Where Are You Going?

by: Thea Westra

Are your goals “moving away from” goals or” moving toward” goals? Check in with yourself on this one because one of these is a source of power for consistent action and the other is a source of continued frustration, procrastination and doubt.

When you have a powerful vision of a future that you are designing and you have a passion for wanting to create a particular outcome then not much can stop you from taking action toward your target of intent.

If, on the other hand, your actions are geared more for avoiding something and escaping a particular scenario in your life then you will be weakened in your resolve to continue taking the actions required to fulfil the outcome. There is no clear outcome that you envisage for yourself. You only see the “what’s not” rather than the “what will be”. This cannot be very inspiring.

You could say that you want to go to Europe because you don’t want to get to the end of your life not having travelled. So you hop on a plane and you start moving around Europe. Once you arrive home you see magazine images of places in Europe that you regret not having seen and you feel the need to repeat the journey because the last trip left you unfulfilled in your true desires.

Simply, you had not got clear about your personal, heartfelt reasons for wanting the trip. Therefore all the places of interest that would have completed the holiday for you, were not visited because you had no plans. The goal was to have travelled to Europe in case you regret it later – a “moving away from” goal.

If your goal was one of “moving towards” the exhilarating experiences of actually standing in front of a Van Gogh painting or skiing down a slope in the Alps then I’d assert that the trip would have been more carefully planned to incorporate those experiences and you would likely have returned home completely satisfied with a trip you can declare a success. Something to celebrate.

As another example, some people see marriage as a way out of a parental home and parental control. They are not looking at the marriage as a long-term partnership of two people creating a lifestyle that empowers both. So when the wedding is over and behind them, the couple are living a situation that feels like a brand new prison, simply another life circumstance from which to seek escape.

Alternatively, if both people step into the marriage with a view to creating a life together that makes a difference to themselves and to those around them then when the wedding feast is behind them, they still have their wonderful plans for that lifestyle and those dreams that they wished to create and work towards, together.

Similarly, if we look to having a certain amount of money as a mechanism for moving away from financial concern or a restricted lifestyle, then when that particular amount of money is generated and “in the bank”, the concern for never living a life of financial hardship is still there. The acquired wealth is not freely enjoyed and life remains restricted because now, we are living in fear - managing ways to hang on to that money and never lose again. Rather than creating projects with freedom in the knowledge that we have continued access to manifesting money whenever it is wanted because we have expanded who we are, in relationship to abundance.

When you are living and taking action on a “moving toward” goal then the questions you ask yourself are very different questions than those you’d be asking yourself if your goal is to avoid something. Our learning and development is all about the questions that we ask and answers we find on that journey.

Revisit your current goals and make sure to ask yourself, am I moving towards something that inspires me or am I pursuing this goal to move away from an undesired situation? One of these two choices brings with it much more power and fun for accomplishing what it is that you’re actually seeking to achieve, from your heart.

As expressed by Abraham-Hicks, "Get so fixated on what you want, that you drown out any vibration or reverberation that has anything to do with what you do not want."

About The Author

©Thea Westra is an international life coach who resides in Perth, Western Australia. She publishes a free, monthly e-zine at http://www.forwardsteps.com.au and several personal development blogs, see the bottom of this site http://www.blogger.com/profile/4433024 for their links.