IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-50347-2_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The problem of goalodicy: The unintended consequences of goal pursuit

In: Destructive goal pursuit: The mount everest disaster

Author

Listed:
  • D Christopher Kayes

Abstract

Pursuing the summit of Everest becomes part of who you are. Your selfimage becomes inseparable from the summit. Contingencies, unintended consequences, and other obstacles attempt to get in your way but ultimately fail to distract you. And distractions they are, since such obstacles only remind you to focus on what is important—achieving your goal. You focus on the summit. You become determined to meet your goal. The goal itself is straightforward: summit the mountain. You know, at least in theory, how this can be done. You put trust in the expedition leaders, and they reassure you that they have it all figured out. Stay the course, don’t get distracted, and listen to their guidance. Don’t worry about the inevitable setbacks, such as the lack of sleep, the uncomfortable cough, the egos of your climbing partners. Focus on attaining your goal. You don’t need to worry about finding excuses because you will have success. Your sense of self and the goal have become inseparable.

Suggested Citation

  • D Christopher Kayes, 2006. "The problem of goalodicy: The unintended consequences of goal pursuit," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Destructive goal pursuit: The mount everest disaster, chapter 4, pages 41-50, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-50347-2_4
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230503472_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-50347-2_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.