What is your hidden agenda?

When you set out to find a job or create a career, you have a hidden agenda and maybe more than one. You'll bring your own conditioning, personal history and emotional baggage. You bring memories of every work-related role and responsibility you've ever had or dreamed.  You may unconsciously choose a variation of what you've already done, or actively seek some experience which is completely different. No matter what your choices, you’re investing yourself, exerting efforts or maybe even paying someone to find an opportunity that meets your standards. How do you know this is all true?

1) You're in a position of power. It's clear you have work goals, and with all the vacancies out there, you're in a position to call the shots. You decide where you'll apply or not. You'll choose whether to approach a prospective employer and market your potential, or decide not to try. You may not yet know exact roles or responsibilities you seek, but through eliminating what you don't, you'll identify desirable outcomes. If you refuse to be sincerely try, you’ll be your own worst enemy. You have the chance to work things out and opt for just what you need.

2) You have psychological expectations. Based on what you’ve been paid before, your level of pretension, confidence, pedigree of education, practical experience and academic qualifications, you have likely established standards. You may sense more or less what you’re willing to do and where, for whom and pursuits that would be unworthy of you. Your internal memories of who rubbed you the right or wrong way will stick.  How convincing will you be about goals to others?

3) You make choices according to identity. How you define your own self-love and acceptance relates to feeling you will be included in social activities which are compatible with your strengths and talents. Even if you take on part-time or full-time work to finance studies or pursuits of your true interests, your focus will be based on how honest you are with yourself. Conscious honest choices require you to filter out other people’s agendas for you to fix your own.

4) You’re driven by your values. Positions of interest may appeal to you for varied reasons. Do you presume people will judge your value on what you aspire to achieve or, on whether or not you think you deserve the market rate for your work? You have a duty to be fair to yourself, to give all employers fair and equal consideration based on your impressions and priorities over and above limiting values.

5) You may make “mountains out of molehills”. If you sense you desire too much or too little in return for what you feel you can offer in a work position, you may be lost in an ego battle. If the hidden agenda is self-interest alone, then you set up traps for yourself that may mean you gamble more than you wish to lose. If you convince yourself of the ‘all-or-nothing’ option, and justify your position by telling yourself you have to get a job today to keep a roof over your head, feed and clothe yourself and family, reality may mean you blow things out of proportion. Do you really create the urgency for other reasons? What is your other agenda?

Restore your inner strength

For much of your life, you may have derived your self-worth from how you performed in the office, with romantic partners, in athletic competitions or, in some other area of your life.  Even if you haven't been consciously aware of it, you may have felt that the more professional or group recognition you gained, the more personal compliments were directed your way, the more money you earned, all determined your underlying value.  Are you the type of person who thinks, "the better I do, the more people will like me?" Is this the crux of your view of success?

If you've had thoughts like those described above, you may have accomplished things, but still miss out on a lot.  There's more to life than simply lving according to other people's criteria or how they think you should live.  Some of the most challenging experiences are those that trigger most personal revelations and initiate inner healing. 

If you have been frightened of making new decisions or taking initiatives, you may assume fate is in charge and there's no point in taking steps to shape your course.  You may not yet have realized its up to you to restore faith, trust and tap into existing inner strength.  Consider this:

1) You decide what comes of you mentally and spiritually.  Conditions such as lack of food, little sleep, and other disconcerting sources of stress, remind you that what becomes of you results from an inner decision.  Do you decide to give up, stop seeking solutions, and stop fighting or, do you decide external circumstances will not control your attitude? Just as you may experience the suffering sides of emotions, you can learn what it means to stop suffering just as soon as you formulate a convincing, multi-sensual, mental picture of what it means and believe. 

2) You can make use of or forgo opportunities.  Are you aware that your inner strength can raise you above your outward experiences?  You are confronted with fate, each time you have the opportunity to achieve and learn through suffering.  You can choose to face hardship in a courageous and dignified way, and value your health in whatever state or, see meaning in other perceived predicaments that challenge your comfort zone. Ask yourself how would whatever you sense is difficult in your life actually helping you? Embrace it.

3) You can decide to take spiritual evolution seriously.  Your free will and decisions shape your observations and how you understand success.  You determine how long you fear your circumstances, and when this destructive mindset will end.  Another way of seeing is to realize difficult situations are gifts that enable you to interpret life as an opportunity to grow beyond what the mind can teach you. Embrace the challenges where you perceive.  Shift your perception.  Turn your circumstances into the reason for your latest, inner triumph. Decidr to take spiritual evolution seriously. Respond with joy and stretch yourself.

