Direction
Every month we’re going to bring you a new post on how to make it a HAPPY WORLD through our 10 Habits of Happiness.
This time, we’re looking at ‘D’ for Direction. Our guest blogger Anya Pearse explains how directing our energies towards something can bring meaning and happiness to our lives.
In a world where everyone’s in a hurry to get somewhere, it can feel tough to feel all at sea instead. This can be especially tough when our self-worth gets tangled up with our achievements, success or productivity.
It’s hard not to admire (or, let’s be honest - sometimes feel a little jealous of) those whose diaries are full of plans and goals. They appear to have the secret to something we struggle with; a direction in life. Their focused commitment gives their efforts traction, and results follow. Whether we reach them or not, having attainable goals is a way to get happier, too.
If our purpose supplies the fuel to our tank, having a direction gets the rubber to hit the road in realising the full potential of our “one wild and precious life”.
What does having a direction mean?
Having a direction in life generally means that we take actions towards a particular goal or outcome. It’s a reason to get up in the morning, or to keep going when times are tough.
Now, for some of us those goals or outcomes can be incredibly concrete: to have X amount of income per year, or to be married/have children by a certain age, or to lose a certain amount of weight, or to achieve a certain qualification.
These are things you can take obvious steps towards - applying for a job/work in a certain industry, dating lots of people/joining a dating agency, reducing your calorie intake, or taking intermediate courses to prepare you for a future university application.
For other goals, the route can be a bit more fuzzy. What does it mean to “be happier”, to “be more successful”, to “get fit” or to “make a difference in the world”? All of these goals or outcomes are just as valid, but without knowing that they actually mean to you - your personal definition of happiness, success, fitness or making a difference - it’s hard to know what next step to take.
This is why finding our direction can be hard
For many of us, it’s easier to say what we DON’T want, than it is to say what we DO want. This is entirely normal; we’re hard-wired to be more negative than positive. But choosing goals to avoid something (like “being lonely” or “feeling guilty”) doesn’t work; research shows that people do really poorly when their goals are simply about avoiding something.
We can also be worried about what other people might think about what we want, which means we find it hard to tune into ourselves. Or we may be interested in lots of different things, and reluctant to give anything up!
In cases like these, when we don’t have a clearly-defined sense of what we’re moving towards, we can end up paralised by over-thinking our options rather than trying something - anything - to create some actual data.
Add in a fear of failure (or even success) and no wonder we stay stuck in a tight circle, chasing our tails on the spot.
Okay. So how can we discover our direction?
There are usually three things to do when planning any journey. These are: know where you’re starting from; have a destination in mind; work out how you’ll get there.
With a physical journey, these components are kinda obvious. But how can they be applied to finding a direction in life, when the destination is the very thing that might be eluding you? There’s probably no clear map for where you’re going. Even if there was, it would have been drawn by someone else.
The answer comes from building an inner compass to guide you as you find your OWN way, step by step. Here are some ideas and resources on how to do it.
Discover your strengths
Remarkably few of us can say what our strengths are, off the top of our head. Often we don’t know or, if we do, we’re afraid of seeming boastful.
But while many of us are taught to work on our weaknesses, it’s by using our STRENGTHS that we feel more energised and authentic. Using them triggers our intrinsic motivation for action (we want to do it for ourselves, not for others), and a sense of naturalness or ease.
How do we find out what our strengths are? There are lots of ways to do this. Two science-backed tests from leading positive psychologists are the free VIA Character Strengths Survey and the inexpensive but more multi-dimensional StrengthsProfile.com (from Alex Linley, author of the excellent Average to A+). As Alex puts it in his book,
“Using our strengths is the smallest thing we can do to make the biggest difference”
We can also ask others what our strengths are. It may feel tough for us to even hear them, as it may trigger the same discomfort many of us feel in the face of a compliment.
But if you ask your friends and family to be specific (attached to a particular moment in time or event), targeted (about a particular action or behaviour) and to supply evidence (the outcome our strength led to), it can be easier for such positive feedback to “stick”.
Discover how you like to use them
Another way to discover your strengths is to remember the things you enjoy doing. These might be things in the past, things you loved to do as a child, or other times where you felt truly yourself or on “cloud 9” (also known as peak experiences). These can offer extremely useful clues to the kind of direction you will enjoy now.
But why restrict yourself to the distant past? Some of the most useful information comes when you examine what you do day-to-day. So why not keep what Stanford University professors and Designing Your Life authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans call a “good time journal”?
Simply record your activities for three weeks (using this print out or their app) on two scales; energy and engagement.
(Why energy AND engagement? Because it’s easy to feel engaged in something (like arguing constructively or problem-solving), and to even be good at it, but to feel drained afterwards. So noticing both aspects is key! You may even identify periods of flow, when you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing that time passes by without you realising it.)
