Desires, Purpose and Achieving Goals
They look like they're getting what they desire. Or do they?
In the past week I've done some meditations and journaling to get to the heart of my heart's desires.
What do I really want?
What do I desire that I'm barely aware of?
Which of my desires are not really my true desires?
How can I know?
This line of inquiry is different from purpose work, and I feel, more elemental in that desires are the very core of what our souls want to create in this world. Purpose, for me, feels more like the vehicle of how our innate desires intersect with our gifts and play out in the physical plane of this world.
I've done my purpose work inquiry (some years ago actually) and feel very settled with it. I don't believe that it's changed that much. I will admit that I've often left it on the side of the road of my journey and let false desires dictate my path, but I'm happy to see that I'm picking up my purpose again and carrying it along with me into this next phase of post-motherhood career.
So back to desires.
I wanted to be really clear about my desires. I think it's dangerously easy to adopt someone else's desires as your own. For me, that comes mostly in the form of career desires. Do I really want to hit that milestone in my business? Do I really want that many followers on social media? Do I really want that particular business model? What do I truly desire to do with my time?
I think we often say we want something (desire it) because it seems like the "right" thing to say. I applaud people who take the time to examine, for example, whether they want to buy a house or get married to their partner or have children, because it shows they're trying the desire on for size to see if it fits.
We'd all benefit from taking a few pauses before saying we desire some culturally normative milestone just because it's the obvious "next step."
So, to the Desire Map I went.
You might be familiar with the work of Danielle LaPorte and her Desire Map process. I downloaded her book and got to reading. Danielle's premise is essentially that we don't want the thing we desire, we want how the thing will make us feel.
If we can be clear about how we want to feel, then we can make decisions in alignment with those feelings regardless of achieving (or not) the intended goal and feel our core desired emotions all along the way.
Cool. My core desired emotions are: supreme (the highest/divine version of myself); all (connected to god/all of creation); joy; generative (for me creative and sustainable and giving all rolled into one).
These words feel amazing to me. They feel like words that will grow with me.
But I still wasn't feeling full clarity about the whats. What do I really want? What does that mean for my business/relationships/creativity?
So I asked my friend/mentor/Soul Language creator Jennifer about it. She said:
“I think the first step is to understand what limitation is behind the lack of clarity..to see what the fear or the limiting belief is that is louder than the desire...AND it will always be our big theme of challenge. Your big theme (and I’m not talking out of school here because you have created a whole program around it) is not enough...so if you had enough what would you do with it? Who would you be? ”
She's right. For me, fear of being Not Good Enough is my challenge. So I flipped it and then asked what happens if I am 100% More Than Enough, what do I desire? What do I really want to do, be have, experience?
And instead of getting a laundry list of cars, vacations, fashion items and career accolades, I received something altogether different.
“Your heart’s desire is to BE connected. To BE connection. ”
The message went on:
When you're in that place, there's no real question or anxiety about what path to take, which goal to desire, or even what step to take next in your journey. So much about the modern sense of achievement and success places everything in the head space- that is using your intellect to solve problems and to create strategies and to decided the appropriate course of action or vehicle for marketing or place to live.
But that does a disservice to our hearts, and really, to our souls. Our souls really don't care about what the head cares about...connection.
And as long as you are connected, your soul will be happy.
Now, what does that mean in terms of desires and to do lists and achieving your dreams? It means that you can enlist your soul to help you decode next steps.
It mans you can call on your higher self to help you parse tactical decisions.
But my guess is that once you've got your soul on board, the next steps and the decision making won't feel so fraught with anxiety, so uncertain. Instead your next steps and decisions will have a sense of rightness and inevitability about them.
Doesn't that feel nice?
Sounds good to me! I don't have to stress about knowing my desires (other than connectedness). I can move on effortlessly to my next steps. (One of which was publishing this post. And it was so easy!)
Though now I want to explore how to get my soul's desire (connection) on a more regular basis.
Here's what I've used to feel connected:
Meditation. This is a biggie for me. I think I did three meditations today (hahaha it had been a while) in order to get to the point where this message could come through.
I like guided and silent meditations. I'll post some resources in a future blog about my faves.
Movement. Dance, yoga, walking, driving. All of these can work for me at different times. Sometimes before or after meditation. It's about getting out the head and into the body that frees up the heart/soul. I have a fun dance video if you're interested.
Singing. This is an interesting way to get out of your head but you must be able to let go of judgment in order for it to be effective. If you're all, "ugh I missed that note again," then you're letting your head take over.
Prayer. As opposed to request-heavy prayer, a contemplative prayer practice can be a very meditative way to silence the head voice.
Special tools like Soul Language. Soul Language has become one of my most favorite meditative/connection practices. I talk about it in more detail here.
So there you have it. The key to getting what I want is not knowing what I want. For me, it's about being connected enough to take simple inspired action.
And that feels very supreme, all, joyful and generative.
These concepts are at the core of the Joy|Money Matrix- a simple tool to help creative entrepreneurs achieve goals with ease in their businesses and lives. Click here to learn more.