What do I Want to Create in 2023?
???
New Years Resolutions Are Passé
New years resolutions lost their appeal to me many years ago. They always felt somewhat contrived and false-hearted. The whole idea of January 1st being some sort of magical doorway you can walk through to a whole new world where everything will soon be ideal and perfect just doesn’t match up with reality.
Setting Goals Was Not Motivating to Me
I’ve always been driven by intrinsic motivations rather than extrinsic ones. For instance, in wanting to become a chef, it wasn’t to prove anything to the outside world. It was simply to pursue my passion for exploring flavors, creating food art and exploring my potential in that area. Becoming a great chef was the effect of pursuing my passions, not so much the ultimate goal.
Goals are Not the Goal
I always rather enjoyed the whole New Years ritual of taking stock of the past year and planning goals for the next one but eventually found out that goals are not the goal. The journey is the goal.
Travelling a path I’m passionate about, a path with Heart, a path that intrigues and inspires me is much more exciting than achieving goals. Of course, there are goals along the path but, they are secondary to an enjoyable journey.
Is Intrinsic Motivation Your Superhero?
Whenever I followed my curiosity, followed my passion and followed my heart, I was much more successful than when I tried to follow my goals. I see this as “the Forrest Gump effect”. Think about it. All Forrest did was be himself and follow his passions and he ended up living an amazing life.
When I look back at my life it’s the same. All my wild successes, memorable experiences and adventures in Life came from simply being myself and following my curiosity and passion.
Being myself, planting the seeds of curiosity and passion that were inside me and letting them grow propelled me forward to the epic life I’ve lived so far. I can now look back on my life with fondness and fulfillment.
It’s the intrinsic motivations that came from the core of my being which I pursued with unconditional curiosity that led me down paths of success, amazement and joy.
That intrinsic motivation made me the superhero of my life and an inspiration to others. Is intrinsic motivation Your Superhero waiting to be set free?
Creating Your Dream Life ~ Simple Not Always Easy
Creating a Dream Life is Simple but not always easy. As human beings, we live in two worlds. The key to living your dream life is to balance the two worlds, the intrinsic inner world and the extrinsic outer world, so they work together in a natural way.
If you can say nothing else about Forrest Gump, you can say he was a simple and natural man. He was who he was simply becoming more of who he was born to be. This is what we are all called to do.
One of my favorite quotes is by Robert Louis Stevenson, “To be who you are and to become all you’re capable of becoming is the only end in life.” This was exactly what Forrest Gump did without actually trying or thinking about it.
Life is Creation ~ You are a Creator
If we look about us, we can see the simple fact that Life is Creation. Everything you see, feel, smell, and hear around you is a creation.
Look at anything around you and think backwards to where it started and what it went through to be created, what it took to come to what it is today. It can be anything from a tree to a baseball cap. It, just like you yourself, is the product of the process of creation.
Anything created by humans goes through the process of creation and is first created intrinsically then created extrinsically, in the outer world. A thought becomes an idea, becomes a plan or a goal, becomes a reality. You actually create everything you experience in your world including your feelings and the situations you experience on a momentary basis.
What Will I Create in 2023?
What will I create in 2023? What will I create today? What will I create in this moment? These are great questions to ask on a daily, hourly basis.
Here’s my simple 3-step plan for creating the life of my dreams in 2023.
1. Ask Empowering Questions
“What can I create today?” is a much more empowering, exciting and fun question than “How can I get through this boring day at work?”
2. Be Yourself and Follow Your Curiosity ~ Simple Not Easy
There is a saying that goes, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” This points out the fact that it’s probably easier to be yourself than be something you are not. Again, think of Forrest Gump. He couldn’t help being himself because he was so simple-minded. We don’t have it quite as easy.
We’ve been told from day one “How to be”, “how to act”, “what to think” etc… to the point where we’re the creation of other people’s ideas, morals and thoughts. “To be who we are” is simply the act of “Being”. There’s no thinking involved. It’s a natural flow.
Be Yourself. Be OK with who you are. This may be tough at first but, as a simple practice, it can bring much peace and joy when followed daily.
Follow your curiosity because that curiosity is the flowering, the expansion, the journey we follow to “become all we’re capable of becoming.”
3. Create Something New
You are a Creator. We are all Creators. It’s what we do, all we do, 24/7. Instead of letting the creative process go on day-to-day as a habit, as a dead pattern of monotonous plodding along in life, Create Something New!
Be the Conscious Creator of Your Life. Most of us create on autopilot and what we create is monotonous, habitual and underwhelming at best. Many of us even create what we don’t want. We need to practice and learn to become great creators of our dreams, of amazement, joy and wonder.
Ask yourself the question, “What can I create today?”, “What can I create different in this situation?”, “What can I create that will bring Joy?”, “What can I create….?” insert your own words that create beauty, joy or fulfillment in your life and relationships.
Ask yourself “What can I create?” and then do it. I can create a smile on my face, a fine thought in my mind, a feeling in my body with almost no effort. Everything we Create ripples out into the world.
Create little things at first. Learn to flourish as a Conscious Creator. Learn to luxuriate in your creations large and small.
New Years Resolution: I will write down these three steps and follow them daily in 2023.
Let this be the path. Simply Create something New; daily, hourly, moment-by-moment. Create yourself anew. Create New thoughts and feelings. Create relationships. Create something fresh… and see where you end up one year from now. What will You Create in 2023?
Cheers to 2023! The Year of the Conscious Creator.
~ The Happy Wayfarer