I recently attended a workshop with Martha Beck on “How to unleash your Genius” and start using your whole mind. It was two powerful days of activities designed to develop your right brain. On the first day a lot of the exercises involved drawing and much of the second day was invested in experimenting with impro storytelling as a way to access our right-brain genius.
One drawing exercise particularly stood out for me: Martha had selected a picture, enlarged it and then cut it up into little blocks, and we were each given two blocks. Nobody knew what the original picture was. We were asked to copy our little pictures onto a larger piece of paper, and then we placed the pictures together to re-create the original picture that Martha had enlarged, copied and cut up. Here’s what our group created:
And here’s the original painting, by Rembrandt, which Martha had copied, enlarged and cut up into little blocks for us to copy:
As a group, we created our own replica of Rembrandt’s Saskia Sleeping, and we did an amazing job with it! In fact the drawing we created was more skilled and more accurate than any of us could have created as individuals.
How our story gets in the way of our genius
Martha’s main message in doing this exercise was that, when we know what we’re drawing, we include our own assumptions and interpretations, rather than just copying reality as it is, and including our assumptions makes us much less accurate. If she’d given us the complete picture of Saskia Sleeping to copy and enlarge, we’d never have created such an accurate copy of it. But because we were only given a small piece of the picture, which was so abstract that we couldn’t interpret it or tell ourselves a story about what the thing we were drawing was supposed to look like, we all focused on observing what was in front of us and created very accurate renderings.
In our lives, we make interpretations about what’s in front of us, and add our own assumptions and stories, sometimes even making our reality into what we think it SHOULD be. Then we respond from this place of inaccurate perception, and of course we don’t get the best results – because we’re not working with reality as it is, so we’re not responding to the REAL problem or using the most appropriate tools to try to remedy the problem.
How having to know the ending can limit you
I came away with another big insight from this exercise. As humans, I think we’re always very keen to know what we’re getting ourselves into, and how things will “end.” A lot of the time, we create plans in order to allay our anxieties about the future, and in creating those comprehensive, detailed plans, we close ourselves off to all sorts of possibilities. And as I learned in playing impro games, trying to work out the ending can also really get in the way of teamwork and collaboration. If you’ve already worked out in your head what you think the ending should be, or what you want it to be, then you’re not going to really see and listen to what other people are offering. Again, you’re not going to be responding creatively and attentively to what’s in front of you – you’ll just be pushing your own agenda instead.
But surely we have to have SOMETHING guiding the direction of our energy?!
As we drew, we had no clear, specific goal. We had no idea what we were creating, what the outcome SHOULD look like, or what we wanted the outcome to look like. But we weren’t completely aimless. We were guided by values. A core value that guided us as we created our small drawings was that we would attempt to make our drawing as accurate as we possibly could. We would strive for accuracy and excellence in our drawing.
The traditional way that we’ve been encouraged to set goals and plan our lives has been to get a really clear, specific picture of the outcome we want, and then to break it down into the small steps we’ll need to take to get there. This makes lots of logical sense and it’s a very left-brain way of going about designing your life, but I think even some of the more mainstream productivity “gurus” these days are starting to recognize that there may be other ways that work better.
What if we applied these learnings about the Saskia Sleeping exercise to the way we set goals in life and work? What if we were to approach goal setting by focusing on values, rather than goals? What if we were to approach our lives, with a willingness to not have to know how all the small things we’re doing will come together, but to trust that, as we give our best in all the small things we’re doing right now, they’ll come together to create a beautiful picture – something far more beautiful than anything we could have imagined and planned out ourselves?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tom Howe and Kerri Weisgerber. Tom Howe said: RT @kerrilw Stumbled it! Thank you! I have no goals.
RT @cathduncan How to live your life without goals http://bit.ly/18eBVm (very cool) [...]
I’ve always resisted the left-brain approach to goal setting. Things always turn out far more spectacular than I can imagine with my limited vision today…why would I want to hinder that marvelous process?
Thank you for affirming I haven’t been remiss all these years in letting the Universe direct my future while I focus on being the best I can be right now.
I’m with you on this.
Earlier today I was reading another blog that was arguing exactly the opposite of what you’re saying here. Problem was that I couldn’t find any soul in that goal setting, planning approach. It was just dead! It had no flow, no real flexibility. No creativity.
When I read a book I don’t want to know what the end is. I don’t even want to know how many pages, chapters there are. I just want to go with the flow of the book.
BTW I love the words the anti spam system throws up. Today I got ‘Yank outages’
What are the implications of there being a “manager” (guide?) of the drawing exercise, a person who *did* have a clearly defined outcome? (I hate to even suggest that they literally had the “big picture”)
@Brenda: I loved this bit of what you wrote: “Things always turn out far more spectacular than I can imagine with my limited vision today…why would I want to hinder that marvelous process?” Gave me shivers! You’re so right – often setting goals can be a limitation, rather than an acceleration of our lives, especially considering how much the world is changing these days!
@Ian: “flow, flexibility and creativity” – all very important resources in the world today! If you have that, then you don’t need goals, because you can trust that whatever happens, you can adjust and respond creatively from there, and use whatever cards you’re dealt to create more of the life you want – even the “bad” cards!
Cath
Cath
@Thorin: are you raising the question of whether leaders/ managers should set goals for their teams, or whether there are some types of projects that must require goals?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, but I think the idea of a manager having the big picture and “workers” being clueless about what they’re working towards because their role has been so over-specialized reminds me of factories and sounds horrible. So I’d hate to see this example applied literally to working with teams in the corporate world.
