As soon as possible

After scoring a 630 on GMAT after about 18 months of preparation, a student was recommended me by his admissions consultant. He was in a typical mindset when he came to me i.e. he wanted to get done with GMAT 'as soon as possible'. It took about 3 months for him to score a 720. He was, of course, elated. When I messaged him five days after his successful attempt asking how things were, I was expecting he would say that he was busy with applications or probably still busy celebrating.

However, his life had turned upside-down by then. He had slept just about five hours in total in the last five days, consumed by stress. He shared that how as soon as he shared his GMAT success, his parents wanted him to come back to India to join them and do MBA from ISB (he always wanted to do MBA from the US) and his girlfriend's mother wanted him to get engaged to his girlfriend as soon as possible. And the girlfriend was adamant on not leaving the US. 

In short, his personal life was in complete turmoil. As I tried to calm him down and discussed different ways to resolve the current situation, I could see that he wanted to get out of the situation 'as soon as possible'. While this was entirely understandable, I knew, from my understanding of life, the more we want to run away from a situation, the more stressed we become and the longer it takes to get out of the situation. On top of that, a lot of times, we come out with highly sub-optimal solutions. So, at that time, I said to him, " You wanted to get done with GMAT as soon as possible and now you find yourself in a much worse situation than you were before your GMAT success. Are you really sure you'd be better off after this situation is over? Are you sure you'd be better off if you do your MBA from the US? Are you sure you'd be better off if you pay heed to your parents? You need to at least recognize that you cannot be sure about the future at all. Then, why so much hurry? Why not calm down and make peace with the current situation and then think peacefully to find an optimal way without trying to rush through? Are you sure you'd be better off applying this year than next year?"

I could sense that he had calmed down somewhat by the end of my rhetoric since the desire to end the situation 'as soon as possible' and the consequent stress had subsided within him.

I wanted to share this incident publicly since this is a very common problem. We set certain goals in life, and then we want to achieve them 'as soon as possible'. And then in our this desire, we treat the journey as inconsequential and thus not capable of being enjoyed. We spend our lives, chasing goals, but our lives which are almost entirely spent chasing those goals become inconsequential and thus incapable of being enjoyed. It's not wrong to have goals, of course, but to make our lives subservient to those goals is probably not the most optimal way to spend our lives, especially if we are looking for joy and happiness in our lives. Are we? If yes, then are we succeeding? Are people in 30s happier than the people in 20s? Are people in 40s happier than the people in 30s? If not, should we change your goals? Or the way we go about achieving those goals?