The Key to Honing Your Creative Goals

Flickr photo courtesy of tomt6788

Recently, I listened to an audio interview with Danielle LaPorte by Hiro Boga. In the interview, LaPorte discusses how to be THE creative force in your own life, and suggests that this process begins with knowing one’s “core desires.”

This concept of core desires in my life and in my creative career resonated with me. On several occasions, I had, without consciously knowing it, articulated my core desires for my creative pursuits. And these desires had become a guiding force in defining and pursuing my creative goals. For instance, it was my core desire to create a life in poetry that fueled my creation of this blog. By writing about this topic in my journal, I came to realize that defining your core desires is the key to honing your creative goals.

Creative Goals vs. Core Desires

In my mind, goals are different from desires. A goal is the purpose, aim, or object towards which an endeavor is directed. Goals are objective in nature, and in order to be effective, they need to be specific, concrete, measurable, timely, and realistic.

For instance, you may want to finish that chapbook, get published, win a spot on a slam team, or get some paying gigs. While we may “desire” to meet our goals, there are concrete steps involved in pursuing them, and their objective nature, I believe, set them apart from our core desires.

In the broadest sense, desire is a wish, a longing. Desire wants what can sometimes be vague and amorphous. Desire drives our dreams and passions, and it’s seldom, if ever, rational. No, we want what we want, whether or not it’s rational or even possible.

Core desires, then, underlie our creative goals. They’re what make us wake in the early morning or stay up late at night to scratch out a few more pages on our book. They give us the courage to spit a poem and wait for some random person to assign a point value to it. They push us to meet publication deadlines or to simply write another poem. In short, they drive the passion that underlies our creative pursuits.

The Benefits of Uncovering Your Core Desires

The problem with desire is that it can be hidden from us, covered by layers of “shoulds,” obligations to others, or fears. Sometimes, we hide our desires because they seem childish, stupid, arrogant, or unrealistic. Often enough, we’re afraid to articulate our desires to others, fearing that we’ll be mocked or seen as crazy, silly, or worse, and when we’re afraid to speak our desires aloud, they can become so deeply buried that we may not even know they exist. It takes a bit of courage and self-confidence to really articulate the core desires underlying our artistic pursuits. But, by doing so, I found that the benefits are huge.

By examining my creative goals and my core desires, I began to see where they matched up with one another and where they didn’t. As a result, I was able to prioritize my goals and even drop the ones that seemed less significant. Moreover, I gained a more focused vision of my goals and how they fit into my creative career. Suddenly, the reason why I was writing this blog, working on a CD, performing spoken word gigs, and pursuing other artistic goals became crystal clear in my mind, and I felt a surge of passion and renewed energy for all of my creative pursuits.

How to Dig Up Your Core Desires

Digging up my core desires and articulating them for myself worked so well for me that I definitely wanted to pass along the exercise to you. Of course, you’re the only one who knows what desires drive your goals and fuel your passions, but here are some suggestions for defining and articulating your core desires:

• Examine your creative goals. What do you want to achieve practically in your creative career? What artistic projects are you working on? For instance, you may be writing a book, looking for an agent, submitting manuscripts to publishers or even writing 30 poems in 30 days in honor of National Poetry Month. Or, if you’re a spoken word artist, your goal might be to book some paying gigs, to win a semi-final tournament, or to make the team for the National Poetry Slam competition. Whatever your goals are, they’re concrete, objective, and there are practical steps you can take towards achieving them.
• Identify the core desire underlying your goal. What do you really want? Why do you want to meet your goal? Let’s suppose you want to publish your poetry. You’ve maybe published before or maybe not, but there are underlying reasons why you want to do so. For instance, recently, one of my poet friends won a contest and a publishing contract for a chapbook that’s she’s been sweating over for some time. When she received the email announcing her as the winner, she was overcome with emotion. “I cried,” she told me. “And not just polite sniffles, I bawled.” What my friend realized was that, for her, publication of her work was a much-needed validation and affirmation of herself as a talented poet. Underlying her keen desire for publication was a core desire to be affirmed in her identity as a poet and to have her talent validated by others who were schooled in what counts as good poetry.
• Write down your core desires. For writers especially, the best way to really understand our core desires is to write them down. So, take a moment to jot down your goals and the core desires that underlie them. This process helps to make the core desire clearer. For instance, for me, things got really vague when I started thinking about why I write. Essays and books are devoted to this very topic, but I figured, surely, after all these years of thinking about it, I’d have a pithy answer to the question. Yet, honestly, I got stumped. What once seemed true for me, even five years ago when I first started writing full-time, no longer felt true. I’ve always known that I must write. If I don’t, I become depressed and anxious. But why should I become so moody and stressed out if I don’t write? What need and desire are being met by writing on a regular basis? The more I explored these thoughts in my journal, the more I recognized that writing offers me a way to not simply validate and affirm my thoughts, feelings and experiences, as I once believed. Rather, writing offers me a way to make them feel “real” and authentic to me. By writing down my core desires, I came to realize that more than anything I want to feel connected to the authenticity of my own experiences, observations, and feelings.

Using Core Desires to Hone Your Creative Pursuits

Now that you’ve examined your goals, uncovered your core desires, and written them down, you’re in a better position to hone your creative pursuits. Do your goals and your desires sync up? For instance, you might ask yourself: Is publishing the best way to affirm and validate myself as an artist and my work as artistic? Does it really meet my underlying desire? When I asked myself similar questions, I realized that I want to be a more active participant in a larger creative community, but I haven’t yet found the best creative ways to do that. Now, I know that my next step is to define a goal that might begin to address this desire.

Ask yourself: Which core desire is most important to me? Do an inventory and prioritize your desires. What I realized by prioritizing my desires is that sharing my creative gifts with others is really important to me. It’s why I want to complete my CD, write blog articles, publish my poems, and perform spoken word. And by examining that desire underlying my creative pursuits, I realized that sharing my creative gifts with others helps me to feel connected to other people and the world around me, which is a core desire in my life, not simply my work.

Knowing your most important desires provides a way for you to prioritize your creative goals, as you’ll be better able to choose which projects will satisfy those desires. And that’s good information to have. It’ll help you know whether or not that “good idea” is really something you have the desire and passion to pursue.

Core Desires=Passion=Energy=Productivity

Your core desires ignite your passion, producing excitement and energy. Productivity is sure to follow. For instance, before I started thinking about my core desires, I was feeling tired and depressed from working a lot and from trying to balance my work and my personal life. However, I found that by digging up my core desires, I felt more connected with my passion for poetry, writing, and performance. Suddenly, I had the energy to write a poem, to create a new (hopefully doable) schedule for completing my CD, and to outline and write this article. Also, I became more interested in my upcoming gigs and started planning my set lists. In other words, I got more excited about my creative goals, and as a result, I became more productive. Perhaps more significantly, I’m really happy right now.

What I’ve come to realize about my core desires is that I often define and begin pursuing creative goals without consideration for how they will meet those desires. I wonder: What would happen if we started with our core desires and defined all future goals around them? I have a feeling that I’d be better able to finish what I start and perhaps move more quickly in my achievements. But that question will have to be answered in another article. I’ll let you know.

What are your core desires?