Using meditation and writing to plan your goals
Welcome to the second part of our finding your goals series. If you haven't already, please read and complete the first article here before you start with the exercise in this article. When you are ready for your hour self appointment come back! Here we are going to be exploring our desires and goals via a short guided meditation and writing exercise. You will need a timer and a writing instrument that you like best. If you are using technology for these two items, be sure you set them on ‘do not disturb’ or ‘airplane mode’ so as to not distract yourself from your meditation and writing.
For your hour, you can go to your meditation spot or return to the place you have been walking to, whatever feels right. When you are ready to begin, start with your mindful breathing and body scan. Return back to your breath focusing on the inhale and exhale, feeling your body respond to the oxygen. After you feel centered you are ready to begin. Start with your visualization. You are in your goal life. You are happy and content. You are feeling the perfect mix of being challenged and stimulated with your work while also being successful. You are not in need financially or emotionally, you have hopes for the future but also are so happy in the current moment. Feel these emotions and find the warmth of this success. Now what does this life look like?
Your alarm is going off and you wake up. What is the bedroom like, pets, partner, alone? You do your favorite morning routine, what is it? Exercise, meditation, reading, coffee? You get ready for the day, who is with you? You go to work and you have a project that you are excited about. What is exciting about the project? Is it challenging, financially rewarding, helping the world? You go for lunch, who is meeting you or are you alone? You finish the work day and head home, what is the mode of transport, what is the city or town? You get home and start your evening routine, what is it? You have dinner with your family? Solo? Friends? You have a conversation with someone you love, who are they to you? Now how do you relax and fall asleep? When you are ready, open your eyes and say goodbye to your vision of the future.
With the thoughts of this visualization still fresh in your mind, grab your timer and writing instrument. Set a timer for five minutes and write down all your favorite details from the visualization. When the timer ends, restart it and start dividing these things between things you can control and things that you can not control and things you can half control. Focus on the things you have control over and reset the timer. Start brainstorming all the ways you can make these things happen in your life. Restart the timer for each subject and try to write for the entirety of the five minutes without going over. Now you have a list of things that are goals and what you can do to achieve them. Restart the timer and ask yourself why you want these things, look for the deep emotional reasons; not the surface level reasons.
Now with each of these goals and your list of things to accomplish them, start writing out the emotions you feel for each of these things. Some of the things you may need to do in order to accomplish your goals will not feel good. Some may hurt or require sacrifice but the end result is what we want. As you write out the emotions connected to the different steps, start placing them in a timeline towards your goal. The point here is to make a timeline you can refer to as you are achieving your goals in order to have a reference point when times are feeling hard or you are lacking direction. After you have finished the emotional side, start dividing things between what you can and can not control. For example, you can not control your competition but you can control how hard you study. You can control your habits but you can not control how every person will perceive you.
After finishing the writing exercise, keep the lists somewhere safe that you can refer to. Now you are ready to continue with the rest of the goal setting found here. Feel free to do this exercise over several days, depending on how many things you are hoping to accomplish, it may take several sessions to complete. There is no exact timeline or one size fits all to this. We have mentioned it several times, but to reiterate, focus the goals in your life to the emotions you want fulfilled over superficial needs. We all know that superficial things do not bring true happiness, of course neither does abject poverty, but wealth should not be the main part of the goal. We all know plenty of unhappy people who seemingly have everything. This is partly because they never took time to find the things that bring them passion and happiness. They simply went with the things that will bring financial success but may not feed their souls. Not all of us will have goals in life that include the dream job. Some of us will do a job that is not satisfying perhaps, but its rewards are worth it for the style of life we get in our free time and this is also ok. But self awareness and knowledge is key here. If you are the type of person that can have passion and meaning in their lives outside of their job and their job merely funds the lifestyle then that is what you need. If you are not that type of person though, then you need to adjust your goals and ideas of your life and find where your happiness lies. Life isn't cookie cutter and no one can tell you what is going to bring you a content life, only you know that and it is up to you to find it.
We hope you enjoyed this series, we would love to hear your questions and comments at info@bullionite.com