Sourcing Fulfilment in Life and Work – Mini Module 2

As I said last week (you really need to read last week’s article before this one), New Year’s resolutions just don’t do it for me, I find life is so much more inspiring and fulfilling with my Big 5 for life (see John Strelecky’s book), together with my 5 questions and 3 words to live by… There is just so much more scope, less constraints and more clarity! Basically, it works so well, I feel fulfilled, energized and smiling J

So if you haven’t done last week’s exercise, please make sure you go back and do it as you need to do them in order for them to be helpful.

This week let’s go on from where we left off… On your list you now have 20 or more ideas of what you really like doing, what resonates with you, where you find your feel good factor. You also have the emotions associated with these. You have also made a note of the top 3 emotions that ‘speak’ to you and during the last week you have been noting where else these emotions occur and what you were doing at the time.

Are you surprised? Did anything unexpected pop up? If it did, make a note of that as well. I love this exercise, it is so liberating…

Now let’s continue. Get another piece of paper, divided in two… This week I would like you to think back to when you were a child. What dreams did you have then? What did you want to be when you grew up? What games did you choose to do during your playtime? (This last question is when you had totally free choice and not when you were being influenced by someone else). Write these down on the left of the paper. Now on the right, why did you want to do them? What was the dream associated with them, and how did this make you feel?

I will give you one of mine as an example, I wanted to be a ballerina, vet, explorer… Ballerina because it made me feel truly free, I could lose myself in another world where I was creative, talented, choosing my own direction, letting my inner feelings and my body become one with the movement and the music, I could float away on a cloud of light and sunshine or descend into a stormy sea. For me dance, particularly classical ballet, is the ultimate freedom of body, mind and soul… (As an aside, I started dancing at the age of 3 and during most of my life I have managed to find somewhere to keep dancing, and I am still passionately interested in everything to do with ballet!).

Now for all of your childhood choices think of the reactions of your parents and family to your imagination and your dreams. Were these your own free choices, or were they unconsciously stimulated by your parents’ approbation or disapproval? Often we don’t realise how much we do things because of outside influences. It isn’t wrong, but we need to be aware of the origin of our ideas and aspirations. Try and clarify which were your own without any stimulus from others and which were influenced.

Again, for the next week mull over these and not down any more that pop into your head over the next few days. Whenever you have a quiet moment you can think about this and about how you felt when you imagined yourself becoming what you wanted to be, and in the action of doing what you wanted to do…

Have fun and enjoy the exercise, it gives you such a positive and happy feeling!

See you next week for stage 3, we are almost ready to put it all together J