And that is because I really no longer know what I want. Even if I knew I couldn't fail, I still don't know.
This will come of a surprise to many of you. It came as a surprise to me. Having read Tony Robbins books, self-help guides, and written more mission statements and SMART goals than you can wave a stick at, I feel unfulfilled.
The cause of lack of fulfillment
One of the main reasons why I no longer plan away is because it was making me unhappy. Even if I achieved some goals, didn't fulfill others, took all failures as "mis-takes" and lessons, it didn't seem right.
One reason was I had become an athiest. No longer a Catholic, prayer wasn't for me now, and doing what I thought the Big Man would have liked me to do was not the answer.
So what was?
Working towards a theory of person
If there is no God, then figuring out what your passions or values are can be difficult. It's hard. Also, I had recently come across the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. This, which I read after a major project had gone severely wrong, and was recommended as a book by a friend, opened my eyes.
I am not my mind. I am not my thoughts. I am only the Now.
I cannot explain this in great detail here - the concept for newcomers requires reflection. But it answered why I had felt bad for so long. I had been controlled by my Ego - and I thought I was my Ego. I thought I was that running narrative inside my head that thinks of only the past or the future, and its goal is to make the future how it wants to have it.
The result is that I had been failing to enjoy life for the last few years. My only respite and enjoyment came from travel - by being 5,000 miles away from work, I stopped thinking and started living, enjoying the moment. But come back to work, and the Ego rose again with its constant planning, and narrative of "this must be done better" or "I wish I could have that... I feel depressed I can't."
Now, being an Athiest, I am not going to simply retreat to this spiritual realm that Tolle describes. Alternatively, I have thought of a theory (which might have come from someone else) to explain who I am. My wish is that by knowing who I am, I will know what I want.
So, what am I made of?
I came up with three components that could be me.
- Consciousness - this is the thoughtless 'being' that Tolle describes in his book. This is a state of being timeless, in the Now, feeling everything as it happens and forgetting the past and the future, for they are only illusions.
- Mind - the Ego. The narrative that runs through the brain, recalling memories, making plans, and using the power of cognition to create a strategy for existence.
- Body - every physical aspect of self, from the body as a whole, to the nutritional and health state of the body, to the neural connections within the brain that cause the sensation of Consciousness and the ability to think.
Now, I am not just one of the parts above - I am all. And they all interact with each other.
For example, by taking LSD, I would be changing my body, which in effect would change the Mind and my Consciousness.
My Mind concentrating on poor achievements and performance would have the effect of causing physiological changes in my body, with stress perhaps reducing the performance of my immune system and raising my heart rate.
And by meditating, accessing Consciousness, my heart rate would slow and the Mind would reduce in intensity and effect on the body.
I believe in deciding what I want to do with my life, or what my specific raison d'etre is, I need to analyse each part of myself as a whole to determine what I should be doing and aiming for.
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