Susan Just Came Back From The Supermarket

Susan just came back from the supermarket. She recounted having had great customer service from an employee who went on to tell her how much he hated working there and was only holding on because he was seven years into a plan that was another three years from potential reward. Seven years ago, he bought a plot of land and planted Christmas trees.

When I began work with a now long-term client, I asked him about a life's goal. "I want to go skiing with my grandchildren." At the time he said this to me, his oldest child was about ten years old.

As I write this, I'm reminded to check in with a former client, whose ambition was to leave one of the world's most important scientific positions to be a resource parent for children whose birth parents were unable to care for them.

Last week, I made the claim that to use our life's force to its optimum, what we actually do all day every day is to explore and learn our life's force and aim it at the things that our soul cares most about.

What does your soul care most about?

Part of the answer comes from looking closely at what we do hour by hour; day by day, at the same time acknowledging this is one hour and one day in one life. What does your one life want? Often it's not bliss and it's not abundance. It's meaning. Which could mean climbing into sewer-access holes to pay for grad school to study learning acquisition to help other people build knowledge more effectively in order to live richer and more productive lives: for example.

Having a meaningful higher purpose allowed a guy behind a supermarket counter to have a meaningful engagement with another human within a job he hopes to work his way out of -- and I think that happens for him other times as well. When we live with meaning, it diffuses out. It elevated the meaning of Susan's trip to the supermarket, and it elevated this post.

My alarm for tomorrow is set for 3am. That alarm will not spark bliss at that moment; nor will it signal an abundant night's sleep. It will mean the start of meaningful work.

What could your one life mean if you were to apply close metacognition, that is, thinking about your own thinking, to what shows up. Starting first with the highly specific sampling of specific next actions, to incremental increases in time horizon: task period, day, week, and three-weeks, forty days, one quarter, one year, one life. What if every action you took was in service to your higher life’s goals?

Has anyone taught you on a tactical level how your individual mind really operates?

This is the work my life's force has driven me into.

If you're interested in hearing more, I'll set my alarm for 3am if that's what it takes.


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