Happy New Year 2022!

A confession: I have no new years’ resolutions. In fact, I might have a strange relationship with goals. I think I take them less seriously than most people. Now, did I just say something devastating to my credibility as a coach? Perhaps, perhaps not.

I tend to view goals as important, but temporary. Often when we set a goal, there is a heightened sense of, “on the other side of achieving this goal is everything I have ever dreamed of.” It is a good thing because it fuels the drive towards achieving it.

But we all know that it’s seldom the case in reality. There is always another mountain beyond the mountain one has just climbed. There is no “final”. In fact, it is not uncommon that the goal-post shifts even before the person has achieved the initial goal, because just beginning to work towards it changes the person, their perspectives and often their circumstances.

And that’s why setting a goal is far from futile. Yes, for what gets achieved, but more for who one “becomes” in the process. Now THAT I take super seriously.

In this process of evolution, I often see an initial goal no longer feeling relevant to a client as an excellent indication of growth.

I tend to view goals as a curtain. There is something unseen behind the goal. Why, say, does someone want to start exercising every day? For instance, the unseen reason can vary from wanting more energy for family after a work day, to a sense of deep shame around one’s body. What would it be like to work on the thing behind the goal as well?

In a similar vein, sometimes the goals we choose reveal underlying unanswered big questions of life.

Questions like, “Am I living my life’s purpose?”… “How do I heal from this?”.. “What about love?”.. “How do I/ Did I make the right choice?”… “What is it like to feel I’m good enough?”.. “What will make me feel like I’ve made it?”

Often it is possible to make tremendous progress on these once we can see what underlying questions we are carrying.

But I am also learning to make space for the frequent experience that life’s big questions, the ones we really wish to have sorted, like yesterday.. often do not get answered neatly with a full stop, nor in a linear process.

We find make-shift answers, answers that take us closer to or further from our sense of true self.. And while those serve us for a time, in honest moments we often realize that the question still persists, perhaps in new shapes and forms.

I am learning that if we are brave enough to admit this, and make peace with the fact that perhaps there won’t be a “final” answer or closure- to whatever our big question is- we can start to grow bigger around it. We can contain and carry the unanswered question within our beings. Like a compassionate adult carrying a lost child (as opposed to, like a scared child running from an animal chasing it).

I am learning that carrying this unanswered question and walking a path towards its exploration will nonetheless change your life.

We can set ourselves the goal of strengthening our ability to explore, navigate, try something out, savour it, move on, explore again.. and knowing that all answers will eventually change can bring a light touch to our journey.

Finally, I am learning to view goals in the context that: We get to shape our lives to our plans, but life also gets to shape us to its own plans. It means recognizing that we have agency, but not total control.

It is a balancing act between confidence and humility, between creating what we want and being receptive to what is.

I am learning to tune into a stiller sense of being, where one can start sensing into where life wants to go. One doesn’t always have to agree. But it opens up refreshing new options! Options that will flow with ease if we feel open to letting go of our initial mental image of what should be.

I am learning to view this falling through of strongly held mental images as life shaping us. When that happens, if you can ask the question, “shaping me into what?”, you might stumble onto that mysterious frequency where you can hear life’s desires for you.

REFLECTION EXERCISE