Archive for Creating My Life
When You Don’t Know What You Want
Posted by: | CommentsLately, I’ve been noticing that the more I have the thought “I don’t know what to do with my life”, the worse I feel, the greater a mystery it seems to be and the less energy I have.
During a phonecall with a friend I remembered that, yesterday, a co-worker had told me that she was reading “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” and she’d been thinking it would be much easier to apply “this stuff” if other people were reading the book with her and they were doing the exercises together.
Anyway, we ended up having a conversation about my running some sort of coaching/mastermind group locally.
And then I immediately forgot the conversation.
It wasn’t until the phonecall this morning that I remembered it. I’d been given an opportunity to create a coaching group in exactly the way I’d said I’d wanted to build a coaching practice, i.e. that my clients would ask me, and I’d managed to walk right by it. So that got me thinking . . .
What if I never know what I want to do in the longer term? That’s pretty much how my life has been so far and I’ve done some interesting and fun things. So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
What if there is a whole bunch of people, like me, who never know exactly what they want to do and, instead of wasting energy trying to work it out, what we really need to learn, is how to notice the opportunities and how to be ready and take advantage of them when they appear?
Can I be the owner of the PROCESS of my life rather than of the outcomes I want to produce? Can I use what is in my life now to propel me into the future without having to know what future it is I want to create?
There is so much good information out there about creating the life you want to live and even how to find what you really want but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Then there are all those quotes (Can’t think of one off-hand) that seem to say if you don’t know where you’re going you’re doomed to go nowhere. Well, what if there is another way?
So, this is what I am going to do for the next 4 weeks. I am going to experiment with creating my life from where I am and without knowing where I’m going. I’m going to pay more attention to what is present and, when opportunities occur which I’m not sure about I will say “yes” rather than “no”.
Bottom line I’m going to have 4 weeks off from being concerned about not knowing what I want and see what happens.
Finding Your Purpose or Abdicating Responsibility?
Posted by: | CommentsSo much has been written about finding your purpose, discovering your true passion or living your calling and, over the years I’ve read many books and articles and attended seminars in the hope that I would discover just what, exactly, my true purpose is. I somehow thought that if I knew what this mystical thing was I could then dedicate my life to it and live happily ever after. But, I see now, that that seeking was a subtle form of abdicating responsibility.
Unconsciously, I was acting from a wish, if I could only find my soul purpose, I wouldn’t have to choose what I wanted to do. My calling would tell me what to do and I wouldn’t get it wrong. There’s an external feel to this – something outside of me that calls me to it. Something separate from my self. But, I suspect, that true purpose has to arise from within. Not be pulled in from outside.
So, that seems to leave me with 2 choices. I can wait until I’ve done the inner work and have discovered what my calling is or I can get on with my life and choose an, apparently, less grand purpose that develops and changes over time. I say “apparently” because I have it mentally set up that finding your purpose is a big deal and should lead to such lofty goals as world peace or otherwise changing the world.
Interestingly, when I mentioned to my coach that “all” I seemed to be up to at the moment was mothering, being in a relationship, being a friend etc., his response was “Proud and admirable purposes, all. They inspire courage, creativity and spirit”. Yet, to me, they often don’t seem enough.
“You don’t find your purpose, you create it”, he says. “Or you don’t. And you don’t have to”.
So, having freed myself from the finding your purpose diversion, I will get back to creating my life. I will shift my focus to answering the question – “what would I enjoy doing?” and then experiment with the answers.
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This little gem on the subject amused me – “Lancelot told Arthur that he heard Camelot’s call from far off France. He was called to the Round Table. But was he? Or did he choose it? He could have gone fishing in Scotland instead”.
Improving Goals Setting Success
Posted by: | CommentsThroughout my life I’ve had a mixed experience in relation to setting goals. I’ve tried numerous strategies but, until recently, none of them worked very well.
During the times I felt I should knuckle down and focus I set rigid goals that I tried to force myself to achieve, but unsurprisingly, I was never successful. Often these goals were so big, or so far in the future that I couldn’t relate what I was doing in the present to their eventual outcome. And there was always a big “should” connected to them which, inevitably, led to stress and resistance on my part.
Another approach was to break the goals down into manageable steps, a sort of mini-goal, and then focus on achieving each small step, one at a time. There were a couple of problems with this approach. One was, I still couldn’t really keep the connection with the big goal, even when I drew charts, plotted my progress and ticked boxes. The other problem was I often found myself at a completely different destination from the one I had intended, scratching my head and wondering how I got there. That, perhaps, was a big clue as to what was really going on.
