It's January 2020, a fresh start of a new decade and traditionally the new year is a time of goal setting we call "New Year's Resolutions." We look out at our lives and set some goals on things we are going to do in this new year, so we can have the things in life we are missing or unable to create thus far. We all do it, every year, and the large majority of us, fail.
Extrinsic goals, goals that our outside of us, and that are based in action, are fully dependent on willpower. Willpower easily wanes, because it's not something that is in endless supply. It's firmly based in our energetic ability to have it.
Let's take a deeper look at the WHY of our extrinsic goals.
Where do they come from? What is the catalyst underneath them?
We look back, and then we look forward and decide what we need to do for life to go better.
-I'm going to lose 50 pounds and be healthier or be more attractive to find a love relationship
-I am going to be more diligent in my business and make $100,000 more!
-I am cutting out sweets so that my energy stays steadier and I can be more patient and kind.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with these goals. What a great thing to want to do better!
And there is absolutely everything wrong with these goals! First they are not the actual goals. We choose external goals because we think that having them, will bring us the feelings we crave, yet we are rarely in touch with that inner reason.
Wouldn't it make more sense to set goals to having the feelings we are craving?
Let's take another look at those three goals;
-I'm going to lose 50 pounds and be more attractive (I crave to be loved and desired.)
-I am going to be more diligent in my business and make $100,000 more!( I crave ease and to feel safe)
-I am cutting out sweets.(I want to feel in control, and more steady)
Victor Frankl, while at Auschwitz, discovered that he could create ease and even happiness for himself in the most horrific of life circumstances, by consciously choosing to have a state of mind that focused on things that made him feel good. Think about that. While living in the most tenuous and unsafe of circumstances, he could make it through his days with an inner resolve to be happy anyway.
He documents it in his famous book "Man's Search for Meaning."
The only thing we actually have control over is our state of mind.
You can decide you are loved, by loving yourself.
You can decide life is full of ease and you are safe by focusing on how much ease you have and reflecting on how safe you are.
You can know that you are in full control of how life feels which is why we want control, to we are in control.
It's a game of focus and perspective, that we always have the ability to win!
It's also more...
Our reactions and the subsequent feelings that follow, are steeped in unconscious conditioning. They are learned habits from our parents, communities, and from social media. We make up the meanings of ourselves in our lives, and of our lives' happenings and circumstances, and then spend our lives reacting to things.
You've likely heard of this before, controlling our thoughts, (which isn't possible but that's another blog.). It's more an ability to focus on the thoughts that give us the feelings we are craving.
You have the ability to walk right up to the thought buffet, and resolve to choose the ones that fill your feeling cravings deeply, and thus you can create the feelings you want, and leave the other thoughts on the buffet table.
But there's more, and this is rarely the focus.
When you live more of the time in the thoughts that help you feel good, and as you feel good more of the time, the things on that original resolution list, naturally happen or simply show up in your life.
-when you love yourself, love shows up.
-when you live in a lighter energy, your body drops the heaviness
-when you allow it all consciously, cravings or neediness falls away and you are in perfect control
You see Victor Frankl survived the Holocaust! The guards seemed to pass him over for the gas chamber. The good life, (and in his case, simply "life" stayed alive, because he stayed alive inside. There was no good reason for him not to be chosen to die, they just didn't.
The deeper your inner resolve to have the perspective and choose the thoughts that fill the feelings you are craving, the more your life aligns with your predominant feelings. Things show up.
So if we go back to the original willpower dependent extrinsic goal, how life goes will mirror the energy of your efforts, not the actions.
When you are in the energy of willpower, hard work and sacrifice, ignoring how things feel and pushing through, life will show up that way exactly. The external goal might happen due to your actions, but the underneath need, will still be very far away and thus the goal will not create what you were really wanting in the first place.
The better you feel, the better life goes, that's how it works,
not the other way around :).
We teach and practice this idea, and help you get in touch with that deeper part of yourself. It's hard to see while steeped in the constant busyness of everyday living.
But this deeper wisdom and perspective, will help you balance internally, focus on the things that make living your life, a much more fulfilling and inspiring thing.
Visit us sometime and explore yourself for yourself!
