We can make a long list of improvements and still avoid the quieter question underneath them: What actually matters to my heart?
This workshop with Rick Wilkes and Cathy Vartuli offers a grounded way to listen for the answer. It is not a demand to manufacture the perfect life plan. It is a practice for bringing the head, heart, gut, body, resources, and real constraints into one conversation.
Begin Three Years From Now
Imagine we are sitting together three years from today. You are looking back over those years and feel genuinely pleased with your progress.
What needed to happen for you to feel that way?
Divide a page into three broad areas:
- personal
- professional
- spiritual
The boundaries can be fuzzy. Connection might belong in all three. Meaningful work may also be spiritual. The purpose is not to classify your life perfectly. The columns help more of your life have a voice.
Write freely before you edit. If your mind says, “I don’t know,” write that and keep the pen moving. Include what you want to experience, not only what you want to achieve. Ease, connection, play, belonging, creativity, and generous service can be as important as an external milestone.
Choose Before You Optimize
Creative and caring people can see many worthy possibilities. That abundance becomes paralyzing when every possibility is treated as an equal obligation.
Choose one priority from each area for now. You are not signing a contract with the next three years. You are giving the nervous system enough focus to notice what helps and what does not.
Ask:
- Which possibility feels alive rather than merely impressive?
- Which would make other parts of life easier or more nourishing?
- Which desire keeps returning even after I dismiss it?
- Which one feels like mine rather than a social instruction?
Notice your body as you consider each choice. A body yes does not always feel like excitement. It may be a fuller breath, a settling, warmth, a sense of space, or quiet recognition. A body no may be useful information rather than resistance to defeat.
Name the Blocks Without Making Them the Boss
For each priority, write what seems to block it. A block may be practical, emotional, relational, or based in an old conclusion:
- “It will take too much.”
- “I do not want to disappoint anyone.”
- “I am afraid I will fail in public.”
- “I do not deserve to choose this.”
- “If I begin, I will have to do everything.”
Add a because when you can. “That will never happen” becomes more workable when it becomes “That will never happen because I expect to be alone with all the effort.” Specificity gives us somewhere to tap, negotiate, ask for help, or redesign the plan.
Circle the three blocks that most affect your chosen priorities. Again, this is a present-moment snapshot, not a final diagnosis.
Inventory What Is Already With You
The workshop separates external assets from inner strengths because both matter.
External assets can include a person, group, class, book, savings, technology, available time, an invitation, or a place where beginner questions are welcome. An opportunity does not have to be fully secured to be worth naming.
Inner strengths might include persistence, tenderness, pattern recognition, humor, courage, curiosity, willingness to ask, practical intelligence, playfulness, or the ability to recover. If acknowledging strengths feels uncomfortable, remember what trusted people have appreciated in you and what you naturally bring when someone else needs help.
You do not need to maximize every strength. Imagine turning up the volume one or two notches on the qualities that support what matters.
Give the Heart One Visible Action
Turn one priority into an action a video camera could see:
- practice for fifteen minutes
- ask one person for a specific kind of help
- schedule the appointment
- take the walk
- share a draft with one trustworthy person
- protect one hour on the calendar
Give it a time. A heart-centered intention deserves enough structure to become visible in the world.
Awkwardness does not automatically mean stop. Cathy offers a useful reframe in the workshop: discomfort can be courage entering the body. We can soften, tap, reduce the size of the step, and still let what matters receive some movement.
Watch the Workshop
Download the automatic transcript
This Guide was adapted from a Thriving Now workshop with Rick Wilkes and Cathy Vartuli, recorded January 26, 2019. The transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.