You Can't Always Get What You Want

but if you try sometime....

One of the reasons I don’t hold specific visions for my future is that I know I am in much less control than I think and than is realistic to achieve such specific visions. I do create specific visions, however. My mind lives in the future so I’m constantly imagining very specific future outcomes. But I don’t hold them as sacred in an effort to control the outcome. I’m recognizing them as possible futures and giving more energy to the ones that seem most aligned with my Puzzle vision. It’s a subtle, but important, difference between influence & control.

We can’t control the future, we can only influence it. That’s because we’re not alone in the creation of our future. Our future emerges from the application of ourselves to the world. And the world is a big place with unquantifiable energy. Your vision for the future almost certainly conflicts with other people’s vision of the future. Who’s comes true? Usually somewhere in between. A future emerges that nobody envisioned 100% because it’s a tension between everyone’s vision of it. Almost nobody’s 5-year plan turns out exactly right (I’m sure there are psychos who set a singular-focus 5-year plan and do achieve it). We usually point to parts of the plan that came true and say “We did it!” And survivorship bias says we only hear stories from people who achieved their big goals. But even then, did achieving the goal bring people what they want? Did they feel like they nourished all the important things in their life? Hopefully we’re growing daily and our understanding of what we need or want changes, too. No perfect goal today is also tomorrow’s perfect goal.

To be sure, zooming in, things like writing down specific goals have been studied and proven to increase the odds of them coming true…..by like 33%. 33% higher odds of coming true does not a guarantee make. And if we take NYE resolution odds as a marker, we’re improving 8% by 33%, making it 10.64% chance of achievement. Importantly, the mechanism is that writing down goals forces clarity and improves focus/prioritization. There’s no magic in the pen. It’s just accurately capturing the goal.

I write down specific professional goals for the month and quarter and they help guide my focus and prioritization while working. Connecting daily work with longer-term projects is, of course, valuable. I even write down specific goals for the year, but they don’t really guide my day to day. I use them to envision possible outcomes that are best-case scenarios. Anything beyond a year is a dream, to me, so I always dream very big. What I hold as my guide, my North Star, is my Puzzle Vision which distills down to “connection & meaning.” In my last post I showed an early Puzzle Vision I created, which looks like a bunch of vague goals. I think presence has created better outcomes across the board than if I had created specific goals. I think this is because I used to create specific goals for every part of my life and, even when I achieved them, upon reflection the joy and lessons were in the path, not the outcome (very cliche and seemingly obvious, but whatevs, I had to learn the hard way). I wondered if I had not had goal-blinders on I might have found more joy and growth. I didn’t have a framework for how to move through life without specific goals, though. Enter The Puzzle.

Envisioning the future is important, but then forsaking parts of our lives to achieve one specific vision of the future is counterproductive at best and dangerous at worst. What I find to be the best for me is to dream a future, dream the path, then be present in everything I do. Our subconscious mind, which really has the reigns of influence, can work with dreams.