The writing challenge; what do you really want?

April 11, 2014  |  ibrainmapadmin

Every morning I wake up with the world calling me, loudly. There are lists to write or do, emails, tweets and posts all grabbing for my attention. Before my feet hit the ground my head is spinning with everything there is to do.

It happens so fast and furious that I never get to ask myself, what do I want?

I feel like someone else is driving my life. I don’t even know if all of this activity is what I want. I think I’ve forgotten what I want. Perhaps I never knew.

My life is an open paddock

At any other point in my life this question of, “what do I want?” might be esoteric or rhetorical, I might ask it as I race off to get ready for work and hardly look up again till I arrive home that night. By the end of the day I’m exhausted but wound up like a tight spring. When I crawl into my bed at last I toss and turn in my dreams, only to wake exhausted again tomorrow and start all over again.

But at this point, my life is in an open paddock. I’ve forced myself into a corner. This week I closed my counseling practice, my house is on the market, I have a hundred of my books, i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness, stacked in boxes in my studio (but no idea how to sell them). And I am still reeling from the sudden death of a dear friend who I’ve known for forty years who was the same age as me, giving me a mortality slap in the face.

I have no experience in selling and promoting my book, I have a website with all the bells and whistles to create an on-line presence, but no idea who I am on-line, or what I want to say. I could go on about what I have, and what I don’t have, but is it relevant? What you have or what you don’t have will be different, but perhaps you’re asking the same question, and wondering, “what do I really want?”

Just me and my question

In short I have cleared my life and now I sit in an open paddock, just me and my churlish question; what do I really want?

And when I ask my question, there is a clammy silence and a few ants pinching my bare feet and a restless wind tugging my hair, and nothing else. No bolt of lightening, no amazing vision with trumpets blasting my name, or a wise old man waiting with parchment before some holy gate – only me and my question, and a resounding silence.

The cash dilemma

Finding my purpose and what makes my heart sing is one thing, but then there is that old cash dilemma. I need to pay the mortgage. Oh no I don’t, I wont have a house soon. Woops!

Well I need to eat. You get my drift I’m sure. Because that is the real dilemma; how do I find what I love and what gives my life meaning and also live a good life where I can buy a coffee occasionally, even though I don’t drink coffee, but just because I want to.

I know from experience that if I don’t have enough money then I can become obsessed with money because money is like food to a starving man. If you have none, it’s all you can think about. But when you have enough food, and warmth and shelter you can find the fabulous, well something good anyway. I don’t want to starve but I don’t want money to be what drives my life either.

So now I see that my question is much bigger than I thought. What do I really want?…. has legs and arms and perhaps some wings and claws.

The challenge – finding what I really want.

So, I’ve decided that for the next month the first thing I’ll do every morning is ask myself this question and then write for 20-30 minutes. I’ll call it;

Finding what you really want….

I’m just going to see what happens, what emerges in my writing. I have no expectations. I will approach with curiosity.

Anyone can join me on my challenge.

You can make your own guidelines. Here are mine, though they may change;

1. Write before you plug in to any technology.
2. Pause before you begin. Drop into presence through your senses, look out your window, feel your feet, your butt, your skin… rest into the sensory experience of your body wisdom, your felt sense, so it can live on the page and in your writing as well as your thoughts.
3. At the top of the page write; what do I really want?
4. Trust emergence (a term borrowed from Gregory Kramer). In other words write whatever comes. Don’t censor or try to make it anything, write as a curious observer.
5. If you’re lost of distracted go back to the question, write it down again.
6. Write with pen and paper if possible. There is something more intimate with a pen and a blank page. Or experiment with using a pen sometimes, and then a computer other days and see if you have a different orientation to the question and discover different things.
7. Approach with curiosity, as an experiment, a discovery.
8. You can’t get this wrong or right. Step into the flow.
9. Turn towards what has energy or tension, or perhaps fear, and lean in close, and keep writing through whatever emerges.

10. Don’t forget to breathe.