Fear of losing jobs to AI. Fear of economic instability. Fear of what the next news cycle will bring. Fear that the ground beneath our feet is shifting and we don’t know where we’ll land.

I’m not going to tell you that these fears are unfounded. Some of them are quite reasonable. The world is changing fast and not all of the changes feel good or safe or welcome.

But here is what I know: the people who navigate this moment with the most power, the ones who are not paralyzed but are instead moving forward with purpose, are the people who know where they are headed. They have defined their end game.

We are often told that it is the journey and not the destination that matters. And our journeys do matter, absolutely. But they are NOT the only thing that matters. When you know where you are going, you can weather the storms along the way. When you don’t, every gust of wind feels like a catastrophe.

So if you are feeling more lost than enlightened in the woods right now, asking the following may be of use:

Why do I do what I do?

The ancient Greeks had a word: telos.

One translation: “for the sake of which.” As in, “I do this work for the sake of…” And of course you are the one who fills in the blank. I speak about this work at length in Making Magic – it also happens to be the root word for our word talisman. Funny, that.

Maybe you do your work for money, for love, for family, for bread on the table and flowers in the garden or for all of the above.

Many of us do our work because we felt called to offer up a specific gift, to be of service in a particular way.

The point being that you get to define your rightful work, the work of your heart. And the act of defining and articulating that work, clearly and specifically, to yourself and to others is an act that carries with it momentous medicine for tired souls and worn spirits.

When you know your telos, fear becomes information rather than paralysis. It tells you what matters to you. It shows you what you are unwilling to lose. And that is useful data.

Some argue that clearly stating where you desire to end up, where you would like to arrive, does not allow for maximum creativity and flow. I think that because our destinations can and often do change, we have encouraged a culture where we try to forget about them altogether.

We focus on process in part because process has been ignored during times in our collective history, and in part because process is where most of us stay for a long time. The journey is where the work is done, and because of this, it is a bright and vital part of our experience.

But this forgetting of our end, our final destination, is a deadly forgetting.

It can leave us vulnerable to every passing wind. It can make us reactive instead of responsive. It can turn fear into a fog we cannot see through rather than a motivating force that makes us move.

Knowing why you do what you do allows you to do it with more grace, beauty, and integrity.

Your journey is enriched when your destination is known.

Sacred Artists of all stripes know that magic begins with clear intention, a wise petition, a prayer straight from the heart. Each of those things contains the seed of the destination, that which through one’s art and magic might manifest.

So today, my petition for you is this: define your end game.

Not because the world isn’t scary right now. It is.

But because courage was never about the absence of fear, as Aristotle reminds us, but rather the ability to respond in the face of fear. And what allows you to do that? Having a strong sense of where you want to end up and why you do the things you do, why it matters at all.

~Briana Saussy

how I know….

inquiry for today~ you can call up the wise spaces….

choose love…..

If we have no peace,

it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

~Mother Theresa