Guest Article

The Wealthy Spirit: Your Best Guess for Today Will Do!

Chellie Campbell, Financial Stress Reduction Expert

"Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it." -Andy Rooney

Do you know what your perfect goal is?

Have you ever changed your mind about your goals?

Along the path from one to another, new goals always appear!

When people ask me how to determine the "right" goal for themselves, not sure which choice before them is best, I just say, "Your best guess for today will do."

Goals aren't about achievement of a dream. It looks like they are at first, but that's an illusion. The joy of the achievement lasts about a minute and a half. The movie star that wins the Academy Award for Best Actor hugs the Oscar, giddily thanking everyone they ever met in their whole life, and parties all night in celebration. 

Then they go home, go to sleep, and the next morning what is it they want? 

Another acting job! They just want to continue their work, their art, their craft. It's the daily doingness - the process of inventing and pursuing their goal--that creates joy in their life. The acknowledgment and applause is wonderful but it is a by-product, not the thing itself. The thing itself is the work--the daily exploration of human behavior, mood, friendships, enmities, glories and disasters. It's the process that matters in the end. That is what is experienced daily, that is what creates a happy person--not the high point of an end goal.

The painter doesn't paint one picture, call it perfection, and sit and look at it for 60 years. Every day they paint, their glory is to paint, their desire is to paint, it is their life to paint. That they offer this to the world for understanding and communication, is the purpose of their lives and it is ongoing, continuing, unbroken, endless. There is no goal where you stop becoming.

The importance of every goal is that it is a path leading you through this existence in a particular direction. You choose the initial direction, but life will take over and lead you on through byways and highways you can't determine from your beginning. Years later you will look back and, with a sense of child's wonder, will exclaim, "Ah, so that's what I was doing there - that's the lesson I was learning." Your job is to pick a path and begin, but it doesn't matter what you choose - life knows what you need and will guide you there.

When I rejected acting because it wasn't nourishing my soul any longer, I took the office manager job, became the owner of the bookkeeping service, then started teaching Financial Stress Reduction® Workshops and wrote books, I was just "following my bliss" as Joseph Campbell said, taking each next step as it appeared because it seemed logical, felt good, and made me happy in pursuit of the goals I dreamed of.

Now so many years later I can look back and see what was the underlying theme - that what most empowered me and made me happy was working with a small creative team to invent a common good that empowered everyone. 

The thing I enjoyed most about acting was rehearsal. It was the process of creating that was enjoyable--after the show was set and we just did endless repetitions of it, I was bored. The bookkeeping job was with a small dynamic company filled with creative, happy, intelligent people that was growing--another small creative team with a goal to help our clients and ourselves to prosper and grow. The bookkeeping service was the same. Then when I started teaching workshops, I immediately rejected the Tony-Robbins-motivational-big-room-seminar-48-employee model and decided that small, interactive master-mind groups of 8-12 people was the way to go.

I was 63 when I figured this out. 

So don't worry if your life doesn't seem to make sense or your choices are erratic and your goals changeable. You are being led by Life to your highest good and greatest bliss. What feels good to you today? What feels empowering and creative and exciting?

Those are the signposts Life is giving you. Go do that.

Set a goal—any goal. It will lead you where you need to go.

Today’s Affirmation: “I am open to receive prosperity, joy, and love from all directions!”

Chellie Campbell, Financial Stress Reduction Expert, is the author of bestselling books The Wealthy Spirit, Zero to Zillionaire, and From Worry to Wealthy: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Success Without the Stress. She has been treating Money Disorders like Spending Bulimia and Income Anorexia in her Financial Stress Reduction® Workshops for over 25 years and is still speaking, writing, and teaching workshops—now as Zoom classes and The Wealthy Spirit Group on Facebook—with participants from all over the world. Website: www.chellie.com