Getting directions to your Goals: Ask your creative mind!

Continuing on the theme of questions… in particular, how you might ask your mind for directions to your goals and lead you to achieving what you want.

Have you noticed that women are often more open to asking for directions than men! Perhaps I’m speaking only about myself? Being a man, I’ve definitely been in the situation where I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but my first inclination is to figure it out, rather than ask for directions. Often this has been contrary to the experience of the member of the opposite sex whom I was with at the time. Their first impulse was to ask someone! 

Perhaps there is a lesson in this. Instead of turning over a problem in your mind, approaching it with the ‘masculine’ logical rational mind. Going over it once again, round the same block, so to speak. Why not, pause, take a break and ask! In this case, not a passer-by but another part of your mind that is more imaginative and intuitive… you might even call it the more ‘feminine’ part. 

Often the issue in creating something we want is a lack of awareness. Maybe it’s not knowing which direction to move in. We do not know how to go forward, nor are we aware clearly of what’s blocking the path. We need to bring some of this information into view.

Ask your Mind for directions to your Goals

So, how can the part of the mind that knows be approached? How can a question be used to find a way forward in creating something you want to get in life? 

What type of questions are the most effective in bearing the fruit of new information? We already established that it might be more productive to ask the intuitive mind rather than the rational part. What language does this mind speak, and what’s the best form of question, if we ask a question in words at all. In fact, doing a drawing, painting or collage might, in fact, be a better way to ask. 

You could ask a simple question, do I go this way or that way. But in my experience, this is not the most effective route because we are trying to engage the imagination and creative mind to come up with the answer. If the rational mind had the answer, we would have solved the problem and found the way already. 

One way to do this is to consider what you want or an aspect or quality of it. Dwell upon that which you are the most certain of. Now, ask a question which is in a form which assumes that what you want is true and has already been granted. 

To give you a trivial example. Let’s say my desire is to create fame. I want to be famous. Using a traditional affirmation, I might repeat… I am famous. However, the mind often revolts against this. “Who are you trying to kid! You’re full of…”

Asking a question of the mind puts it in a much more creative space. It has less inclination to kick-back, since you’ve given it a bone to chew upon. It starts considering the possibility, perhaps it does throw up objections. Possibly it does contemplate whether fame is an authentic desire worth paying attention to. Maybe. But if it likes the bone then it will start to imagine that reality and how to get to it, throwing up possibilities, insights, and ideas that are perhaps more productive in realising the goal. 

So, to summarise the steps for using questions in this way: 

1) Consider what you want. 

2) Form a question assuming that to be true… usually beginning with Why or How

3) Let your mind marinate in the question.

4) Act from your new insights. 

The final step is in fact the most important, to take any new information and act upon it, thereby moving towards what you’re creating, to a new landscape, perhaps ready for further questions!

I wonder how you became so creative in your life? 

Ask your mind for directions to your goals, in the right way, and who know where it might take you!

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

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