The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart famously said that the pure, divine life lives "without a why". That is to say that life springs from the depths of its own source. Life itself, according to Eckhart, "lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so lives without asking why it is itself living". This is, of course, very zen like coming from a Dominican friar from a very different spiritual traditional. The challenge is how to take this apophatic philosophical approach and transfer it in a psychodynamic context.
The vast majority of psychotherapeutic methods have embedded within their structure some kind of goal directed paradigm; this is particularly true for existential styled method. There is value to this. I came across this article that was counter-intuitive to those methods. The author, Leo Babauta, argues for the value of achieving without goals. He conducted a self experiment and found that instead of acting from goals, live out of principles and values. Among his insights:
The vast majority of psychotherapeutic methods have embedded within their structure some kind of goal directed paradigm; this is particularly true for existential styled method. There is value to this. I came across this article that was counter-intuitive to those methods. The author, Leo Babauta, argues for the value of achieving without goals. He conducted a self experiment and found that instead of acting from goals, live out of principles and values. Among his insights:
- Love what you do. This seems obvious, but so often people do things that they’re not excited about. I try to find things that I love doing, and if there’s some mundane task I have to do for some reason, I either eliminate it or find a way to enjoy the hell out of it.
- Help others. I am strongly motivated by the desire to do things that will help people — my readers, my friends, my kids, people in need. And so this principle guides everything I do, including all of my writing. I highly recommend it.
- Build relationships & trust. Each thing you do, personally and for your business, should be building a relationship. I build relationships with my readers by being authentic and trying my best to help, and build relationships with friends & family in the same way. Being trustworthy as much as humanly possible is a great way to build relationships, so these two go hand-in-hand.
- Be curious. When you’re curious about other people, and about life in general, you tend to be a better listener, a better friend, more informed, and have fun each step along the way.
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