Hunting The Muse

It's nice to have

It's nice to have clear goals, but it is also extremely easy to have our goals become creatures of their own. Sometimes goals have a very tenuous connection to our emotional needs. How often do we make a goal based off of one session of brainstorming, one mental space that we are in based off of one passing desperate need or guilt trip, only to find out later that we have been working towards something we don't care about anymore? When we make a goal, how can we maintain our emotional connection to it? What's the fastest way to keep checking in with it to make sure it still fits in with our other priorities and needs?

There's two opposing skills that need to be mastered here - one is identifying exactly what we need to do given an emotional need and then accomplishing it, and the other is identifying the emotional need in the first place. When the need is clear, it requires a methodical ability to create strategy and put it into place, and then it requires sustained effort, willpower, and discipline to accomplish it. But the skills needed to identify the emotional need in the first place are far different.

Sometimes these emotional needs are obvious. It might be that there's a huge serendipitous moment where it feels like the universe is just telling you what to do. Or perhaps you've been denying a basic need for a long time and you're at the edge of an abyss - change your life Or Else. At those moments, the emotional needs are loud. But we can't count on serendipity, and we should hope we don't get pushed to the edge of the abyss. We can't always wait for the loudness.

More often, our emotional needs are less obvious. And to identify them we have to go into this counterintuitive space of "proactive receptivity". It can almost seem like an oxymoron, but really it's nothing more than disciplined listening. Do you feel vaguely dissatisfied about something? Stop, breathe into it. Maybe go as far as turning off the lights, lighting candles, and lying down. You have to find a space between directed thought and falling asleep - let your mind wander, but give it a general direction. Keep asking yourself questions and see what comes up.

I've done this often, and have used it as part of my brainstorming to come up with goals. What is confusing for me is that they can still change so quickly. Either I am growing really quickly, or I have been non-integrated for a long time, (or perhaps both), but what I am getting stuck in lately is that it seems various different - even opposing - emotional needs seem to thrust themselves forward into places of greater priority. So for me, I haven't quite figured out the balancing point between listening, and having actual goals that consistently feel appropriate.

And so I have to choose a directon to err towards - I've very clearly chosen the direction of making sure I am *not* working towards goals that feel disconnected to an emotional need. But in this time of non-integration, it means that I'm not extremely attached to any projects or life directions - everything keeps changing. Different job opportunities, different areas of focus, different friends, different social projects... at times, it can feel like that I'm just not so good at the discipline and sustained effort, the accomplishment... but the more gentle way of looking at it is just knowing that things feel in flux for me right now... I am either growing or integrating, and I'm not quite there yet, not quite at a place where I can slow down and accept something consistent.

I hope that the churning slows down soon - I fully intend that soon, some consistent truths and commitments will rise to the surface for me - things that feel gentle and staid, permanently connected to myself and my emotions. I don't need many, because I love variety. But a couple of central things to commit to - it would be nice. Posted by Curt at January 24, 2002 01:11 AM