In this article I will be setting new goals, and setting guidelines for how I want to live life. This is the second and final part of this article. You may want to read part 1 of this post on my guidelines and goals to make sense of part 2.
Five states of life – continued
In the previous article I already covered the first three of the five areas:
- Material state
- Active state
- Social state
- Emotional state
- Physical state
The next to work on is:
Emotional state
This is about how you feel, about the inner voice and about inner peace if you will.
The old guidelines
- I listen to my intuition and take it seriously
- There is no failure, only feedback I can learn from
The central values here are Love and Authenticity. This state for me is about being rooted from within (the authenticity part) and in connection with life and people (the love part). In my mission statement I say that I love life, and that I have a lot of love to give. That authentic love needs to be expressed, and there are various ways I can do that.
Obviously love is expressed in relationships with family, friends and loved ones. And even in those close relationships, there are a variety of ways that love manifests itself. Becoming a father really made me aware of that.
What I recently rediscovered is that music is something that helps me get in touch with my emotions too. Apparantly that’s even a common factor for people, as I’ve read in an article that the first language (“goegoegoegaga”) that we communicate in (with newborn babies) is best labeled as music, instead of as language. It serves the purpose of communicating emotions to the baby, helping them to make sense of the world. I’m definitely going to write about this more, fascinating stuff!
But back to my own guidelines: if music is connected to emotions, making music might also be a great way to express them. It may serve as a way to live through emotions, in other ways than is done in relationships. So to sum all these new insights up, here are the new guidelines:
The new guidelines
- Trust intuition
- Keep the music alive
- Express yourself
Physical state
This is about what you want with your body and mind.
The old guidelines
- I listen to my body and keep myself in balance
- I have a lithe and athletic body with excellent stamina
- My diet mainly consists of healthy organic food
The central value here is Growth, although the aspect of design and impact are important here too. The physical aspect is not really represented in my mission statement anymore, at least not specifically. In order to radiate positive energy though, you need to have high levels of energy. When you feel depleted, you won’t be able to radiate that energy.
Recently I discovered that I look at the physical aspect from a threshold level. My stamina and energy levels need to be above a certain level in order to feel good. But above that level, I don’t have great ambitions. So if we look at the old guideline “I have a lithe and athletic body with excellent stamina”, the stamina part is no longer valid. As far as the athletic body part, that is still true. That part is about being visually pleasing (which originates from the design aspect that I mentioned).
This state is not only about the body, it’s also about the mind. If there is a challenge for me with respect to the mind, than it’s keeping it from creating chaos. I have so many interests and such a desire to learn, that I often get caught up by too many things that are occupying my mind. This is something that needs attention too.
As far as the guidelines go, I shuffled them around quite a bit:
The new guidelines
- Feel healthy and energetic
- Shape up
- Free your mind
And that completes the guidelines in all the five states. Now on to new goals.
New goals
Even though I’ve worked my way through all five different states, I’m not setting goals for all of them simultaneously (again). I have done so in the past, and it turned out to be too much to focus on for me. I’ve discovered that having only a handful of goals works better than having lots of goals. I also discovered that goals with a short deadline work better for me too.
I’ve said this in previous articles already, but I’m going to set three goals. One that focuses on a result, one that focuses on effort and one just for fun. They’re three different types of goals, probably with a very different dynamic. I’m also going to work with a six week timeframe, after which I evaluate the goals and set new ones.
After working my way through all these different levels, I have enough ideas for a lot of different goals. The way I’m going to choose them is less structured than the previous part of the process. Because I’m starting with actively working with goals again, I’m going to choose the ones that give me the most energy from the start. It is best to start with a good experience!
So here are the three different goals:
Result goal:
I want to make some real progress in the “Less stuff” guideline in the Material state. So the goal is to get rid of 100 things over the coming six weeks. That equals more than 2 per day on average. Some of the stuff I’ll throw away (responsibly of course), some of it I’ll give away and some of it I’ll be selling (I hope! This would certainly help the “more cash in” guideline as a side-effect!).
Effort goal:
Over the past year or so, I have pretty much neglected working out at all. On the days I work at school I walk between 4 and 5 kilometers (in total) between school and the trainstation, and even though that’s a good habit that benefits my stamina and physique, it’s not really a workout. I want to improve how I look, so for the effort goal I set that I have to do some strength training everyday.
Fun goal:
As far as the fun goal is concerned. I choose to make music. And since this is the fun goal, I will not define a result I need to obtain or a daily effort I have to put in. Making music is one of the things I want to be consciously working on, without pressure.
And there they are. I’ll be reviewing my progress every week in my weekly reviews. These goals start today, Saterday February 20. The six week deadline is on Friday April 2. And now for some progress!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
In NLP, we’d remind polepe to focus on an outcome/intention/goal that describes the FEELINGS, i.e. physical sensations, we want to have, rather than the specific path (process) to get to those feelings, or specific material things we might find while taking that path. These feelings/sensations outcomes are the most important things to keep in mind, since they allow us to more easily be open to all the good, true, beautiful, and inspiring opportunities that happen to present themselves in life which we may not be expecting. Because, if we are focusing too much on specific paths or material things, such as “writing a book”, we might miss out on some other opportunities we have that would lead us to even more of these feelings we want to have, because “writing” is just one paths we might take and “a book” is just one of the material things we might find on our way to our intended sensational goal. The purpose of doing things this way, – of setting the goal/outcome/intention to be feelings – is to let each part of our self do what it does best. The conscious mind is great at looking at the past and future and deciding what might be best for the future, in this case sorting though all the different sensations that it’s had in the past and would love to have again, and the unconscious body~mind is best at navigating and noticing details about possible hidden gems in our environment. For me, my goal/intention/outcome is something like: The feelings of having enough whole food, pure water, fresh air, warmth, light, and the freedom to express myself physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. The short version of this goal is to continue to love the world and myself even more every day. For you, Brain, what feelings do you get when you give your greatest gifts, and greatest services to the world, inspiring as many polepe as you can, as you have fun studying, embodying, and sharing your favorite wisdom? What does it feel like when you do this? What sensations do you experience as these things happen?
{ 1 trackback }