We all have a way in which we secretly want to change the world, but we’re scared to death to try. I want you to bring that secret desire into your awareness, to feel it in your heart and soul, right now. Maybe you want to publish a novel, or leave your job and start a business. Maybe you want to paint or sculpt or write poetry.

But if you’re like me, every time you try to get out of the box that it feels like you’re in, a thought or two pops up and says “No. Not You. Not Now.”

I’ve found a way to push through those thoughts.

There’s a lot of information out there about how to achieve your goals. About how to stay motivated, how to focus on your dreams and not be distracted by failure and set backs. But that all assumes that you know what you want out of life, that you already have goals you’re eager to achieve. Recently, in response to a comment I made about pursuing one’s goals on The Change Blog, I got a poignant reply that asked “But what if you haven’t found anything worth doing, any goal worth pursuing?”

Great question – focus is wonderful, but if we aren’t looking at the right things how useful is it? Sure we can learn from failure, but what do we do with those lessons if we’re not really doing anything? How can we find out where we should be looking for our satisfaction in life?

We’ve all seen friends there. We’ve all been there ourselves: overwhelmed, confused, lost in evaluating a big life dilemma.

What should I do with my life? What job should I take? Should I move or not? Should I stay with the good, secure option or take a riskier road that has the potential to be great?

Sometimes thinking about these questions leads us into a tearing-out-our-hair, overwhelmed, utterly confused state. Intricate pro and con arguments swirl through our heads. We’re swimming, unable to keep up with the multiplicity of factors to weigh and reason through, and fearful because we sense there is no way to rationally predict the best outcome. Thinking gets us more and more stressed, further and further away from a connection to our desires, our truths, to clarity.