Is it Soul Work or is it Goal Work?
One of the ways I prepare to deliver a workshop is to actively use something I first read about in the Adam Grant book, Originals. I say ‘actively use’ because most of us use this technique - let’s call it Creative Procrastination - all the time.
The way I use Creative Procrastination - and that Grant recommends in his book - is this: begin designing the workshop. Do, let’s say, 20% of the work. Just enough to get a sense of what the big unanswered questions are in the design, what the big challenges for the participants are.
Then stop. For quite a while. As long as possible, really. Don’t do any work on it.
In this period, Grant says, our subconscious sets to work solving the problems we have set it. (This is why, I would guess, we have so many great ideas in the shower or out running, when our conscious is occupied and our subconscious can have free rein.)
Then I capture those ideas whenever I have them.
In the lead up to the Coach’s Journey Community In Person Intensive last week, the big unanswered questions for me were:
1) How do we separate the reason we are doing the thing (e.g. connecting with someone) from the end goal we want (e.g. having more clients)? This is important because if you connect with someone purely to connect, that actually works really well as a business development activity. If you connect with them to try and have them become your client, it really doesn’t. They get weirded out and run a mile.
2) What is the different between content creation which enhances our business and our life as we create it, and content creation which drains us, wears out, and is actually a waste of our time in creating the work we want and the life we want?
The answer came back for the second one first.
It works if what you’re creating is Soul Work.
And then I realised that’s the answer for the first question, too.
As I prepare for workshops I’m often looking out for ways to coin a phrase which will stay with people - I learnt that from many great teachers over the years.
And here’s what I came up with. What matters is:
Is it Soul Work or is it Goal Work?
Whenever something is purely Goal Work, we’re in trouble. That’s because we’re doing it purely for the end point, and if we don’t get that end point we really have failed. Before we start, we generally don’t actually know if the Goal will be as good as we think it is, and so we are also betting a lot of energy now on uncertainty later.
That isn’t to say Goal Work is bad in and of itself. Goals are vital. Our ability to look forward and say ‘I want things to be different and this is how’ is an incredibly important part of our humanity. It is hope. It is SO much of what sets us apart from other species. It is deep in what makes us human.
But in a business like mine - and a life like yours - there’s more to life than just goals.
To answer my second question above, if we make the content we create deeply connected to our soul, then three things happen: one, it’s better, more original (probably more scary to create) content. Two, we win whether whatever goal we want happens or not, because our soul wins. Three, it is more likely to do the thing we want it to do (in a coaching business, connect people to us, so they know us deeply, because it comes from the soul).
To answer my first question above, we have to take the Goal Work (I want to have a bigger network, so I can have more clients and more money) and put it back of mind. Then remember that our soul loves to connect deeply with people. Make the connecting Soul Work, with the knowledge that it will help us with our goals firmly back of mind.
This is why, with any creative pursuit, having money taken care of somehow (at least partially) is vital. In Big Magic, Liz Gilbert talks about how she kept her day jobs going for a long time, so that her creativity could have the freedom to create. (She says trying to make your creativity make money is like shouting at a cat).
By keeping a day job, Gilbert took care of the Goal Work (‘I need to pay my bills’) so that she could make the writing Soul Work. My mentor Rich Litvin used to say, ‘If you need a client to pay the bills, you don’t need a client, you need a job.’
More than that, in the War of Art Steven Pressfield gives us a rule of thumb: the more Resistance we feel towards doing something, the more important doing that thing is to our soul’s evolution.
Where we feel the Resistance is our Soul Work.
So the questions become:
What are my goals?
And
How do I make the doing of them Soul Work (and put the Goal Work back of mind while I’m doing it)?
PS If you’re based in London and would like to explore making writing more Soul Work and less Goal Work (and procrastinating less while you do it), come join me this Sunday at the Chiswick Book Festival: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/chiswickbookfestival/how-to-write-a-book-in-12-minutes-with-robbie-swale-workshop/e-jgdlxx
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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