If you happen to be a fairly standard-issue human-sized breathing meat sack, you may find yourself experiencing the need to be constantly leveling up or working towards something, regardless of how trivial this actual goal may be. I certainly feel like this all the time in myriad different ways, and have recently become more mindful of this drive in myself, in that I feel like I can observe it instead of just being completely pulled along by it.
This manifests a couple of different ways, but the most obvious to me are the kind of general overarching “life-goals”. For me, this feels like a great deal of my happiness on any given day comes from the ability to justify to myself that I am working towards some greater imagined state of happiness/freedom/productivity/contentment (insert your favourite state of mind here). For example I can get through my work much better in the next couple of weeks knowing that my workload will be severely reduced come the end of June, and I will be able to spend more time on music for the rest of the summer, and it helps me put my head down and get through the day when I have this light at the end of the tunnel. Then after that I am okay with the prospect of returning to work in September because I wont be working 7 days a week and have the promise of more free-time to feel like I am leveling up some how.
But what after that? Do I really need to always be “progressing” to feel happy. I’d like to think that through inner work I can “progress” towards just more contentment with the mundane aspects of everyday life. I would hate to see this addiction to “progress” impede of my personal relationships and compromise the things that make being a human great, as I believe it can for many people. Of course, in this sense this is a positive mental phenomenon, as it is a great barrier against complacency (though I rarely find myself drifting towards that end of the disposition spectrum) and can be a massive motivator for all kinds of positive progress.
So with that rant I urge you all to just take a second to consider what is driving you? What are the consequences of how you spend your time. Though this statement in and of itself could totally be seen as coming from a point of privilege, which it certainly is in that I am extremely lucky to have a good amount of control over how I spend my time, I think it is worth considering for everyone. If you can, take a second to just be mindful of your motivations, and get yerself a healthy level up!
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I have indeed been driven by various projects and life goals. My current life goal is to teach mindfulness and touch to make couples have happier relationships.
My girlfriend keeps telling me that what's important is that I feel harmony and love in my own relationship, with her. I have gradually come to understand that the purpose of my existence is to be happy, rather than taking on some mission to spread mindfulness for couples across the world.
What I notice is that when I relax a bit and appreciate my existence in the present, things feel easier and I feel happier in general. Still, I can fall into feeling stressed with having to "accomplish a mission". I do believe that it is possible to find a balance, to both be happy in the present and from that place work on a project or life goal.
I have seen lately that by working from the present, everything tends to be easier. I think this is really important, and it is easy to say, but I have needed some time to come to a deeper understanding and experience of what it means.
Getting out of the thought bubble is the main thing, because to me that is where accomplishment anxiety and all the stuff that screw me up originate from.
So what is driving me is being in the present, and the life goal of working with mindful touch.
Thanks for your mindfulness posts, really good to read them.
Awesome! Yes this is such an important lesson to learn, and along with it goes that no matter what your mission is, you will be so much better at it when you do work on yourself too! We cannot heal any part of the world before healing ourselves.
Yes healing ourselves, that is Challenge No 1.