Keep Daily Tasks Rooted in Big Picture Goals

This post is from 2014, but still relevant today.

I’ve been flustered and confused lately about my lack of expected motivation and enthusiasm when doing daily tasks designed to get me to a bigger goal.  The answer came to me while meditating today:  instead of keeping the daily goals squarely in service of the ultimate goal, I had been allowing those smaller goals to become an end unto themselves.  As such, they had not enough “juice” to push the effort forth.  On the contrary, my experience of the daily goals was one of flatness, grey, unfocused, becalmed energy.

Keeping the sense of how the daily parts serve the whole is vital for keeping me accomplishing those daily tasks!  So then the question became “How do I keep the goal at hand firmly anchored in the big picture, in service to the ultimate goal?”  The first answers that came to me were “Teach it to others, blog about it (thus the words you’re reading right now), and reiterate it to myself”.  To that end, when I’m making out my list of daily tasks, I’ve decided I’m going to write down how each task is in service to the bigger picture.

As a necessary step in the progression to the accomplishment of the ultimate goal, the daily goals then remain alive, multidimensional, colorful, and suffused with energy and light.  When the daily goals have that kind of “life energy” to them, it is easier to pull forth the resources needed to do those goals and move closer to the ultimate goal.

Another question you might have at this point is “What are the ‘ultimate’ goals?”.  According to the meditation I did this morning, they are beauty, love, creativity, joy, etc.  All else is in service to those.  So, for example, one of my goals today (Sunday) is to update my website so it matches the e-newsletter I’m sending out on Tuesday with respect to talks I’m giving soon and upcoming workshops.  When I answer the question, “How does this serve the ultimate goals of joy, beauty, happiness, love, creativity?”, my answers include:  it creates the opportunity for greater awareness in those who read the blog post, it puts me in the presence of those who are focused on growth, it draws more people to working with me on their own issues with motivation and focused effort, and more.  When the task of updating the website is couched in terms of how it serves helping others grow and become aware, it’s much easier to tap the energy necessary to get the task done.

Try this idea as a way to keep yourself moving forward with the goals you’ve chosen, both large and small.