Posts tagged Term Goals
7 Tips ‘N Tools for Moving From Overwhelm & Distraction Back Into Action
Aug 10th
“There’s nothing wrong with my life. In fact, things are going really well…so well that some days when I sit down at my desk to work I have no idea where to begin. I end up wasting time distracted by too many thoughts.” “I want to make changes in my life but I’m dealing with so many issues I don’t know where to begin.” Do you get stopped by feelings of overwhelm exactly at the times you need to be in action?
I know I had some thoughts on this topic…but I noticed my computer doing something weird so I figured I had better fix it then thought I’d better check my email because something may have popped in during the last three minutes which led to flipping over to the Facebook tab – where I tossed up a comment then reminded myself I have outlines for five workshops that need completing plus a bunch of organizational must dos and I haven’t gotten to any memoir writing this week…PHEW! Feeling overwhelmed and allowing oneself to be distracted can be pretty common.
When my brain starts to whir like this I feel like I’m spinning. I’ve created for Moving From Overwhelm & Distraction Back Into Action:
1. Acknowledge what is going on for you. Simply stop everything and sit for a moment in the overwhelming feeling. Notice how it feels in your body, in your head and notice how it is not serving you in any way. Take a couple of deep breaths and reconnect with yourself.
2. Identify short, medium and long term goals in the area where you are overwhelmed.
3. Get clear on the end goals. What is it you wish to achieve? What is the outcome you want all your actions to contribute to creating? When you are clear on the end goal you can stop yourself when you feel you aren’t on target and ask what outcome is this particular action supporting.
4. Create a go to document. Find an organizational system that works for you. I found myself jotting notes in a notebook, making short lists on my phone calendar, scribbling on post its and ending up with my to dos in too many places. Figure out one tool and discipline yourself to put everything there. Personally, I am using Google Documents project management schedule. I need my list to be portable and I hate rewriting from one notebook to another. Some people use whiteboards with colored markers, others use recipe cards or colored post its on large wall calendars or leather bound organizers with graph charted project sheets.
5. Identify your top ten must do actions each week and identify them as top priority in your go to document, then highlight the top three. Do not even think about actions four through seven until you have completed the three highlighted tasks.
6. Create an awareness journal to track a list of what distractions you use when you get overwhelmed. I feel distractions, for me, are like a mental grasping at straws. But the random nature of this will not get me back to a place of focus.
7. Experiment for a week. Each time you feel overwhelmed do the check in I outlined in Point #1. Then open up your go to document, check your top ten priorities and select the actions that will support the completion of those goals. If nothing you’ve tried so far is working, interview some of the people in your life you know juggle and multitask to find out what works for them.
These simple actions can create the shift from feeling overwhelmed to getting back in alignment with what it is you wish to achieve.
How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes
Feb 19th
Here’s another great post by one of my favorite authors Steve Pavlina from http://www.stevepavlina.com
How do you discover your real purpose in life? I’m not talking about your job, your daily responsibilities, or even your long-term goals. I mean the real reason why you’re here at all — the very reason you exist.
Perhaps you’re a rather nihilistic person who doesn’t believe you have a purpose and that life has no meaning. Doesn’t matter. Not believing that you have a purpose won’t prevent you from discovering it, just as a lack of belief in gravity won’t prevent you from tripping. All that a lack of belief will do is make it take longer, so if you’re one of those people, just change the number 20 in the title of this blog entry to 40 (or 60 if you’re really stubborn). Most likely though if you don’t believe you have a purpose, then you probably won’t believe what I’m saying anyway, but even so, what’s the risk of investing an hour just in case?
Here’s a story about Bruce Lee which sets the stage for this little exercise. A master martial artist asked Bruce to teach him everything Bruce knew about martial arts. Bruce held up two cups, both filled with liquid. “The first cup,” said Bruce, “represents all of your knowledge about martial arts. The second cup represents all of my knowledge about martial arts. If you want to fill your cup with my knowledge, you must first empty your cup of your knowledge.”
If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false purposes you’ve been taught (including the idea that you may have no purpose at all).
So how to discover your purpose in life? While there are many ways to do this, some of them fairly involved, here is one of the simplest that anyone can do. The more open you are to this process, and the more you expect it to work, the faster it will work for you. But not being open to it or having doubts about it or thinking it’s an entirely idiotic and meaningless waste of time won’t prevent it from working as long as you stick with it — again, it will just take longer to converge.
Here’s what to do:
- Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
- Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
- Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
- Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.
That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.
For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.
As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answer pops into your head as long as you just keep writing.
At some point during the process (typically after about 50-100 answers), you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel the urge to get up and make an excuse to do something else. That’s normal. Push past this resistance, and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass.
You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry — they’re just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you’re getting warm. Keep going.
It’s important to do this alone and with no interruptions. If you’re a nihilist, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you’ll still eventually converge.
When I did this exercise, it took me about 25 minutes, and I reached my final answer at step 106. Partial pieces of the answer (mini-surges) appeared at steps 17, 39, and 53, and then the bulk of it fell into place and was refined through steps 100-106. I felt the feeling of resistance (wanting to get up and do something else, expecting the process to fail, feeling very impatient and even irritated) around steps 55-60. At step 80 I took a 2-minute break to close my eyes, relax, clear my mind, and to focus on the intention for the answer to come to me — this was helpful as the answers I received after this break began to have greater clarity.
Here was my final answer: to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace.
When you find your own unique answer to the question of why you’re here, you will feel it resonate with you deeply. The words will seem to have a special energy to you, and you will feel that energy whenever you read them.
Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose.
If you’re inclined to ask why this little process works, just put that question aside until after you’ve successfully completed it. Once you’ve done that, you’ll probably have your own answer to why it works. Most likely if you ask 10 different people why this works (people who’ve successfully completed it), you’ll get 10 different answers, all filtered through their individual belief systems, and each will contain its own reflection of truth.
Obviously, this process won’t work if you quit before convergence. I’d guesstimate that 80-90% of people should achieve convergence in less than an hour. If you’re really entrenched in your beliefs and resistant to the process, maybe it will take you 5 sessions and 3 hours, but I suspect that such people will simply quit early (like within the first 15 minutes) or won’t even attempt it at all. But if you’re drawn to read this blog (and haven’t been inclined to ban it from your life yet), then it’s doubtful you fall into this group.
Give it a shot! At the very least, you’ll learn one of two things: your true purpose in life -or- that you should unsubscribe from this blog.