I think that no person ever has the complete big picture on reality. We can all create a picture of a vision, but that’s an exercise of the imagination, rather than an attempt to represent reality as it actually is. We’re always like the team members, co-creating by responding to what’s in front of us. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
I love to create organizing systems, but no matter how clever or helpful I think they are I always eventually get bored and go back to aimless wandering for inspiration.
@Sarah: “aimless” wandering can be a great source of inspiration!
Cath -
I swear sometimes you must be reading my mind and then write exactly what I need to hear!! This is an amazing analogy of learning how to let go. Oftentimes we trap ourselves by creating unnecessary expectations (or goals). Then we FEEL good or bad based on something that we just made up in our heads!
I have been practicing what you are talking about here… At first, it was a stretch, being the neurotic planner that I am, but then I found the process very Freeing! If I don’t have to “Have It All Figured Out”, I give myself more options. I have even started taking openly about not having any idea what I’m doing! Before, I would talk about my goals (as if they were some representation of why I existed, or who I am). But I had a friend admit recently that he had no idea what he was doing and I found that so refreshing, that now I’m doing the same.
Letting go of these expectations has freed up a lot of the garbage in my head; feeling like I “Should Be Doing Something Different” and allows me to be more present to my current situation with an unpredictable outcome. I’ve actually become more relaxed and feel like I am much more in the flow.
Great post, as always!!
Brooke
@Brooke: I laughed at “I’ve even started talking openly about not having any idea what I’m doing”… isn’t this a form of treason or something?! Nobody really knows what they’re doing yet we’ve all be taught to talk as if we know it all, and somehow so many people are still impressed when we talk like we know it all… I’d love to hear what reactions you’ve been getting to telling people you don’t know it all. Bet there are some great stories in there!
Martha did a very cool thing at the beginning of the workshop – she started moving tables and chairs around, saying the room wasn’t set up properly and then moving them back as if she was indecisive, and finally settled with all the chairs in a very odd arrangement. People got so flustered and you could just see them thinking, “gee, this is unprofessional…” until someone did eventually get pissed off enough to say something about it.
Martha then explained that she started the workshop like that purposefully to shake up our worlds and see how we react to chaos and change. It also unearthed the whole assumption that to be good at what you do or “professional” you need to be orderly and you need to teach in a classroom that has the furniture arranged in the traditional way – all sorts of weird assumptions we make that hold us back from being more creative and cause us to miss creative genius when it’s right in front of us, because it’s not dressed in a smart clothing and behaving in an orderly fashion. Way interesting, huh?
Cath
Hi Cath,
Very good article. But i am still quite confusing about goal or no goal.
I have no goal in my life and i hear a lot of advice that i should have a goal because having a goal is the way to success and take charge of life by setting goals etc.
and seems that most people who are successful do have plan…
How to Live Your Life Without Goals…
I recently attended a workshop with Martha Beck on “How to unleash your Genius” and start using your whole mind. It was two powerful days of activities designed to develop your right brain. On the first day a lot of the exercises involved drawing a…
@Pliskin: you’re right that it’s still very much the core message about success – that you have to have goals in order to be successful. And the teaching is that your goals must be specific and measurable. I do believe there needs to be some form of intention or something you’re clear about valuing in life, to use as your guidance system, because the unconscious mind works more effectively when it has a clear purpose. So I’m not suggesting you should be purpose-less! What I’m questioning is whether we really need to form specific, measurable goals, and suggesting that perhaps it can be more effective to have just general intentions, values and emotions that guide you and give you more space to adjust and change as you progress.
This is something I’m still unpacking myself, but I’m starting to live like this and enjoying my results, and I’ve been experimenting with some other structures or ways of being guided by values, intention and emotion with my clients, and they’re liking their results. I’ll definitely be writing more about this, so stick around…
Cath, this is LOVELY. Thanks.
Wow, I’ve been beating my self up for not knowing what I want my end goal to be with my business, but perhaps I should just keep letting it evolve and seeing what develops!
Thanks for sharing your experience!!
Thank you for this post. I really needed to read it and have been making myself crazy trying to control my future with planning planning planning. I’ve been doing meditations on how to break this spell, and I’ve been getting the same messages about focusing on the tasks now without over imagining them a particular end result. I’m going to print out your last paragraph and pin it to my wall.
Sarah Bush´s last blog ..Image Transfer with Inkjet Transparencies
[...] this post about how to live your life without goals indicates, for some time now, I’ve been wondering about the relevance of traditional goal [...]
I’ve been thinking about this post since Friday, because I knew I had some thoughts about it, but nothing specific, until yesterday.
I think that you make a great point:
“when we know what we’re drawing, we include our own assumptions and interpretations, rather than just copying reality as it is, and including our assumptions makes us much less accurate. If she’d given us the complete picture of Saskia Sleeping to copy and enlarge, we’d never have created such an accurate copy of it.”
This is also about skill. If you give an unskilled artist the task of making an accurate copy of the painting, yes, you’re going to get something far more inaccurate than what you were able to come up with, together.
What I keep coming against, myself, is that if I’d given the same exercise to Picasso, or Michelangelo, then I might have gotten something amazingly accurate.. But they’ve been trained to be able to observe what is really there, and important.. more than the average observer.
So would it be how to live life without attachment to specific goals? Because without experience and skill you may be drawing the symbol, as opposed to the real picture.