Finding New Direction (podcast $)

“How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home.”
— Bob Dylan, from Like a Rolling Stone

Goals and Ideas

Most of us presume that a new direction results from abandoning the old plan and adopting a new one. That kind of redirection is rarely new, it’s usually a different version of the old. A new direction leads to a different place. That’s something we tend to hold for emergencies.

If you can’t get through the forest, you might try the swamp, but that’s not a new direction because it leads to the same place. A new direction might lead to the old goal, but it might be more useful if it took you to a new goal. You might revise your whole notion of direction.

We can break this process down into parts, starting with two parts at the highest level and breaking subsequent parts down further. Two parts to finding new direction are reconsidering your goals and reconsidering your ideas of progress.

Have a Large Goal

A goal is a picture of what you want to accomplish. What is the underlying goal? What was your last goal? A goal should have a meaningful purpose. If your purpose is weak, then it’s likely you're rationalizing the goal.

Cultural, political, and religious goals are inadequate because they’re impersonal, abstract, and unreal. Such things as wealth, security, virtue, and respect are insubstantial goals because they don’t make anything happen.

Lacking meaningful goals is why most people don’t commit themselves. This applies as much to marriage and family as it does for business and planning.

The narrower your goal, the clearer are the paths to it. But the narrower your goal, the more likely it will fail to yield the rewards you hope for. There are always elements of chance, discovery, and ignorance that make it hard to hit a small target.

Wider goals are better, but the path is less clear. It takes longer to achieve broader goals, but there are more options both in getting there and accepting the destination. It’s easier to find new connections if you explore more territory. It may be easier to search a small haystack, but if there are several haystacks, then you’d better check them all.

Follow a Wide Path

Progress is a tricky thing when the path is uncertain. It’s almost impossible to judge progress without a goal, you need some idea of what you’re aiming for. It’s essential that this be something you understand.

Consider progress in terms of geographical movement. In most cases you’ll have a destination and location. This might be your location on a map or your location in terms of satisfaction. You expect to achieve some portion of what you’re aiming for, however small. If it’s wealth, you expect some income. If it’s love, you expect some affection. If it’s peace, you expect some comfort.

I remember walking across a miles-wide glacier toward a distant peak where the nearest visible landmark was miles away. We walked for hours and with almost no visible progress. It was unreal. After a while, with nothing new to see or say, your mind starts to turn to jelly.

Ideas

Ideas connect things, and important ideas create a path to progress. On one hand, ideas are simple, in the same way that connectors are simple: they clearly relate things and let you move from one thing to the next.

On the other hand, ideas arise mysteriously. Solving a problem depends on new ideas, but there’s little you can do to expedite their arrival. It supports our notion of free will to think that we conceive our goals through a process of far sighted genius, and we figure a path to those goals using our independent powers of deduction. From this picture comes our arrogance.

It’s just as likely—more likely in fact—that the paths we choose are pre-programmed by our memories, habits, and perceptions. We find what’s evident to us and recognize what feels right. Just as water does not choose a goal and then find a way, much of the time we don’t either. Our hungers and inclinations are our laws of gravity and, depending on where we start, understanding these laws can determine where we’ll finish.

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If you’re ready for new ideas, schedule a time to speak with me at:

https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com/schedule15

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