Aspirations & Ancestors
As the year winds down, it’s a natural time to pause and reflect. Reviewing what you’re grateful for and acknowledging how you’ve grown, learned, and developed can be incredibly valuable. Reflecting on your progress helps you recognize what has come to fruition and is a core driver of fulfillment. Writing down your lessons and insights deepens your connection to your growth but also boosts engagement with life and work, improves your well-being, and can even enhance sleep by reinforcing your sense of accomplishment.
But here I’d like to be more future-focused. I want to ask a question about your deepest desires. What are you longing for? What is your aspiration? What do you really want? As you explore those questions, you might also ask, for the sake of what? Who or what will that serve?
In my experience, these have not always been easy questions to ask. Do you allow yourself the space to explore your dreams and aspirations? We might find ourselves not even daring to say what we want. It might invite internal judgments, assessments, and qualifications.
“You can only have that if you are ______.” (You can fill in the blank with your own familiar story).
Or…
“You tried to find that before, and it didn’t work, so don’t waste your time.”
Or maybe even more critical thoughts around whether you even deserve this kind of dream. These thoughts are impediments that can cost us our freedom and well-being. But it’s important to acknowledge that the thoughts are there. These thoughts protect you from something… maybe disappointment, rejection, or something else. You can start to see the good intentions behind the thoughts, but they limit your life and the possibilities you allow. Foundational to my coaching practice is an IFS-informed approach. You may have heard about IFS, Internal Family Systems. Parts Work is one of the most popular forms of self-development due to its effectiveness and it’s a practical and easy way to understand and relate to our inner experiences.
But here is where the good ancestor comes in. I’ve been studying in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition where we learn the future is made of only one thing and that is the present. We are constructing the future now. In my coaching work, we learn how to unfold the future from right now. We start where we are. We build the future with what’s available as opposed to believing that what we need is missing. When we take the best care of the present moment, we are caring for the future. Rest and self-care couldn’t be more important to your future self. And if you think of it this way, all the systems and structures we are living in now were created by the aspirations of our ancestors. So it’s critically important to identify our deepest aspiration now because how the world will be in 10 years and beyond, is the result of the collective aspirations we nurture today.
What if I propose something very radical? We are already what we want to become. You can not aspire to something completely unknown to you. It’s as if it’s true and not true at the same time. I wrote about the acorn growing into the oak tree. We don’t criticize the acorn for being an acorn. We see and appreciate the acorn as it is right now. It has everything it needs to grow and develop into that beautiful oak tree. As you do! The acorn will grow into the majestic oak tree if the conditions are right. Our aspirations are becoming based on how we’re living right now.
Maybe our job is to be in this world more like a gardener. We take care to nurture our aspirations today and cultivate them. We may not exactly know our deepest aspirations, but we can tend who we are being as we explore and discover. If our aspirations are partially true, we want to create the right conditions so they can grow and flourish.
I’d love to hear from you if coaching could help support this cultivation for yourself. Unlike some coaching approaches, I don’t take a gap analysis or start from a place of deficiency. We start where you are and explore the threads together.
Reach out for a free 45-minute call to chat.