People didn’t stop having goals.
They stopped tolerating long ones.
That’s the shift most people feel but rarely name.
Ask almost anyone if they still want something meaningful—
a better life, stronger finances, stable relationships, real purpose—
and the answer is yes.
What’s changed isn’t desire.
It’s tolerance.
There was a time when friction was expected.
If something mattered, it took years.
If it was worth building, it was uncomfortable.
If progress stalled, that didn’t mean failure—it meant you were still in the game.
Delay wasn’t a warning sign.
It was part of the contract.
People didn’t ask, “Why is this so hard?”
They asked, “How long do I stay with it?”
Friction used to be normal.
You planned around resistance.
You expected boredom, doubt, slow stretches, and setbacks.
You measured progress in seasons, not outcomes.
Now friction feels like a defect.
If something slows us down, we assume it’s broken.
If a goal doesn’t reward quickly, it feels unfair.
If effort doesn’t show immediate results, we start questioning the goal itself.
That shift didn’t happen overnight.
Comfort quietly became the default success metric.
Somewhere along the way, feeling okay replaced becoming capable.
The standard changed from endurance to experience.
The question used to be:
“Can I see this through?”
Now it’s more often:
“Why does this feel hard?”
And once that question becomes normal, long goals start to collapse.
Because long goals require sitting with uncertainty without reassurance.
They require continuing when nothing is happening.
They require trusting a process that doesn’t constantly validate you.
Modern systems don’t train that muscle.
They train responsiveness.
Restart.
Reframe.
Optimize.
Rebrand.
Lower the bar and still call it progress.
None of this makes people lazy or weak.
It makes long ambition harder to hold.
When everything can be adjusted instantly, patience feels unnecessary.
When everything can be reframed, quitting doesn’t feel like quitting.
When comfort is treated as success, endurance feels outdated.
So goals got shorter.
Not because people aim low.
But because long goals demand a relationship with discomfort that modern culture no longer supports.
That’s why so many people feel restless instead of driven.
They’re busy, but not anchored.
Motivated in bursts, then drained.
Always adjusting, rarely arriving.
They haven’t lost ambition.
They’ve lost a culture that respects slow construction.
Older generations didn’t have better tools.
They had fewer exits.
If something mattered, you stayed because staying was the only way forward.
Walking away wasn’t framed as self-care—it was framed as unfinished business.
That doesn’t mean the old way was perfect.
But it did one thing well:
It taught people that meaning takes time.
Today, we’ve reduced suffering—but we’ve also reduced stamina.
That’s the trade most people are living inside without realizing it.
When friction is treated as a flaw, people stop choosing paths that require patience.
When comfort is the reward, ambition shrinks to what can be maintained without strain.
That’s why goals feel smaller now.
Not because people want less.
But because fewer systems reward staying the course when it gets dull, heavy, or uncertain.
This is the point where readers stop defending and start nodding.
Because most people know this isn’t about motivation.
It’s about environment.
You can’t build long ambition in a culture that treats resistance as a signal to stop.
Shortened goals aren’t a personal failure.
They’re a cultural signal.
And signals can be corrected—
but only if we’re honest about what was traded away.
Long goals don’t disappear because people stop caring.
They disappear when patience is no longer taught, rewarded, or protected.
And once you see that,
you stop blaming yourself
and start understanding the terrain you’re standing on.
micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org
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