The pitfall in 'useful' activities

Whenever you do something, it should preferably be useful. This means something like: in the eyes of yourself (and hopefully those of others as well) time and energy are used in a useful way because you see some added value coming from it, usually something that will bring a certain goal more within reach. It gives a pleasant touch to something that does not always has to be pleasant. Like a certain job can be useful within a specific career path. Your activities for a charity function can be useful for your social self image. A relationship has to be useful, which usually means that it has to contribute to your feeling good. Etc. Useful activity therefore is a major personality tool for creating and upholding a self image which gives a form of justification to certain activities or stopping with others. It is also a more neutral way of judgment, since 'usefulness' sounds more objective than a personal point of view. Maybe it is because of this that the idea of usefulness has become so popular these days.

Usefulness is the result of a judgment or an interpretation of a situation in relation to goals, standards and values as adopted by your personality. By the way, these are usually quite vague, you should be able to recognize this in many of your conversations. The alternative of useful according to your personality is useless or senseless, or not useful enough. The consequence of this kind of alternative is that no one could expect you to continue this so you have to stop or change it in such a way that it can become useful after all. Or that you continue to do what it is that you have to do, however, now your motivation cannot be expected to be anything but extremely low.

All this is much like being successful. When something is not successful it is as if it could not be useful. This too assumes that the result is the basis for judgment and determination of the value and impact of the process itself.

The intense relationship with your self image makes it quite difficult and courageous to want to acknowledge this to be but one of your personality labels which has to be faced and let go of it in favour of the well-known alternative of Being inspired by your inner Self. Especially since it is so woven into the pattern of goal setting your personality maintains, and this choice seems to introduce an element of aimlessness, which your personality cannot handle at all.

You could help yourself to become aware of the judgment that is at the basis of the 'useful' label. For example, question yourself: is the energy that I put into this activity useful when it attracts ten visitors per day, or is it more useful when it attracts hundred visitors per day. Was my work useful today because I accomplished something specific. Or was it not useful today because I did not accomplish something specific. Was this visit to my mother useful today. Or was it not useful because she was not nice to me. The second 'not' question usually will reveal the source of your interpretation quite clearly. Then continue to remind yourself of the alternative, for example when you have worked with the issue 'only when I do something I can see myself as being useful', introduce an idea like 'doing noting may not be useful, however, useful is not the issue here'.

By now you may be familiar with the idea that becoming aware of these patterns is the beginning of the process of letting go, and it is often much easier to let go when you know what it is that you have to let go of. Ultimately you will be able to say: I do not know whether this was useful, but it felt good to do it. This sentence perfectly shows you the process you went through, the way you used to look at things through the eyes of your personality, and the choice you made and learned to trust to listen to your inner Self instead. Trust your inner Self and its ability to bring you the kind of experience you really want in any situation: inner Peace, which is a very different experience than the brief and meager results of a personality interpretation based on usually some vague goal.