IF WE STOP THINKING, WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT OUR GOALS, DREAMS & AMBITIONS?
“There are no limitations to the mind except those
we acknowledge.”
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I think, therefore I suffer.
When I finally understood that thinking was the root cause of all of my su9ering, I was jumping up and down, exhilarated, relieved and grateful for discovering the true reason for everything negative I’ve experienced in my life. This ecstasy was short-lived though because soon after the exuberance settled, the next thoughts popped into my mind:
If thinking is the root cause of all my su9ering and I just stop thinking, how do I live my life now? What about all of my goals, dreams, and ambitions? Do I stop wanting things in life? Will I just devolve into a couch potato and not do anything with my life anymore?
In case you were wondering, yes, I am telepathic and yes, I can read your mind. Just kidding, but if you are wondering how I wrote the exact or very similar questions and know what thoughts you most likely have right now, it’s because I am human also, contrary to popular belief. All of us are going through similar journeys of awakening to our True Selves, so rest assured that many people are having the exact same thoughts you are having right now as you come to see your true magnificence.
Now back to the question of what we do about our goals, dreams, and ambitions if we stop thinking. As I pondered on these questions, an incredible amount of fear and anxiety began to surface because I thought that I would have to give all of it up and become a monk in the middle of the mountains.
I was definitely not ready to do that. As much as I wish I were that enlightened and detached from my life, I genuinely enjoyed being in the world, experiencing the fullness of life with other people, even if a large portion of my life was filled with su9ering.
Here’s what I’ve discovered about what to do with our goals and dreams with this new understanding. As we’ve mentioned in previous chapters, there’s a di9erence between thoughts versus thinking. The source of thoughts and the source of thinking are di9erent, and the source is what will dictate whether it causes su9ering or not.
Similarly, where our goals and dreams come from will determine whether we feel great about pursuing them or not. Like everything in this world, there is nothing inherently good or bad, only our thinking makes it so. Goals, dreams, and ambitions are not good or bad, so it’s not really an either-or situation, but more about where those goals are coming from.
There are two sources of goals: goals created out of inspiration and goals created out of desperation.
When goals are created out of desperation, we feel a large sense of scarcity and urgency. It feels heavy, like a burden, we may even feel daunted by the colossal task we’ve just committed ourselves to, imposter syndrome and self-doubt begin to manifest, and we always feel like we never have enough time for anything. We go about our life frantically, desperately searching for answers and ways that we can accomplish our goal faster, always looking externally, never feeling enough or that we can ever get enough. Worst of all, if we happen to accomplish our goal, within a few hours or days afterwards, all of those same feelings of lack begin to resurface. We begin not feeling content with what we have done, unable to savor our accomplishments and because what we did never feels like it’s enough, we feel that same way about ourselves. Not knowing what else to do, we look around for guidance externally to see what others are doing and see they’re continuing to do the same thing. Thus, we go ahead and proceed to set another goal out of desperation in an attempt to escape all of the negative feelings gnawing away at our soul. When we dig a little deeper into these types of goals we set, they are all typically “means goals” and not “end goals”. In other words, the goals we set in this state of desperation are all a means to an end. There’s always a reason we want to accomplish the goal and it’s always for something else. For example, we want to create a multi-million-dollar business because we want financial freedom, or we want to quit our job so that we can escape the stress and anxiety that comes from it. We feel like we HAVE to do these things instead of WANT to. Goals created from desperation are typically “realistic” and created from analyzing our past and what we think to be “plausible” in the moment. It feels very confining
and limiting. Although these types of goals and dreams may excite us in the moment, as soon as we begin to try to create it, we feel a lack, and we are desperate to bring the dream to life. Paradoxically, if we do end up achieving a goal created out of desperation, we end up feeling even more empty than we did before it. The next “logical” thing we tend to do is to set an even bigger goal out of even greater desperation to hopefully make us feel whole inside.
This is how most of us set our goals and how we live our lives. I’m also not saying this to criticize or judge at all, but to reveal the reality of it. The only reason why I was able to describe it in painful and excruciating detail was because that was my life.
Here’s the good news: it’s not your fault that you set goals that way if you are and there’s a way out. It’s through creating goals and dreams out of inspiration instead of desperation.
