The Spur

The Spur

What matters the most to you? Family? Career? Money? Recognition? Enjoyment? Being right? Creating? Did you notice the shift there? We went from outside stuff to inside stuff. How interesting that we can have several things that matter the most.

Each of us has that, the thing we are always looking for, the little spur that inspires our choices, informs our realities.

On the outside, we may devote ourselves to the comfort and well being of our families, or we may work diligently and long to do the best job we can. Perhaps we focus on the stock market or real estate with the the goal of having millions. Maybe we seek attention through various venues. But there is another piece happening inside. It is the deep thing that drives us.

For some of us, it is a positive spur. We wake up cheery and excited to greet the day. We expect that we will have a nice day, and are rarely disappointed.

For some of us, it is more like a burr under our saddle, a needling, a pricking, that bugs the heck out of us. We may wake feeling apprehensive about the day. We may indulge in negative fantasies about what will happen, we may dwell on how previous events are going to sour. Our chests sink, our frowns deepen, our eyebrows squish together. We stress. We fear. Maybe we even anger.

We have a niggling doubt about ourselves. That doubt can prompt us in a couple ways. It can drive us to try too hard, pushing and pushing to prove that we are okay. We become lawyers to prove we are right.  We become heads of things to prove we are good enough. We found charities to prove we are giving. We become religious to prove we are wholesome. If I feel like I have to prove something, I am working from that doubt. I am overcompensating for my feelings of doubt about myself.

But it has another face, too. Sometimes we succumb to that doubt and we decide it’s true. We believe that we are not right. We believe that we are not good enough. We believe that we are selfish. We believe that we are corrupt. We give up. We become indifferent. We procrastinate. We let things slide, we get in trouble.

Both ways are hard. Both ways can be painful, full of challenges, and not the fun kind. Both ways leave us feeling bad about ourselves, and, frankly, that’s heartbreaking. We are such miracles at our core, each of us has such amazing gifts, to have such struggle, instead of joy, well. it’s just sad.

Creative Questions to the rescue! As we identify that feeling, that niggling doubt, we form that statement, and from that statement, we get our bad creative question. Our bad question lets us know what our new, useful, transformative question will be. And as we start using that new Creative Question, our lives begin to shift. We shake our faith in our doubt. We find that we may begin to love our work, or we may find that we want to do something altogether different. However it goes, it’s so liberating.

How have I changed from being a slave to my doubt to living free in my good Creative Questions?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 02132013