Taming the Genie: Exercises on the First Rule

Most advice about finding your life’s purpose or personal meaning is junk. “Focus on what makes you happy” and “find your passion.” It’s junk because the immediate next question should be, “How?” I look at these bits of advice and want to know the nuts and bolts. What is the specific prescription for how to find my passion? What do I need to do tomorrow morning to do that? 

The upside of this junk advice is that you can ignore it. Your life is particular and unique and there’s no amount of advice that will perfectly suit your situation. Your life is yours to tread and you should thank the gods that I can’t speak to that. Do you want another person to have that much influence and control over your life? 

Stopping there is bullshit and does a disservice to the problem of meaning. It’s irresponsible. It makes you feel bad that you don’t know how to find your passion. 

Yes, most advice is bad, and yes, your life is particular. But we can do better. My job in this life is  to give you the ability to see your life and your circumstances from a creative and new way of living. Often, this is all it takes to get you unstuck and moving forward. 

Toward that end, here are three exercises that help with defining what you want and seeing what you need to do next. 

Define your values and then destroy them:

Step 1: Review this list of values. Which ones resonate with you? Pick three as your top ones. (If you are like me, it’s okay if you actually pick five. I won’t mind.)

Step 2: Define your goal. Any goal will do, but it should ideally be a goal that will take a month or two to complete. 

Step 3: For each value you selected, write how your value may be violated or weakened by completing the goal. Try to imagine not holding that value, would it be easier to achieve your goal? 

Here’s an abbreviated example:

Step 1: My values are growth, honesty, and openness. 

Step 2: I want to get in shape.

Step 3: Getting in shape may mean stopping learning music to focus on getting in shape (growth). It’s better to keep my goals to myself until they are well underway and even not mention the goal until its complete because it may cause others to feel bad about themselves (honesty), and it’s much better to pick one exercise routine and do it than to explore the territory to find the most optimal (openness).

By understanding my values and my goal, I can see where there will be suffering, and where I will have to change to achieve my goal. It’s plausible that my values today are even getting in the way. Who has not spent more time reading about diets and exercise than doing the work? 

Step 4: Do the thing. Try to get in shape. See if your value breaks. Notice that your values shift or have more flexibility than you think. Is it your values hurting? Or is it that you prefer not doing the thing more than doing it? What would you need to do to like doing the thing? Who would you have to be?

Loving the Darkness

I want you to think of something that is a total blocker in your life. For me, it’s my shitty chronic pain brain. For you, it might be a medical issue, a bad relationship, a garbage upbringing, or a job you hate but you need. 

Now I want you to write down what you love about it. What about that shitty thing is actually helpful? How does it create self-definition for you? Spend a few minutes working on this. Try to list thirty benefits you get from that shitty thing. 

Do you notice the intense feelings you’re now having? Does your body feel constricted or tight? Is your heart racing? Are you fighting back against this exercise? 

Look at those feelings now. Is it possible for you to imagine that the sensations you are currently having are actually pleasurable? That your heart is racing from excitement? That the constriction is from filling with joy?

Do you see how malleable our feelings are? You can take an awful thing and notice the benefits. You can take intense feelings and notice how pleasurable that intensity is. 

For me, this means embracing how intense my feelings of pain are, of how the challenge of working around an overactive nervous system is a meaningful thing. I get to be someone who overcomes and helps people do the same. I feel grumpy and upset about that fact but also inspired and hardened. 

It’s not a pretty thing to realize that our obstacles and thorns are, in some ways, benefits to the story we tell in our lives. But once you notice these benefits, notice the intensity and richness they bring, the less you’ll battle with them. The more you’ll find meaning in the hardship and strife. 

You can have everything you want:

I want you to imagine your future five years from now. In this future, you have everything you want. Write it down. Write down where you live, what it looks like there, the smell of the air, the texture of your walls. Describe how your body looks and feels, what your mind is like. Describe the work you do, the hopes you have. The wealth of all sorts that you own. The relationships you have. What a beautiful and wonderful week you have, every single week. Describe it all. Write it all down. 

What do you notice?What stands out to you? What’s most important? The place you live? The people you have in your life? The way your body looks and feels? The beliefs you hold? The things you own? 

See your wants plain. In this future, you have everything you want. So what do you have? Don’t limit your wants here, it’s just an imagined future. You can have everything you want. What is it you have? 

Now that you see your wants, can you carve a pattern back from what you want to what you need to get those wants? Is it money? Is it more time with those you love? Is it a better sense of self-worth? What would you do tomorrow to make those wants closer to today? 

We block ourselves from wanting sometimes, of being totally transparent with ourselves about what we want. There’s nothing dangerous about dreaming of our wants, except the danger to our current situation. We know that we can’t remain the same and get the things we want. So we hide them, because those wants have the ability to draw us out, and make us into something else.  

These three exercises can turn you toward what you want and care about. In the next entry in this series, we’ll look at the problem of remaining loyal to who you are today.