The Immersion and Feeling Test
I love setting goals and goals are important. Positive Psychology tells us that, “Setting goals helps trigger new behaviors, helps guide your focus, and helps you sustain that momentum in life. Goals also help align your focus and promote a sense of self-mastery.” Goals have been a part of my life since I was a child. At this point, I can remember actively working on a goal over thirty years ago. After many decades of goal setting and goal striving, I can say that I have achieved every goal that I was truly committed to achieving. I can also say that I have failed to achieve every goal I was not truly committed to achieving. For myself, true commitment can be felt. I certainly know when I am giving an endeavor my all. For me, there is a feeling to it, or, I should say, there are a couple of feelings that accompany a strong pledge.
Feelings are feelings. Everyone can be interpreted differently. Your process to reach a target could be completely different than mine. My take may not apply to you. But, if you are struggling to accomplish a goal, it might be a good idea to check your situation against my gauges. One small change could be a big help.
One of the main feelings that come with my best efforts is the feeling of immersion. If I can spend enough time in an environment, I can become familiar enough with its components to truly excel. With immersion comes the ability to see patterns, anticipate movements, and, generally, sense what is happening without consciously analyzing. In short, if I can become immersed in a topic of arena, I can flow. Flow has always been a key element in my campaigns.
As it always does, the yin-yang comes into play in regards to immersion and flow. Just as, when assessing myself honestly, I can feel a level of immersion, I can also feel a lack of that feeling. If there are still dark corners of a topic that intimidate me, chances are, I am not in shape to master that topic. Any type of confusion is the enemy of immersion and flow. If you’re confused, the tendency is to think and analyze. Thinking and analyzing jam up the gears of flow. Until I am fluent in a subject, I cannot release my thoughts enough to see patterns or move in rhythm with that subject intuitively. To pull a piece of advice from this anecdote, it’s safe to say that to consider yourself immersed in a topic, you must dig up and (effortlessly) master every aspect of that topic.
Are you immersed in the world involving your goal? Do you know everything there is to know about its history, philosophies, key moments, key people and the debates currently happening? If not, it’s best to spend time learning as much as you can about the topic. When the information becomes so familiar that you don’t have to analyze it, you will be able to access the best possible state - flow.
Another feeling that signifies my trajectory to success is the feeling that I can (almost) actually “taste” the achievement of my goal. This feeling is even harder to express in words than my first feeling. But, even though it might be vague, it’s important. When I am effectively building towards an achievement, I always have the sense that I can feel the completion of that achievement in my body. And, for some reason, for me, it relates to my sense of taste. I am not sure why that is since I can’t ever remember setting a goal around eating something specific. However, this mystery doesn’t change the fact that, if I am on my way to success, I can always feel its reality with my senses.
Of course, if I am honest with myself, I can tell if I need to change course if I do not feel that same feeling. Unfortunately, this does not always happen quickly enough. There have been weeks and months in my life when I physically went through the motions of striving for a goal while being fully aware that I was not feeling the feeling that I needed to be feeling. Through maturity and mindfulness, I am now able to look back at times in my life when I ignored my intuition and anything not brick and mortar. This was a mistake and the reason for this piece is to try to prevent others from wasting time by working toward a goal without the right emotions and energy behind the crusade.
Does the thought of achieving your goal create changes in your body? Does it get you excited? If your physical response to the thought of accomplishing your goal is flat, chances are, you haven’t developed a strong level of excitement about your quest. In this case, it’s best to focus on anticipating how you will feel when you accomplish your goal. Try to crystallize that feeling. Use visualization to imagine a world where you have already accomplished your goal. Let that visualization excite you and generate enough emotion to propel you to success.
What’s more interesting is that the importance of the goal has not necessarily influenced my level of immersion or feeling. Some of my most important goals took years to accomplish because of time spent misaligned with the goal. I can also say that the difficulty of the goal was also not relevant to my commitment level. I accomplished the biggest long shot of my life by writing a movie distributed by a major studio (it’s still playing on major channels worldwide). At the same time, I have failed to accomplish goals that should have been relatively easy for me, based on my age and abilities.
I believe that one of the most encouraging parts of this piece is that, with the right state of being, all goals can be accomplished - both big and small. As I stated above, I have achieved every goal to which I was truly committed. I also have a way to measure my level of commitment through honest assessments of two impressions of mood: Immersion and the ability to feel the goal achieved. If I am right, then I should be able to anticipate the success or failure of everything I undertake going forward. And, with that, I can change course along the way to save time if those impressions of mood aren’t rating strong enough to keep the status quo.
I would love to know if you can also rate your level of commitment through non-physical means and if your level of commitment relates to your level of success in the past. If we can gather a consensus about which factors predict success or failure, we can work together to develop ways to know how to improve those predictors or discontinue the project at hand. As always, it’s with introspection and a quiet mind that we can unveil the truth.
Burak Uzun is an award-winning writer and a Certified Meditation Teacher.
Burak Uzun also co-wrote a feature film called Team Marco, which was featured in over fifty film festivals around the globe and was distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
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