When we create goals out of inspiration versus desperation, it is a completely di9erent story. In this state, we are creating because we feel deeply moved, inspired, and expansive. It feels like a calling rather than an obligation. It is like there’s a powerful force of life coming from within us, wanting to be expressed through us to be made manifested into the physical world. This is why painters paint, why dancers dance, why writers write and why singers sing, even if they never get paid or make a living from it. We feel pulled by a force to create something. We gravitate towards it. We feel compelled to do it. When we feel like this, we are creating from a place of abundance instead of lack.
Most surprising of all is that in this state, we are creating not for any reason at all, other than because we simply want to. We don’t create because we feel like we HAVE to. We create because
we simply want to and there’s no other reason. We aren’t creating these goals so that we can do something else or use it as a means to get something else we want. This creating comes from a place of wholeness and abundance. It’s an overflowing of love and joy for life. This is the reason why most of us want or have kids. It’s not so that we can milk our kids for their money once they’re old enough to work and hopefully use them as a retirement plan. We want to have kids because we want to share the abundance of what we have with them, and it comes from a place of sharing what we have lots of versus trying to get something out of them.
This feeling of deep inspiration is incredibly difficult to describe because it does not come from this world. It really doesn’t come from us, but through us from something greater than us. I like to call this feeling divine inspiration because the ideas and vision we have of what we want to create seem to be far bigger than we could have possibly imagined or come up with ourselves. Since divine inspiration doesn’t come from us but from something greater, it doesn’t analyze or rely on past data or what you or anyone in the world has already accomplished. Divine inspiration is what happens when groundbreaking creations and inventions are created that seemed to be impossible not too long ago. It knows no boundaries, limits, or constraints. It is an incredibly expansive force that energizes and lifts us, making us feel like we’re “high” on life. In this state, we feel whole, complete, filled with unconditional love, joy, and peace. We don’t analyze, compare, criticize, judge, or rationalize anything, but instead we truly live, love, share, give, create, grow, and nourish. It really is one of the greatest feelings we can experience, and it is truly a gift that we can experience the divine as humans (and it’s because we’re from the same source).
Everyone has experienced this deep feeling and desire to create something marvelous in the world that’s out of pure inspiration and not desperation. Before moving on to the next paragraph, I encourage you to test this theory. Pause here and spend a few minutes thinking about times in your life where you felt an overwhelming feeling and desire to create something magnificent because you felt deeply inspired and called to. It doesn’t matter if you actually created it or not, but just think of a time where you felt that feeling to create out of inspiration.
Isn’t that just one of the most amazing feelings in the entire world? Most of us feel this divine inspiration, but then suppress it as soon as we begin thinking about doing it. We begin to think ourselves into doubt, rationalize why we can’t do it, tell ourselves that it is unrealistic, how we should focus on more important things, and that we’re not good enough to do it. As soon as we begin to think about the thought of us wanting to create, it completely shuts o9 the source of that inspiration and we go back to living life as usual. When we cut o9 that source, we also cut o9 the feelings of abundance, exuberance, ecstasy, joy, pure unconditional love, and go back to the feelings of doubt, anxiety, frustration, sadness, and feel confined, stuck, and frustrated with our lives.
We can only ever follow one calling at a time, either inspiration or desperation in the present moment. The two cannot coexist at the same time, but we can fluctuate between the two depending on how much thinking is going on.
When we stop thinking, we don’t stop having goals and dreams, we actually fall back into our true nature and begin to create goals and dreams out of inspiration versus desperation. We begin to allow thoughts from the Universe to come into our
mind that lead us to divine inspiration to create something that has never been created before in the world. When we follow divine inspiration, we feel alive, whole, joy, love, peace, and fulfillment.
So how can we tell when a goal or dream is created out of inspiration or desperation?
A simple way to know if a goal or dream is created out of inspiration is to remember the distinction between thoughts and thinking. Goals and dreams that come in the form of thought are created out of inspiration. Goals and dreams that come from thinking are created out of desperation.
Typically, when we think, we’ll analyze, judge, criticize, rationalize, and use our past to try to create our new goals, but this form of creating goals feels extremely restricting and limiting. We don’t typically feel good when creating these types of goals and when we’re pursuing them, we do not feel great either, since it’s all out of desperation.