"If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you." -T.S. Eliot

Under your own spell

If you write or dream of writing, intending to provide material for other people, it makes sense to reflect on what you think they desire to know. Would you ask them directly, infer or, try out your skills of mental telepathy? Writing for readers is a test for you. Do you tell them a little bit of detail to spark their curiosity? What would you like people to discover for themselves? Maybe you assume reading words would be a meaningful experience for anyone. What kind of experience? It may be a matter of feeling like you're under your own spell. Words can be that powerful.

If you would like to share part of yourself or leave a legacy, stories may be the least you could leave for future generations. In some priceless ways, stories may be one of the most selfless gifts you can offer the world with no strings attached, or at least few expectations. After all, you would likely hope somebody somewhere would read it and benefit somehow.

At times, you may feel you live in your own world, separate from others, maybe even experiencing things that seem impossible to overcome. Writing could give you a way to deal with this. As you look inside you, other people remain outside. The more you explore your inner world, the more connected you can feel to everyone.

1) Why do you need to learn? Writers may write because it enables them to reflect back on their words and learn. Readers may read in order to build on what they think they know or, learn completely new things. Any person may simply desire to develop self-inquiry and grow. Our minds think ceaselessly on everything that happens. Our perception can be positive or negative. It can expand us and enable us to feel strengthened or, it can contract us and make us feel troubled. As you discipline your self-talk, and how you interpret words, you'll learn to control which ideas you accept and which ideas you wish to reject.   Will you choose to change?

2) Would anyone pay to read this and why? Some writers naturally imagine how they would market their material to an audience. What would make it stand out from other writers and motivate readers to buy it? How would you honk your own horn? What about your life or style, is purely unique? Readers might look at certain published material and wonder how that ever managed to get into print. Publishers and literary agents also have to learn to think strategically, to survey best seller lists and other trends which help influence the projects they choose to believe in. If you have low self-confidence, its hard to convince others to buy your work.

3) Will I come away with anything useful? Only an individual reader or writer determines if words are worthwhile. What you drink in or churn out is subjective, yet relates to your values and vision of the world. Understand whatever job you have, whatever life choices you make, your perception will cause you to think as you always have, unless you progress along your inner journey and grow. For those people who feel over-confident in their credentials and abilities, they may not feel ready or willing to absorb new words or their implications. Whether or not a writer benefits from the writing exercise, and whether or not readers choose to learn, is based on desire to explore fact or fiction, the past or present or, wallow in fantasy.

Cease to be a problem to yourself

You may have been told that it's wise to learn to like yourself wherever you are.  If this is the case, then why might you also be told its also useful to establish goals, which would imply its desirable for you to change? To accept feelings wherever you are means you take responsibility for both negative and uplifting emotions.  Being willing to initiate a self-inquiry enables you to uncover healthy states and distinguish them from self-destructive states.

If the ultimate goal is to get-to know and accept yourself with humility, then your goals involve learning to uncover and understand what is true and false about yourself.  What you sense is true should bring relieve and inner peace.  If instead, your choices trigger increased tension or stress, then these choices aren't perhaps the best ones for you now.  Whatever outside influences may affect who you think you are, you have the mind you have and it has power to establish goals.

One of the biggest challenges may be to juggle goals. For people who have aims in different areas of their lives, which ones should be deemed the most important priorities? Would that be your personal life? Your work ambitions? Your spiritual side or, something else?

If you feel as though different areas of your life compete for attention, then it is up to you to get a grip and identify a step-by-step strategy to deal with goals individually, one step at a time.  You may come to the conclusion you could benefit from a change in how you think and when.  This would entail you can take control and cease to be a problem to yourself.

Prisoner of a boundless vision

Those things you dream are sometimes projections that represent something deeper within yourself. What do you wish to see? What sorts of characteristics would you hope to develop? Projection may fill a temporary desire that you're unable to realize directly, or feel too insecure to fulfill in reality. It's a relatively safe kind of fantasy because it connects us to our higher values yet, it may legitimize a self-view that is incompatible with who we really are.

You may know someone who idolizes himself and other people don't regard him with the same respect. His understanding of this discrepancy between how he would like to be accepted and reality, causes pain. He may project a self-image of the person he'd like to be, but gets so wrapped up in his projection, that he unexpectedly becomes a fallen hero in his mind and reality. Projection creates the meaning you choose to give it. Events are meaningless unless you give them value. Do you project a facade in hopes of winning affection or attention, based on something you're not? What would this tell you about your fear?

Western culture is built on projection. Our hopes and expectations evolve based on images we see and literature which paints a picture of ideals we're supposed to aspire toward. As you begin to attach values to people, events and dreams, you may forget its your mind that shapes what you see and relationships you forge. You decide what's real or not.

You may aim to convince people what you want them to believe, but a projection fails if you don't believe it deep down yourself. If you're blind to your fear or inadequacy, these traits may be visible through your behavior and transparent soul. As you grow willing to see beyond your ego and become more self-aware, you'll no longer be your prisoner of your fearful, boundless vision.