A completely different approach was the one I followed in my “going with the flow” periods, a sort of anti goals setting method. Basically I sat around, completed abdicated responsibility for creating my life and used the fact that I achieved very little, as evidence for this relaxed approach not working. Relaxed? Ha! I was comatose.
So, since I’d spent many unsatisfying years spinning my wheels and getting nowhere fast I began to look more closely at the actual goals themselves and at the possibility of finding a happy medium. I think the fundamental problem with both approaches was that neither approach was strongly seated in my main life goals. My primary life goal is not about doing particular things or being a particular way but rather to consciously create my life so that each day is better than the last and each day I am better than I was the day before. (Not sure about the word “better”. Defining my primary life goal is a work in progress). Now there are a number of other goals that I think might contribute to that but I am not longer attached to them and am willing to drop/replace them if I disover they don’t contribute to my main goal.
One such goal is to create a prosperous coaching practice but I’m only willing to focus and put energy into that goal if it can be done in such a way that serves my bigger life goal. In order to create a life that really works for me it needs to be, amongst other things, fun and contain lots of unexpected moments. So building my coaching practice also needs to be fun and grow out of unplanned moments. The same is true for any goal I set myself. If it doesn’t support my primary life goal then there’s no point in setting it and this will lead to an improvement in my success rate.
Live For Today
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve had a very full on couple of weeks – lots of internal working and questioning of beliefs, stepping up to try new things and enquiring into the question “What do I intend to use my life for”? I’ve been pleased with my progress and with the mind shifting that has been happening but this morning I almost fell back into the old trap of over thinking things and believing my story of “I don’t know what to do”.
Last night I was catching a friend up on what had been happening and she was amazed (as I am) at how quickly things are shifting. But, even as I told the sotry I knew the real test would come this morning when I woke up with an empty calendar for the next three days. Because a big challenge for me has been how I live my life when seemingly nothing is happening. How do I fill the space? Do I even try?
And this morning, when I woke to the prospect of “nothing happening” over the next three days, I felt my energy begin to sink. So first I told myself “do not go there”. Then, I just lay quietly and observed my thoughts trying to sort this thing out, this thing of “nothing happening”. My mind came up with loads of ideas about what this meant and what I should do about it and then one question slowly arose that stopped the clamour of competing voices – “What do you want to create today”? Not in the future, but today. And I thought, but all I’ve got to do is a load of boring stuff – house cleaning, buying school uniform and sorting out a bus pass with my son.
All last week I was meeting new and exciting people, talking about exciting things and today, I thought, the only person around is my son.
ONLY? ONLY?
WAKE UP !
When did I get to see my son as the “only” (as in no-one special) person around. As though my time with him were not as wonderful and exciting as all the people I met last week. Because he is familiar and he is in my life on a daily basis I have fallen alseep to his beauty, to the wonder that he is. I have fallen into the trap of the daily grind – fighting with him over computer games, getting him to do his room and turn off the tele. I have been loving him, yes. But I have not been creating something new with him. Something today, even more wonderful than yesterday.
So, when I got out of bed, I did so committed to creating a wonderful day today with my son. With the miracle that is my son.
And then, as if that waking up weren’t enough, I read a blog post on my friend Nick Smith’s blog called live now. He recounts how a prospective client of his was killed in a plane crash this weekend. It is another wake up call and ends with:
Live Now!
Give all you have to give to the world now!
There is no tomorrow.
What Do You Intend To Use Your Life For?
Posted by: | CommentsI have come across this question – “What do you intend to use your life for”? – a number of times in the last couple of months but it was only this morning that I got it’s connection to life purpose.
I spent many hours in the past searching for my life purpose, as though there was one pre-ordained mission for me to complete that, if I didn’t find it, would mean I had somehow missed the point of my life. This is a common interpretation for many people who are involved in any spiritual discipline, religion, personal development or empowerment programme. When I didn’t find this one all-encompassing thing, I gave up looking and have felt totally turned off ever since, by anything that asks “What is your purpose”?
But whilst enquiring into my life through the victim/owner distinction I saw that a better question would be “What do I intend to use my life for”? Even better than “what do I really want”? since intending to use my life puts me firmly in the driving seat of my life and this creates my purpose. I’m already using my life. It is current, I just need to check I’m using it consciously and for something I truly want to create. Whereas thinking about what I want seems to put me in a place of not yet having/being something. Intending to use my life is an internal thing whereas wanting something is external.
