed is an awakening of the inner life. We do this by being aware of our addictions. One by one, with consciousness, we can bring them to an end.

With the ending of addictions we can enter the inner life. There, we are free of the mind’s compulsion to life in the past or an anticipated future. There, we are able to embrace the fullness of the present moment. Simultaneously the heart opens, perception widens, and the splendor of the inner life is enjoyed. Bliss becomes a companion. Each day becomes an opportunity to deepen the perception.

This is mysticism, an unclouded perception of reality. This is when the true purpose of life unfolds. And it is at this stage that setting goals have real meaning. This is where setting goals take us deeper into the mystery of our formless infinite nature. This is where it is possible to heed Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss.”

If setting goals in your life is designed to take you to this inner realm of consciousness, then you are making progress on the journey to your final destination. If not, going back to my airline metaphor at the beginning, you might fly to 300 cities on five continents and never find your way home.