Laden...
Hello,
Happy New Year!
Final quick reminder: Today is the LAST DAY to apply for the Portfolio People Mastermind before the price goes up. Learn more about this small community of creative thinkers we’re curating.
This time of year is teeming with possibility. As the days get longer and a new year approaches, I start to wonder: What new thing wants to be birthed in me?
Whether you look back on this past year with regret or celebration, you may find yourself looking forward to what’s to come. This is natural. Part of the thrill of being alive is the joy of remaking your life into something other than what it has been.
Click here to read my latest article on this topic.
Many of us take this sense of exciting possibility and turn to goal-setting. There is nothing necessarily wrong with goals, but I find that many of us approach this process the wrong way.
We often think of goals as answers to questions instead of considering the questions themselves. For example, instead of asking, “How can I make more money?” we might consider asking, “What does it take to be content?” Or instead of asking “how can I lose weight?” we might instead wonder, “What will it take to love myself as I am?”
I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive for personal change. By all means, improve yourself. All I’m saying is that nobody ever told me I could reconsider the questions. If we don’t do this, we run the risk of constantly chasing the wrong thing.
Have you ever gotten the very thing you thought you wanted only to realize it’s not what you wanted at all? Maybe it came too easily or you sacrificed too much and it wasn’t worth the cost. Or maybe you didn’t get it at all and now feel like a failure.
What is all this about? Why do some of us crush our goals and others do not? Why do some pursuits come more easily than others? And what do we with our disappointment and boredom with our own life? Do you double down on pursuing your failed attempts at success, trying even harder, or simply give up and move on with life?
There is, I believe, a better way to live, which is to exchange traditional goal-setting for treating your life as a story.
Every story has a hero who wants something and is willing to overcome conflict to get it. The mission is usually too big for one person, so the hero requires helpers and guides to come to her aid.
Why should it be any different with you?
Instead of merely jotting down a bunch of arbitrary goals for the sake of setting some New Year’s Resolutions, what if you thought of this next year as a new chapter in the story of your life? And if that were the case, you might consider some new questions, such as:
“What do I want?” If life is a story and you are the hero, then wanting something is essential to moving the narrative forward. There is nothing wrong with wanting things. Your desires are clues to the next leg in your journey—embrace them. “What obstacles will I face?” Anything worth having is worth fighting for, and some prizes even require multiple battles. Expect resistance; it means what you want is important “How will I grow?” A character who gets exactly what he wants without struggle or complication makes for a boring story. Your journey will be filled with failures and disappointments, all meant to change you in some way. Whether you get what you want or not, the point is to learn and grow. “Who can help me?” Frodo had the Fellowship. Katniss had her friends. Luke Skywalker had his sister, a Muppet, and a bunch of ghosts. Who do you have? We all need community to help us complete our journeys.Take a moment and answer those questions and start seeing your life as a story. See how reframing it like this helps you better understand things like failure and your own frustration with this thing you want to happen not happening sooner.
Maybe what’s happening is so much bigger than you scratching an item off your bucket list. Maybe some great story is being told here with your life, and it’s up to you to pay attention and learn the lesson that this experience is meant to teach you.
And if you need help finding someone to help you on this journey, consider joining Portfolio People, an online and in-person community of creative people I’m working with this next year to help them pursue what they want and learn along the way.
Click here to learn more about it.
Best,
JeffLaden...
Laden...
