a soulful perspective on goal-setting and deadlines - Joyful Productivity for soulpreneurs

A student very familiar with my content wrote this insightful comment:

“I’m seeing this pattern of mind setting up goals and plans, and especially times, to complete things. Then what tends to happen is that the plans get somehow thrown off… Things tend to start after the end of the arbitrary deadline.

I thought I just need to get better at doing things on time, but I learned in an inner voice retreat last week that what’s actually happening is that when the mind sets an arbitrary deadline, it puts bars on the time. Then the human that knows deep down it’s meant to be free just avoids that arena that is caged and waits until the cage disappears (due to the deadline expiring) before starting to work on it.

It’s sovereignty expressing, and what’s needed isn’t to control more, but instead, to retain the structure and release the walls…”

She also wrote about how SMART goals feel like they’re squeezing the life out of soulful intention-setting, and that ultimately, what matters most is for Love to be explored and experienced and expressed, even as we do things in human form. Yet often, egoic mind-led (little “s” self) dead-lines and metrics can squeeze out Love in the moment, or even dead-en (take the soul out of) our goals/visions…

Here’s my response:

Gratefully — I see a lot of alignment here with Joyful Productivity 🙌🏾😊

The JoyPro method has us always coming back to our values/virtues (e.g. Love and Truth!) while we’re working.

We aim to do this, ultimately, in every moment of work — hence my frequent Energy Reboots. The deepest “goal” is to prioritize our values above any deadlines or metrics, since those values/virtues/connection-with-divine have more meaning and importance for our soul’s existence and growth.

And yet — the following also tend to be true, and this is where JoyPro can bring more earthiness…

Fear-driven perfectionism

The egoic mind is fearful to publish or launch things, so it cleverly creates blocks.

Why? Because it doesn’t want to be rejected by other humans, nor by its own egoic judgments of its creations.

In other words, fear-driven perfectionism.

The egoic mind is incredibly wily and brilliant in making us think that it might be a spiritual thing to delay publishing something (even a single post) or launching a product, because our “intuition” (in this case, ego-in-disguise) says we’re not yet “ready”.

If we follow those limiting beliefs, and delay and delay our putting ourselves out there, publishing things, launching things, we may even delay to the point of the deadline of paying rent.

And then we end up needing to get into the cage of a job, and losing the sovereignty of entrepreneurial work.

True learning

Yet, it’s also true that when we publish or launch more things (within a year, for example), we more quickly learn (within a year) because action-then-observation is the real way to learn, and to grow.

In prioritizing action over fear-driven delay, we grow (our business) more quickly, because other humans get to experience our energy signature, and we get to collaborate with them to make our creations more aligned.

Therefore we get to play together with other humans through our services and programs. This serves to grow our true livelihood, thus liberating ourselves from the cage of working-for-other-egos :)

Tools for the soul’s play

You mention that deadlines and metrics can feel like cages, and that the soul wants to be free from such limitations… and that only after a deadline has passed (the cage has been removed) does the soulful human create freely…

Yet what if we transcend that perspective, and see that “there is no cage”? … cue the little buddha kid from Matrix 1 🧘

What if so-called “deadlines” and “metrics” can be transformed into tools for the soulful human playing?

What if they are Self-”imposed” constraints (with capital S … soul-inspired constraints, just like this entire Earth life!)… similar to banks of a river channeling the life-giving energy of water toward a desired destination?

Because they’re tools, lightly (and effectively) held, we never self-flagellate when using them… we eschew self-blame or punishment… (we practice liberating ourselves from past authority figures that corrupted our sense of deadlines/metrics…) and we repair our relationship to them… and practice seeing them as tools in a Game which is designed to inspire energy and direction.

That’s how I see deadlines and metrics… I’ve long practiced making them fun, and if a deadline passes or a metric isn’t met, I say “oh well!” 🤷 (as in “oh, all is still well!”) and I get curious for the learning.

Moments to pause and reflect

I used to self-flagellate. Now, gratefully, I practice setting deadlines and metrics without emotional charge… other than the positive, energizing charge of The Earth Game 😊

Along the way, those deadlines/metrics are *moments of pausing to reflect* on what worked, what did we learn, how might we work more effectively going forward.

So it’s more like pit stops to pause and reflect and repair, rather than looming deathly urgent hell-pits 🔥 of self-blame 😬

Magnifying our direction

Another analogy is a magnifying glass 🔍 focusing the Sun to create fire 🔥 and we make sure to control that fire so it warms and cooks and doesn’t burn down the village. A deadline is the magnifying glass. A metric is the control of the fire for helpful purposes.

To en-lighten deadlines/metrics so that we can use them as what they could be — energizing tools of focus, progress, and learning ✨ to help us liberate from egoic fearful perfectionism.

In that way, perhaps our perspectives can be aligned.

Ultimately, it’s still the Soul playing 😊