Tag Archives: goals

Creativity’s Guide to Problem-Solving

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Creativity's Guide to Problem-Solving

Hi Everyone! This post is going to be a little something different. So, part of my experience in working through things, as I’ve talked about in many places on the site, has been different aspects of my inner life experience being embodied by characters, whose appearance mirrors what their nature is like on the level of their feel, energy, approach to life, etc. One such character is one I call Creativity. She seems to specialize in solving any and all kinds of problems, utilizing things like creativity, lateral thinking, consideration, and playful experimentation. As a character, I’d say she’s generally good-natured and fun to be around, too.

I came up with the idea of having some characters “speak” out guides to things they are strong in, and the first one that came to mind was Creativity and problem-solving. How did I write this? Well, like any storyteller or actor might – I have a sense of Creativity, of her energy, and of how she might go about approaching giving a guide to this topic. So, without further ado, here is Creativity’s Guide to Problem-Solving: Continue reading →

The Deep Darkness of Desire

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The Darkness of Desire

Like a black hole, Desire tries to consume and destroy what makes it uncomfortable, including your own willpower! Stumbled across him while doing creative visualization.

Loneliness, fear, sorrow… being doubted, questioned, mistrusted, rejected… in pain, powerless, dead inside…. tragedy… loss… What do you think about these feelings?

For most of us, myself included, we’d rather not feel these things. And since certain circumstances bring out these feelings in us, it’s only natural to want to change our circumstances so that we have to feel these things as little as possible.

Yet when we’re not willing to feel certain things, we ignore ourselves during our times of greatest need. Our desire to not feel something doesn’t show us how, in our pursuit of something, we trample over our own spirit, the part of ourselves to whom it feels natural to feel those ways. All Desire can see is the goal.

Desire, to me, is the embodiment of ‘the ends justify the means’.

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Find your Curiosity and Move Past Failure

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Finding your way past Failure

On any journey, the way you imagined might not be the one you need to take. Curiosity can get you looking for the right way again.

When you’re trying to accomplish a goal, oftentimes, your own frustration with not having accomplished a goal can get in your way. We can be so desperate to get to our goal that we want to have the quickest way forward.

Here’s the problem with that: we imagine our strategy for getting to our goal. If imagining a goal was enough to get there, then life would be super easy, right? But achieving anything is not that simple. Our imagined approach is not enough to achieve the results we want.

Remember this quote from Thomas Edison?:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

If imagining his light-bulb were enough, he would have created it immediately. The same for any of the goals you strive for. Continue reading →

Find Your Unconditional Kindness, Feel Self-Acceptance

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“Avoid the signs.”

Oftentimes in life, the way we find our goals is by criticizing every wrong move we make. We think, “well, if I can avoid doing it wrong, if I PUNISH myself for doing it wrong, then I’ll end up doing it right, eventually.” Yeah but, how does it feel?

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What do you truly long for? Separating Goals and Purpose

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Ambition and Purpose Part Ways

“Out you go! Gahahahaha! Find your own way! Sink or swim!”
“I could be mad, but maybe you’re right. I’m going to find my own way!”

There is a part of one’s self who wants to chase big dreams, goals, and ambitions. And there’s another part who can get lost in life and wants to find direction. When these two meet, the part who is lost can be persuaded that what he is truly looking for is what the ambitious one has his sights on. But that is a lie. By pursuing ambitions, you can lose your sense of purpose, and thus the guiding light that gives you direction.

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The Warrior and the Shadow of Death

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My Inner Warrior, being stared down by The Knowledge of Death, who often takes the form of a blood-stained hawk.

Today, a challenge was given to me: to accept death. My warrior encountered the side of myself who dwells in the knowledge of death (and all of the most horrible aspects of reality). This made me realize the warrior side of me was still weak, still not looking death in the face.

It turns out that the side of myself who appeared as a hawk with bloodstained wings (who I mentioned briefly here), and the side that keeps death in mind, are one in the same. Needless to say, many other parts of me try to ignore him or avoid him, thinking instead about particular aspects of life that favor what they want in the moment, rather than the whole.

For instance, think about goals. If you have a goal in life, thinking about how death would render that goal meaningless probably isn’t going to help you. It might bring you down, or, even if you do accomplish the goal, thinking about death might leave you with an empty feeling.

And warriors operate on goals: they see a goal, and break through the barriers standing in the way. But what is that warrior fighting for? If they kept death in mind, the impermanence of things, would they make the same choice?

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The Irresponsible Self

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The part of myself who coaxed me to procrastinate. He carries around a lot of pain.

Ever been trying to get things done, and, whenever you think of an item on the list, you say to yourself, “eh I’ll just do that later.”? I bet you have. Procrastination runs rampant in the world and this little voice seems to be the one responsible for putting things off. Today I decided to see where the thought was coming from, and I found something intriguing.

On the surface, this irresponsible guy just says things to get you to put off doing what you really want to get done. He comes up with all kinds of excuses as to why you don’t really need to be doing what you wanted to get done. But the real question is, why is he saying these things to begin with? Why make excuses?

After talking with this part of myself for a little while, I could tell that he was carrying around a lot of pain. He got defensive, bitter, resentful, and told me straight out that he didn’t want to do some of the things I wanted to get done because they would be “too painful”. Now sure, any given task has its challenges, but this part of yourself uses the pain it’s already carrying around as an excuse for avoiding more pain, even if it’s relatively small.

I had to be very patient with this part of myself to avoid an all out fight. Understand that it can get so bad for this side of yourself that it would rather bury the pain deep within the subconscious than even talk about it. However, doing this reduces the chance of healing that pain by A LOT, because you have to go dig around inside with the express purpose of finding the pain. And who really enjoys doing that?

However, what my encounter today showed me is that it is an absolute priority, if we want to live without carrying around a burden of intense emotional pain, that we must find a way to get to the pain and let it out despite what this irresponsible side of ourselves says.

Now, that being said, it’s not easy to find that pain right off the bat, and that part of you may not even remember where the pain is stored anymore. So instead of stigmatizing this part of yourself, it’s OK to let it continue doing things that it enjoys doing to avoid the pain, as long as another part of you searches for it. However, this pain-ridden, irresponsible self might resort to harmful activities, in which case, it needs to be confronted.

So what’s the take away? If you want to live more freely, seek out your pain to let it out. Otherwise you’ll get caught in a routine of life that doesn’t satisfy your true needs, and doesn’t bring you fulfillment.