Following on from my previous post about Autumn, I find I am definitely at the point of rethinking goals for my future.
I love doing what I do, and my whole life has been about helping people in some way or another, but I feel there is definitely a move to pivot my focus slightly (See pivot or change career).
Apart from the natural tendency to become more introspective as the the nights draw in there have been several events coming together right now that indicate to me the need to re-evaluate direction and rethinking my goals.
We all know there are several well known life events that give us a jolt and promote questions about our life. These include birth, death, marriage, moving home etc.
My Prompts
I have not only hit a milestone in my age, which is giving me pause, but a friend has just been diagnosed with a serious illness, both of which are enough to remind me to reconsider my current and future purpose.
As last night was a full moon (with an eclipse) I decided to spend some time focusing on my future direction.
One of the most helpful activities for introspection is to determine what you are wanting to achieve and crafting questions or points of focus before you start.
Focus Questions
Having decided on my focus points, and feeling that last night was quite important I used 2 sets of cards as visual prompts. You don’t have to use cards, it could be absolutely anything you want from books, pictures, objects, song titles etc.
(Strangely while I was writing the last few words I had two songs pop into my head – this is the type of think I always take note of because it means my intuition is trying to tell me something!)
Anyway, I asked a few questions and drew a card for each one. They included:
Where am I now?
‘Creativity’ was the answer which surprised me but when I stopped to think about it I recognised that I have been so focus on doing the next thing on my list currently, that my creativity has become very bottled up.
Where am I heading? (this was about future direction):
Again, the answer was unexpected and initially felt very negative being a card called ‘Sorrow’. But it is a lesson to not take things at face value but sit with the message for while. Having been so focused on doing what needed to be done I have not been looking at the larger picture. A prime example was in front of me, simply looking at the title of the card was very narrow focus but when I focused on the whole picture I could seen the potential to reconnect with a much larger goal.
What will help me?
This card was the ‘Rebel’. Do you see a pattern here? Stop just doing the next think and break the pattern, get more creative and do things differently. This is an ongoing challenge for me but it does remind me to be courageous and step outside of my self-imposed comfort zone.
Overall Purpose
I also used some cards to indicate purpose and was relieved to see I am still looking at goals around service, support and healing – these are things that pretty much define me and I would have been very challenged if something very different was indicated.
Next Steps
Having spent some time with the cards (there were more, I’ve just given you a flavour of what I did here) I will not spend some time identifying the rules and regulations I have imposed upon myself that may well be holding me back – in other words what do I need to rebel against.
Once I have identified these I will spend some time doing the mindset exercise to find a way to push my boundaries and make some changes to how I work.
In case you are interested the cards I regularly use are the Osho Zen deck. I DO NOT READ TAROT but I really connect with the images.
I hope you have found this useful and please do contact me if you want to discuss anything any further.