What You Say Is Revealing… But What Do You Really Want?

Conversations can be revealing, can’t they? The words we use, the way we use our bodies to show our passion and enthusiasm or the uncomfortable wriggling and writhing as we wrestle with what we yearn for – are all cues to our progress and how we feel we’re doing on our chosen path. In the twenty years (combined) that Jo and I have coached for we seen people striving for tangible goals. For example, someone may say they want to make more money or become the kind of person that can hold down a relationship. One of the revealing things I hear when people speak to me about their desires is that they often speak with ‘ownership.’ Sometimes they are quite literally saying ‘I want success to be mine’. But is this really what they want? In my view, people don’t want to own a successful relationship. They want success in relating to another human being. I’ve also observed that people don’t really want to make more money for monies sake, they want to make money from work which has meaning and purpose and that they find worthwhile and fulfilling. In my observations people don’t want ownership of money, relationships, spirituality, health or anything else. What they – and all of us – want is the feelings of abundance, love, connection and well-being. When he talks about success in the Endorphin Effect, Dr. William Bloom puts it superbly when he says, ‘It needs to be inside the skin, not outside. If you want to test this try today’s exercise, below. Last week, author of the Power of Now, Echart Tolle’s wife, Kim Eng, was in Bristol. She spoke to an audience of around a hundred people. She said that desire is the beginning of suffering – the yearning for wanting something we see as being outside our self. She went on to say how we are already whole and that when we desire something beyond our self we are subtracting from our self. I think when you combine Kim’s words with today’s exercise you can really sense how we already have what we most desire inside us already. Inside us is a factory for well-being, love, health, connection etc. The only real problem we may have is remembering this. Today’s Exercise 1. Visualise something that you want. See, feel it, smell it. 2. Really get inside the feelings of having what you want. Fall in love with it. 3. Now, if you had a choose, would you want the thing you visualised, but without the feeling, or the feeling without the object. You’ll find more on this in the Endorphin Effect by William Bloom. With Love and good wishes Neil