This blog continues examining the differences between a congruent goal and the ones that we choose for the wrong reasons. My book Get Lucky Now! is about how to get what you want the easy way. Setting the right type of goals is the foundation that everything else is built upon. This blog continues the series of excerpts from Get Lucky Now.
Happy people know who they are, what they want, and how to achieve their goals. That is why they are lucky. You have started on your journey to attract more luck, too.
The mysterious doors of life surround you, and their importance to you is beyond measure. Everything you want and everything you will ever want lies behind these doors—just tantalisingly out of reach.
Some doors call out to you to approach them for all the wrong reasons, whereas others beg you to draw near for all the right reasons. Some just scream for you to go away. Usually, you would be right to give these doors a wide berth, but not always. This is rather confusing. Which doors should you push at to enter, and where is the best place for you to start?
Fit to bust
When you were a child bursting to share a story or a magical moment, your words tumbled out in no particular order, leaving you very frustrated. The listener probably looked at you with a wry smile. Your wise friend, teacher, or parent implored, “Take your time, take a deep breath, and start from the beginning.”
This is good advice for anybody, anywhere, and always has been.
Look inside
Our friend Aristotle also knew a thing or two about what makes us tick. He explained a long time ago: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Successful people know which doors are the easiest to open, but probably take for granted their ability to identify these as normal. They are also probably bemused by how difficult we make our lives, because we continue to go in circles around doors that remain resolutely closed.
The truth is that most of us struggle with developing and sustaining a sense of purpose; many of our ancestors did, too. This is why this chapter is so important and is the logical starting point of our journey.
Not much has changed over the last three thousand years. When the same message of the importance of self-knowledge keeps surfacing repeatedly over the centuries, we can be fairly sure of its enduring value.
Treasure hunt
More recently, Nietzsche described the difficulty attached to truly resonating with one’s own unique personality. He would have known this more intimately than most people. Nietzsche died in 1900, eleven years after suffering a serious nervous breakdown. We can only wonder and hope that his eventual self-realization provided comfort during his final years.
“One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.”
Let us ensure your treasure surfaces much sooner. You have a busy life, many challenges, and many people competing for a piece of your time. When you have chosen to live in the “now,” you do not have the luxury to explore all the doors around you. You want what you desire, and you want it right away.
Go with the flow
This will be difficult, if not impossible, without such self-knowledge. This is your shortcut and the way to connect to your intuitive self—to do what feels right, to get out of your own way, and to allow yourself to be guided to the doors meant for you.
Possessing accurate self-knowledge is critical in building a healthy, wealthy, and happy life. Although for some, it is about the hardest thing in life to achieve, for others it is as natural as walking down the stairs. Fortunately, you do not need to spend years in contemplation and meditation searching for perfection. Like so many other things in life, you just need to be a bit more skilful than you might be at present. A little goes a very long way.
The reason self-knowledge is so important is that with it we can plan our lives and develop authentic goals to structure order from chaos by pushing at the open doors and increasing our own luck. Without self-knowledge we drift, or even worse, we waste our time and energy on goals that are meaningless or beyond our control. These are the closed doors and were always meant to be—at least for you.
Setting authentic goals is one of the techniques included in my NLP coaching programs and more information can be found here – http://drstephensimpson.com/techniques/nlp/
In the next blog we will continue to get to know ourselves and our passions quite a lot better because that’s where we find wisdom.
