What is Destination Disease? The Need for Medical Success is a Destination Goal

When success takes on a medical perspective in terms of a person’s health and well being, or as the inability to succeed or the lack of success, this often equates failure to succeed with a disease process.

Is it actually a disease process?

The article, “When you catch destination disease” compares medical success to a destination, or a point in life towards which a person is oriented.

Setting and achieving goals are two different things. Everyone has goals, some more realistic and achievable than others. Many people strive to achieve their goals, while others coast along without putting in a concerted effort into reaching a point in life where they feel they are successful. There may or may not be an element of contagion with respect to striving to achieve goals or coasting along in life. If one person sets distinct, realistic goals, it does not necessarily mean that others will set goals too, much less the same ones. Neither does setting goals guarantee success.

It would appear that the diagnosis destination disease pertains to feelings as opposed to fact. Feelings reveal the need to link success to achieving, or reaching a specific destination in life. Coupled with this feeling is the lack of fulfillment, or negative feelings that arise when one sees him or herself as a failure, or other feelings that reveal a distinct lack of orientation, purpose or direction.        

Feelings can and do lead to joy or sorrow which can affect a person’s health and well-being. The contagion element is present in both joy and sorrow. One person’s joy can lead to joy in another person; one person’s sorrow can lead to sorrow experienced by another also.

Goal setting and achievement of success have to do with becoming proactive in a positive, constructive direction. Motivation to succeed is often rooted in faith, as opposed to feelings. Feelings arise in conjunction with a person’s emotions and the emotional reaction might be appropriate or inappropriate.

Goal setting has to do with specific challenges in life and the steps taken to achieve success. When a person is in a state of wellness, life offers many different kinds of challenges, each one with a distinct set of goals. These goals are flexible and change over time. A state of non-wellness, disease or disharmony with oneself, others, or even with the divine, can lead to anxiety, fear, frustration, confusion and failure. This suggests that disease is not associated with success or failure to reach goals. It may only be realistic in terms of having a sense of ‘dis-ease’ or restlessness related to disharmony. 

A well person seeks to achieve his or her goals, always desiring to expand this horizon in life by setting new goals immediately. A person who is not well is often defeated before he or she achieves any goals. Even goal setting becomes problematic.

What is destination disease? Is it a misnomer, or simply a question like, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg”? In other words, is it actually a disease or simple a state of dis-ease?