“What would you do if you took your goals seriously?”
That’s how the question went.
How did it land? Like a sucker punch.
It’s warm, I’m in my downtime on retreat and encouraged to explore oracle cards, tapping into intuition and self-awareness.
I pull the Animal Spirit deck and ask it: “How do I need to show up to achieve my next phase in life and work?”.-
As I move through the smooth, slightly dog-eared/much-loved cards, I feel the pull and turn over the card. A smirking, toothed hyena looks back at me.
Huh.
It goes on to explain the qualities of the hyena – the joker, using humour to mask or perhaps stop thought and feeling, using it as a tool to connect and engage with others. But what about what it’s doing to me?
It asks if I’m taking myself seriously and being focused on my aims.
It encourages me to look at these qualities with curiosity and see how they are playing out, being applied, under what circumstances and how does it make me feel, ultimately.
It ends with: “What if you took your goals seriously?”.
Huh.
And there it is – the right question that had been eluding me.
I sit back in my chair and look out across the ocean, sweating, heart racing a little, trying to erase the furrow in my brow.
I feel called out.
I look around to see if anyone has caught my embarrassment and expression on my face that gives away a triggered, gut response. My cheeks slightly flushing.
Rewind a few months and I had taken a personality test as part of a presentation skills course to become more comfortable with finding and using my voice, with (gulp) crowds.
My top trait? Humour.
I had taken this as a positive and a way to break the ice, connect, build trust and engagement. I hadn’t had it reflected back to me in such a way in how it was impacted how I viewed and treated myself.
As I move through a time of transition and change in my life and work (claiming that voice and message), the question begs reflection on how serious I’m taking my own thoughts and vision.
How it makes me seem and feel to take a lighter hearted view of them. Of myself.
Does it mean I need to be serious now – no quips and quirks? No. But it’s invited me to hone my focus on what matters to me, on what I have to share and what this can mean – to me and those that engage with it.
So, the day I received a question from a hyena make me stop, sit up a bit straighter and roll my sleeves up.
All with a smile on my face.