Soon you’ll have useful data to discover what brings you alive by applying their AEIOU approach;
A = Activities. “What were you actually doing? Was this a structured or an unstructured activity? Did you have a specific role to play [e.g.] (team leader) or were you just a participant [e.g.] (at the meeting)?”
E = Environments. “Our environment has a profound effect on our emotional state. You feel one way at a football stadium, another in a cathedral. Notice where you were when you were involved in the activity. What kind of a place was it, and how did it make you feel?”
I = Interactions. “What were you interacting with—people or machines? Was it a new kind of interaction or one you are familiar with? Was it formal or informal?”
O = Objects. “Were you interacting with any objects or devices—iPads or smartphones, hockey sticks or sailboats? What were the objects that created or supported your feeling engaged?”
U = Users. “Who else was there, and what role did they play in making it either a positive or a negative experience?”
Deploy design thinking
So, you know what your strengths are, and how and where you prefer to deploy them. A sense of purpose may have revealed itself through this, or through other exercises in self-reflection. You’re starting to get a feel for your direction, but you’re not quite sure.
This is where some ‘design thinking’ comes in.
Again, offered in its most accessible form in Burnett and Evan’s book, it can be summed up in five principles; curiosity, bias to action, reframing, awareness and radical collaboration.
Be curious An attitude of curiosity is one of the most useful traits you can cultivate if you wish to discover your direction. It makes even the most mundane of things new and interesting, helping you to recognize opportunities and possibilities everywhere.
Try stuff How do you know something will work? Just sitting and thinking isn’t going to get you the information you need to move forward. Having a bias to action means you’ll try things! It’s better to try ideas out as early as possible, and to fail fast and change direction, than to never know what might have been. Remember “there is no failure, only feedback”.
Reframe problems We all see things in a certain way, and it’s this way of seeing them - rather than the things themselves - which can keep us the most stuck. By reframing our challenges, we can overcome our biases and see new possibilities open up before our eyes.
Know it’s a process Rome wasn’t built in a day, and nor is your new life direction. You may have to keep letting go of your initial ideas to make space for something new, different or better, even if it feels like you’re taking two steps backwards at times. Awareness helps you to be gentle with yourself as you learn that discovering a direction a process, not a destination.
Ask for help Here’s the thing; you’re not travelling through life alone. Having support, be it through friends and family or through a mentor or like-minded community, means that finding your direction in life - and, better still, actually living it - becomes a collaborative experience. As the African saying has it, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Action for November; Commit to your goals!
Direction is the final part in creating a coherent life; one which is lived in such a way that you can “clearly connect the dots between who you are, what you believe, [and] what you are doing”.
Committing to your goals is also one of Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky’s 12 science-backed ways to be happier in her book The How of Happiness: A Practical Guide to Getting the Life You Want.
Here are a couple of ideas, and remember; it’s easier to keep habits if they’re obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.
How can you make your chosen direction really obvious to you? Can you add an inspiring or caring message as your phone wallpaper? Can you create a vision board to look at before you go to sleep each night, or set a recurring reminder for an in your calendar?
How can you make this goal attractive? Can you make a list of how it will make the most of your strengths? Can you visualise how it will look and feel to reach your goal or head in your chosen direction? Perhaps you can start a WhatsApp group with friends to share reminders and support?
How can you make it easy? Can you ‘stack’ a goal-supporting habit with an existing one? For example, if your direction involves doing lots of research, can you do an item on your checklist when you sit down to lunch? Can you set an intention when you brush your teeth each morning?
How can you make it even more satisfying? What kind of difference would having a direction make for you? How would you sleep differently at night, knowing that you’ve taken one small step towards it that day?
And finally...
I said that there probably isn’t a map for where you’re going. But you can draw one! Try making an “Odyssey Plan” (again, from Designing Your Life); a five year “what if” of your first choice, something similar if that one isn’t an option, and then something completely different (and wilder!) Try it and let your imagination run wild! As Bill and Dave say, “There is no one idea for your life. There are many lives you could live happily and productively.”
Don’t worry if you don’t know what your direction is, even if you’ve taken all the steps above! It can feel really stressful to chase after it, or to feel that we can’t do anything until we know what it is. For some of us, our direction in life is something that evolves rather than presents itself fully-formed, and that’s okay. Take a deep breath, and focus on just one step at a time.
And to follow one from the above; let go of worrying about how many steps it may take for you to get from where you are to where you want to go. Sure, keep the general direction in mind but be aware that, much like an aeroplane flying from New York to London, there are going to be lots of incremental course-corrections on the way, depending on the conditions you encounter. As Jenny Blake says in the title of her excellent book Pivot, “The only move that matters is your next one.”
Anya Pearse is studying an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology, is a Museum of Happiness volunteer, and helps smart and sensitive individuals find relief through self-compassion, connection and communion. Learn more at LetTheLoveIn.com and sign up for her newsletter here.