Jennifer, a very intelligent woman came to see me about finding some direction in her life, but instead she filled her sessions with complaints about her husband. According to her, he was obsessed with buying the latest four wheel drive vehicle, and making sure that he had the very best in fly-casting equipment Her husband owned his own business, provided her with a comfortable living, and was certainly able to afford his pleasures. Her attitude was so critical, it began to tell me more about her than him. We explored what bothered her so much about her husband’s pursuit of these special interests. It turned out that she was deeply envious; not of his all-terrain vehicle or fishing rods, but of his guilt-free pursuit of his dreams. She did not know what she wanted to do with her own life, and it drove her crazy to see her husband follow his inclinations so easily. Jennifer was close to convincing herself that she had married a shallow, petty man who was obsessed with his possessions, when the real problem was that she had not allowed herself to focus on what she wanted.
4) The Tool of Appeal:
Appeal is the attracting pull that desirable people and things exert upon us. In a store, some items appeal to us, while others are passed over without a second glance. In a room full of people, we sneak peeks at a certain person because there is something about him or her that we find “appealing.” This subtle experience is a reliable guide, nudging you toward something or someone who reminds you of what you need.
5) The Tool of Physical Response:
Physical sensations are among the best tools for self-discovery, because they are less likely to be filtered through family expectations or cultural norms. When we get close to our purpose in life, we all have physical reactions. A heightened sense of energy has already been mentioned. Physical pleasure is a giveaway as well. What is exciting to your heart and mind easily extends into pleasant body feelings. Feelings of warmth and well-being are very common, often accompanied by pleasant, full feelings in the chest area. Connecting with our true purpose gives us a feeling of physical lightness, especially noticed as a feeling of weight being taken off our back and shoulders. It is also characteristic to feel physically able in the pursuit of our true purpose, as though our nerves and muscles were preparing to make physical action easy.
There are also unpleasant responses to things that would pull you away from your purpose. Feelings of disgust, fatigue, boredom, depression, headache, nausea, and irritability are just a few of the physical sensations that occur when you are moving away from your right direction. (The one exception in this category of negative reactions is anxiety, unquestionably a noxious sensation. Anxiety and fear are natural knee-jerk reactions many of us have toward any kind of change, good or bad, and therefore are not always indicators you are going the wrong way.)
It is important to “tag” these feelings when they occur so you will learn to recognize their messages in the future. “Tagging” the feeling means that you notice in detail how it feels, and then name it so you can quickly identify it later on.
6) The Tool of Mental Response:
Just as our bodies respond to what we like, so do our thoughts. For instance, if you are considering an interesting career that fits you well, you will probably experience hope, optimism, and a sense of possibility. Uplifting fantasies will pop into your mind about how it would be to live that way. These pleasant and stimulating mental responses occur when you are on the right track, moving toward your true purpose in life.
If you review these tools for self-discovery, you will probably recognize every one of them as familiar experiences. Perhaps you will even wonder what the big deal is, since you already were well aware of these feelings. The point is that these naturally occurring human feelings also are tools, designed to be used for guidance. Too often we dismiss these experiences as simple random reactions, lacking any particular usefulness. The truth is that these feelings and reactions exist for the crucial purpose of telling us when we are on track toward finding fulfillment If you don’t know where to start, utilizing these tools will begin to point you in the right direction within a single day.
Success Moments
It is hard to see all at once what we should be doing with our lives. However, on any given day, you can use the self-discovery tools already in your possession to gather up pieces of your life puzzle. Every time you notice a surge of energy, or follow your interests, you are having a success moment Tag it, and keep going.
The goal is not to burden you with unrealistic expectations of perfect mental health or instant total success. Our goal is for you to collect success moments. Success on this life quest is getting as close as possible to the bits and pieces of your dream. These are the moments when you know you are living your life through your real self. A success moment is a goal that is completely possible, and without which nothing bigger is possible. A moment of success may be followed by a disappointment, or an emotional regression. But that does not cancel out the reality of your success, however brief it may have been. Success is success. People who have successfully followed their dreams have learned the art of nurturing and tagging their success moments, and they take every bit of credit for them.
The Wrong Questions to Ask Right Now
It usually happens that as soon as people come up with an idea for their future, they immediately begin assessing whether or not they think it would be possible. Worry starts over how they would go about making these dreams come true. They quickly run through their sum total of ideas related to the topic, and, not surprisingly, come to the conclusion that it cannot be done. This demoralizing attitude quickly drains their initiative. The problem is that they launched prematurely into the planning stage, when they had barely begun to formulate ideas for what they wanted to do.
Self-discovery has a predictable course, and skipping over some of the steps never works. The sequence of growth stages is invariable. If you are in the daydreaming stage and try to push yourself ahead into planning, you could easily become so discouraged you will stop.
Accepting Our Desires
Sometimes we know what we want before we are ready to accept it We can be surprised by a simple desire popping up, and the dilemma that results can make us intensely uncomfortable. This is what happened to Michael.
Michael was a thirty-seven-year-old sociology professor who liked to stop in at a local bookshop on his lunch hour. One particular day, he hovered around a certain bookshelf for over a half-hour, picking up a large paperback on spirituality and art, and putting it back again. He made a point of investigating other titles on nearby shelves, pushing his glasses up on his nose and thumbing through books he had no intention of buying. Michael could not walk away from the book with its thrilling, mystical cover art, but he could not bring himself to buy it either. It was getting late, he had to be back for his next class. He told himself his ambivalence was absurd. Putting a stop to his dithering, Michael plucked the spirituality book off the shelf and tried to look casual as he strolled to the checkout counter. Inside, however, Michael felt like an adolescent about to buy a sexy magazine. What had been a safe and private fantasy was now exposed on the laminate counter as a declaration of intent.
When Michael talked about his purchase later in a therapy session, he fidgeted in discomfort. He felt as though he had exposed a shameful, unacceptable side of himself, but he said he also had to have the book. One might say that this was a small act, an inconsequential event. But if we had monitored Michael’s pulse, blood pressure, and adrenaline levels at the sales counter, we would have come to the well-founded conclusion that his body was preparing him to run for his life. We can easily understand the anxiety of a mortified teenage boy trying to buy a forbidden magazine. We recognize such symbolic acts of emerging adulthood, and the bridge every adolescent is trying to cross. But a grown man, a professor and parent, feeling such a high level of anxiety about buying a book does not seem natural.
Of course it is not the book itself that so embarrasses Michael or those with seemingly incongruous desires at these critical points of transformation.