So you’re trying to figure out what’s important to you and WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE… Such H-E-A-V-Y stuff!

And if you’re a Gen-X or Gen-Y member, then you’ve probably been told that you must find “meaning” in your work, and you must be doing what you *love,* in order to be happy. Aargh! Extra pressure!

And the worst part is when you read those personal development books about finding your passion, and they say, “Here’s 3 steps to doing what you were born to do: 1.) List 3 things you’re good at, 2.) List 3 things you love doing. 3.) Make a business out of that. Do what you love and the money will follow.” So you mean I can make a business out of remembering song lyrics, playing tetris and snoozing? They make it sound so easy that you feel even more frustrated after trying to answer the questions.

The problem is that we often don’t know what we are good at

because our school systems and company appraisal systems have taught us to focus on our weaknesses. And we often don’t know what we love to do, because years of focusing on trying to improve our weaknesses, worrying about how good we are at stuff, trying to fit in and please people and having everything and everyone measured and judged has sent us down a rabbit-hole that leads us further and further from what we love. So these are HARD questions. And the more we try to force an answer to these sorts of questions, the more stuck we get. Trust me, I know – I spent a year in a dark depression after finishing school, trying to force out an answer to “WHAT AM I MEANT TO DO?”

So can we agree to put aside such difficult questions for now? Can we start with the easy stuff? You see, my experience is that, even though we often don’t know what we want and would love, we ALWAYS know what we don’t want, and what really annoys us. And that can be a seriously sneaky route into figuring out what’s important to you and what you’d love. And, since you have full permission to bitch and moan, be judgmental and throw temper-tantrums, this is really fun exercise too. Here’s how it works:

The sneaky route to figuring out what’s important to you:

1.) Write down everything you can think of that’s really annoyed you recently.
Think of interactions you’ve had with people, where they’ve said things that got you seriously riled. Think of stuff you saw on the news or Twitter that pissed you off. Think of movies that raised your heart rate, stuff you read that you felt compelled to tell others about so you could express your outrage. Think of your “hot buttons” in general: what points of view or behaviors would be guaranteed to get you ranting and raving?

Here are some of mine:

• Raw foodists/ vegetarians/ organic-only eaters who think they’re living some superior moral ground and work hard to evangelize their food religion.
• People who agonize about gifts and give gifts they don’t want to give, just because they feel they HAVE to do so, in order to be socially appropriate.
• People who think it’s a given that everyone will get married and have babies. And I could go mad when people who are mere acquaintances interrogate us about when we’ll have children (note, that “whether” we’ll have children isn’t even a consideration)
• When someone says it’s selfish not to have children (I can’t even bring myself to explain this one, it gets me so heated!)
• School reunions and other such gatherings where people ask boring, status-assessment questions, instead of all the really interesting questions they could ask: “What do you do?” “Where do you live?” “Did you buy or are you renting?” “How many children have you got?”
• When someone says, “I had a crap time at that party because nobody spoke to me.” (You mean that you went over and initiated conversations with loads of people and they ALL just ignored you?)
• When people use, “What would people think?” as their main criteria in deciding what to do next.
• “Computer says no” – bureaucrats make my blood boil!
• People who want to help but think that wanting to help is enough and don’t have an actual intelligent strategy or an understanding of the situation they want to be helpful in.
• Social workers who encourage children to cuddle, befriend and confide in them because it makes the Social Worker feel good – and they can’t see that it’s setting the child up for all sorts of disappointment and inappropriate relationship boundaries.
• “Sunday School Answers” – when people give over-simplified answers to the big questions about life, the universe and everything (and want me to affirm their answers) because they can’t tolerate “not knowing.”

Mining Your Anger

I’ve talked a lot about how fear is really useful, and how you can mine your fear. I think that all emotions are useful and serve a positive purpose (even if they feel awful and have negative consequences). Anger is an emotion that we’re particularly socialized not to have, especially if you’re a woman. But anger is actually a really useful indicator of what’s important to you. If you’re feeling angry, it’s because you’re thinking that something that’s important to you is at risk. So, if something or someone has really been infuriating you this week, you can mine your anger and use it to discover what’s important to you. Here’s how:

2.) Look at your list of things that have infuriated you, and ask yourself, “What must be important to me, for me to feel so angry about that?

What was important to me, that I felt the need to defend or protect in that scenario?” And then convert your “what I DON’T want” into a statement of what’s important to you and what you want instead.

Here’s mine:

• “You’re not the boss of me” a.k.a freedom and conscious choice is important to me. I want to decide for myself. Oh, and I don’t like organized groups, because they don’t promote people deciding for themselves.
• Generosity, honesty and simplicity in relationships are important to me. Giving a gift that you don’t want to give contradicts all 3 of these values.
• Conscious choosing, instead of conforming, is important to me – especially when it comes to such important matters as parenting.
• Making a contribution and a positive difference in the world is important to me. Being seen as selfish is a direct threat to this important value.
• Being seen for WHO I am, not what I have and do, is important to me. And real connections and relationships are important to me, instead of status games, which are predictable and boring.
• Living expansively and generously, in spite of the risk of possible rejection, is important to me. And humility – being willing to take the initiative to connect with someone else and to invest in developing relationships, is important to me, because that’s how you get great relationships.
• Being fully alive and fully self-expressed, in spite of the fact that some people will think you’re a tosser, is important to me. Choosing for myself, instead of worrying about what other people will think, is important to me.
• Conscious choice, and focusing on getting results in a flexible way, is important to me – instead of inane rules for the sake of rules.
• Results, competence and effectiveness are important to me. And independence and empowerment are important to me.
• Emotional and physical safety for children are really important to me. Children are beautiful, raw gems, and it’s important to preserve their beauty and purity.
• Questioning, curiosity, exploring and experiencing are important to me. When we think we know the answer, we lose our curiosity and we stop exploring and experiencing.The other thing that’s important for me here is… you guessed it: conscious choice!

So, if you’re feeling a bit direction-less and frustrated and, particularly if you feel like you have a short fuse at the moment, take a few minutes to mine your anger and figure out what’s important to you. If you’re already living in alignment with what’s important to you, you’ll probably find that the anger dissolves when you acknowledge the value within it. If your anger is sticking around, or if you find it increases when you do this exercise, then ask yourself what adjustments you need to make, so that you’re living in alignment with what’s important to you – and go and make those adjustments and watch your anger melt away.

So now I’m dying to know your “pet peeve” lists – what drives you mad, and what does that say about what’s important to YOU?

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Photo by Akbar Simonses

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