I recently talked with a member of our IAM Learning Community about what direction he might take his work. So many possibilities! So little experience discerning what he really wants! One of his biggest challenges is simply knowing where to focus.

If you think about it, ‘too many choices’ would be a common challenge when connecting to the abundant, infinite space of our essential selves – what we like to call our essential best. When you break free of external limitations, when you realize that anything really is possible, the buffet table of options can be vast.

Except that the choices that are right for us are not infinite. What was interesting in this conversation was hearing how this person, like so many of us, was looking for ‘opportunities to be creative’. This is also a marker of transforming your work and life so that you can be your best: creativity becomes key. In looking for ”opportunities to be creative’, my friend identified what I like to call ‘the delay factor’: when creativity and joy is a destination, not an integral part of our choice making, a tool we can use to narrow our focus and prioritize our options.

Creating work and life that reflects our best selves happens when we start from creativity and joy:

• What brings you joy right now in this very moment?
• If your creativity was an energetic fuel that wants to move through you, what’s first thing you would do now?

When we tune into our joy and creativity now, we hone our ability to know what we want and make the choices that will create the future we really want. The wrong job or the poor business deal didn’t happen when things went wrong; it happened back in the beginning when we were unclear about our joy and creativity.

A friend of mine says that we vote every day. How true this is! We don’t create the results we experience in a singular event like an election. We create results every step of the way – in ways we participate in every day life.

The dark side of the ‘delay factor’ is the source of this pattern of thinking. Where does it come from? Many religious traditions have misinterpreted sacred teaching to go something like this: “if you are good, then, and only then, you’ll go to heaven.” I’m not interested in whether this idea is right or wrong. I AM interested in what this thinking does to people: “if you are good” is typically determined by some rule or dogma we are supposed to follow.

The thing I have an issue with is how these religions ideas have permeated society and created generations of us who have given our power to others who determine ‘what is good for us’. Heaven later instead of heaven now in the form of joy and creativity is the source of the delay factor. It is also the source of most oppression and persecution in the world.

So snapping out of patterns of delay become critical in several ways:

• It’s key narrowing focus and choice that leads to the right work and life for us: real success
• It contributes to a societal shift away from oppression to empowerment

Are you ready for joy and creativity now? Are you ready for heaven on earth here and now? Does it sound crazy to think about joy and heaven right now, this very instant? What ‘yea buts’ come to mind?

Curious about what you think …

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