The Importance of a universal goal

Counselling and psychotherapy is a process of renewing one’s purpose and meaning in life and looking at someone’s driving core truth or goal often reveals a lack of awareness of it: ‘I’ve never really thought about it’.

For the most part we are all being driven by something within us but in therapy realise that it is not a higher core truth or goal but an unconscious belief, fear or desire, or many of them usually in conflict with one another. One client may find their work, relationships and family are still destructively affected by their childhood of insecurity and fear. Another client may find that their motivations and goals in life are centred in a need to be recognised for status and respect because in the past they were terribly maltreated by an ex-partner or boss at work. Another client may be driven by their reactive anger towards everyone who doesn’t give them what they want because they never resolved or processed the anger and trauma towards a bullying father. People who suffer severe trauma in conflict zones or have been abused by someone will live their life according to the fears and memories that constantly play out in their mind every day and all day. These fears and desires that were created in the past continue to drive all of us in life – the past controls our now and we continue to create the past in the future. We become trapped and stuck in the thought loops of our minds.

The importance of realising a true, universal goal in life can transform that feeling of stuckness and entrapment. By placing all aspects of our life beneath a significant truth in life we can begin to change ourselves – our desires and fears. Our business life, work ethic, family ethic, relationships goals, home life, pastimes and interests, material aspirations all fall underneath such a truth: to seek a healthy balance in life, to pursue truth in life, to create happiness for self and others in life, to value the best in myself and others, to live in truth to my God Self.

All these significant aspirations renew and review everything we say, think and do. Then we can identify when we are not in sync or in harmony with that goal. Emotional dysregulation like anxiety, depression, anger and grief all signify when we are not in harmony with truth and purpose. We begin to live in better alignment with who we want to be now and not what we have been hurt by in the past. Then the future can look ever so brighter.

In your journal jot down some aspirations, goals and truths you want to follow in life. Write loads if you want. Think about them over the next few days and decide one that can reach over all others and lead the way in everything you say, think and do in life. Wear them to see which fits the best.

Begin to look at your relationships in your family, friends, associates and work colleagues and see where they fit in with your truth and where they might not. Think about how you want to change what you do, the things you say and the things you believe that will fit in better with the significant goal or truth you are wanting to live by. Begin to align and synchronise your life with your goal/truth.

Review all of this with your emotional wellbeing and reflect on how living in your truth affects your emotional reactions and general feelings.

Jot down some things about ‘how’ you want to change in different areas of your life:

  1. How does living in this truth affect your partner?
  2. How does living this truth affect your relationship with your parents?
  3. How does living in this truth affect your relationship with yourself?
  4. How does living in this truth affect the way you sit at the computer?
  5. How does living in this truth affect the way you speak to people at work?
  6. How does living in this truth affect the way you see your body, how you treat it and what you put inside it?
  7. How does living in this truth affect your intimacy with your partner?
  8. How does living in this truth affect your technique of tennis practice?
  9. How does living in this truth affect the thoughts you have in your mind?
  10. How does living in this truth affect living with wellness or illness?
  11. How does living in this truth affect the things you do for yourself?
  12. How does living in this truth affect your political views?
  13. How does living in this truth affect the way you vote?
  14. How does living this truth affect the way you see gender, sexuality, race, religious views, spiritual ideas, God, class, wealth, poverty?
  15. How does living this truth affect the way you see your neighbour?

Our goals and aspirations change over time. They are never fixed. Goals evolve. When life loses its purpose or meaning it means it is time to adjust, review and reform your goals and aspirations. Being more conscious of it means you don’t have to let the unconscious past dictate your life habits, attachments, addictions, procrastination, rumination, avoidance, resentment, malevolence towards you self, others and the world. Instead let your more conscious, mindful, living-in-the-now presence enter your life more regularly. Be aware of your awareness. Be conscious of your consciousness and be true to who you really are.

Enjoy living a higher, purposeful and meaningful life.

© Martin Handy 2019