Another way to identify the two is to sense how you feel energetically. Goals and dreams created out of desperation will feel very heavy, draining, confining, and empty. We tend to feel a lot of scarcity, fear, and stress, like we HAVE to do it or that we are obligated to. With these types of goals, it seems like if we do not accomplish it, that there will be dire consequences, hence the high pressure and stakes (I’m sure you can see now how this can create the feeling of desperation). Moreover, we feel like we’re trying to accomplish these goals to escape our current situation and get out of something. Our goals created in this state are typically means goals, meaning that we want to achieve these goals so that we can do something else afterwards, such as having the goal to quit our job. Most likely you’ll have this goal because you want to go do something you
actually enjoy, but you can see how the goal of quitting your job is just a means goal for you to go do something else. Or having a goal of making $1 million is typically set because you want to have financial freedom and go travel the world. These goals are always a means to an end and not the end itself. There’s always a reason that we want to accomplish these goals and it makes us feel very empty inside.
I want to emphasize that none of these goals are inherently bad or that we shouldn’t have goals of wanting to make money or quitting our jobs. If those goals are created from inspiration, that is completely di9erent. It just depends on the source of the goals and not necessarily the goal itself. This is an important distinction to make, otherwise you’ll spend most of your time debating and stressing yourself out over if this is the right goal for you or not.
There is no right or wrong goal, only goals created from inspiration or desperation. It just depends on how you want to feel inside and when you’re aware of these two types of goals and how they manifest, then you’ll be able to feel blissful as you go about creating amazing things in your life.
On the other hand, goals and dreams created out of inspiration (which comes from thought) feel very light, energizing, uplifting, and expansive. We tend to feel excited, joyful, and most importantly, inspired. We don’t feel like we HAVE to create it, but that we WANT to. Instead of feeling like you NEED to do this, you feel inspired to. There is virtually no pressure because we’re not trying to get out of something or escape our current situation by accomplishing this goal. There is no scarcity or urgency because we don’t feel like we’re creating from a place of lack, but instead from a place of abundance and we just want to share it with the world. Since
it’s coming from inspiration, we are not doing it to get something out of it so that we can do something else. It’s not a means goal, but simply an end in and of itself. There is no “reason” we need to create it. We are not creating so that we can feel whole, but we are creating because we feel whole and want to give from that place, not expecting anything from it.
I’m sure you can see the stark di9erence between the two now and that you can tell which type your goals currently fall under. If most of your goals fall under the category of desperation, don’t worry because most people have goals created from desperation, including myself before I knew a better way.
So how do we create goals and dreams out of inspiration versus desperation?
Creating goals and dreams from divine inspiration isn’t something you have to try to do. We naturally have thoughts of infinite inspiration all the time. If you look at children, they naturally have the wildest dreams and imaginations of what they want to do. It almost doesn’t even register in their minds that they can’t do something most of the time. The only di9erence between us and children is that we have learned to shut down all these thoughts of inspiration which contain our dreams, hopes, and goals that we truly want to see manifested in the world. Our minds are filled more with reasons of why we can’t than thoughts of what we want to create.
We innately have an infinite flow of inspiration that comes through us, but we block that flow as soon as we begin thinking about the thoughts we have, which causes self-doubt, self- sabotage, and anxiety. Think of the flow of inspiration to create like a river. The river always flows until man puts something there to block it, like a dam. Then when the dam is there, we ask
why there are so many fish dying, animals disappearing, and forests dwindling, when all we need to do was return the river back to its natural state and everything will be working perfectly fine, the way nature intended it to.
This is the same for our minds and our goals. We always dream, have big goals, and know what to do at all times when we’re tapped into our inner wisdom and inner intelligence, free from thinking. If we simply do not think about our thoughts, any sort of thoughts about dreams, goals, and desires that naturally arise are all from the divine and that is how you “create” goals out of inspiration versus desperation.
A question that greatly helps me to settle the thinking and tap into the limitless well of possibilities of what I could create is:
“If I had infinite money, already traveled the world, had no fear, and didn’t receive any recognition for what I do, what would I do or what would I create?”
Whenever we ask questions, answers always arise. It is impossible for our brains to hear a question and not come up with a response. So when you ask yourself this question, whatever begins to come up for you without any manual thinking will be from the divine and from inspiration versus desperation.
The way the question is worded is extremely important because it removes most of the thinking, fear, criticism, and external reasons of why you would want to do something, so it focuses your answer on what you truly want to create (usually it’s for no reason other than you just wanting to create it because it’s fun), without any influences from the material world.
Try asking the question and seeing what comes up for you! You’ll be surprised at what surfaces, but don’t get caught up with your thinking when those true dreams of yours begin to be revealed to you.
To a mind without the limits of thinking, anything is possible.
