Day 45 - 14th Feb

FOLLY

When you are spent

And bent

And weary

When it's the same

And plain

And dreary

When the game you play is over

But the head will not come over

To the new place

The weirding place

The commonplace seems real

But all outside

Is foreign

It's useless to appeal

To logic

Or drive

Or thought even

(Thought cannot care)

Thought is scared

Follow folly

Thought wouldn't dare

To go there

Everything you have tried before has worked

In the wrong way

Folly and nonsense

Raise that up

Let tempest make

Its inclement weather

You don't need to get your shit together

Because if you get it together

It's still shit.

Niall Campbell

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When clients present their goals to me, I have them write them all down—and then, generally, we just rub them out. But only after they have seen what truly lights them up.

We have a separate column titled "Folly." Once that is full, and I can see it has lit them up (their whole demeanour changes), I swap out the derogatory word "folly" for "dreams." And just like that, the little switcheroo is complete.

When their ego is given permission—"Just tell me some of the stupid shit you would do if money were no object and you didn’t care about people’s opinions"—it grants access to the brain’s play circuitry. Suddenly, they can list all the random things they would do, because, of course, we are just shooting the breeze here with a hypothetical.

Once this is exhausted, and the word is swapped out, there is a moment of sadness. Seeing the head’s demands for success in the goals column—suddenly adjacent to the heart’s dreams—makes for bitter reading.

I’m not trying to be clever or show off, but I’ve found that a bit of benevolent misdirection is the only way to make such crucial information conscious. Because therein lies the lie:

Their goals were not in service of their dreams.

Read that again.

Their goals were not in service of their dreams.

Now, we look at this list of random, amorphous, and usually poorly articulated dreams and have them operationalise them. We still remove the need to make money from them, but suddenly, a sense emerges:

"So… people on Earth achieve objective success by engaging in the activity I would dream of doing?"

Yes.

"Are they more talented at it than me?"

Maybe.

"Did they put a lot of work in?"

Yes.

"Have I given myself that opportunity?"

No.

"Have I achieved relative success doing things I hated?"

Often, yes.

"Could it be feasible that this could become something if I combined my hard work with doing something that actually lit me up for once?"

A thousand percent.

At this point, we abandon "goals" altogether. Instead, we create "next actionable steps." Suddenly, a list of sensible but empty goals is replaced by steps towards a dream. No less than that.

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These unexpressed dreams are festering subconsciously, and if they are not acknowledged and given a chance to express themselves, they will sabotage everything.

If you shove them in the trunk of the car and keep driving down the wrong road, they will break the car down. But isn’t it better to be broken down on the side of the road—prevented from driving even further away from who you really are at breakneck speed?

This is well known in addiction and rehab circles.

---

The time I worried most about externally successful clients was when they had their big exit:

They got the top job

They bought the best house in town

They won at the game they had been playing for years

Because the aspirational part of them—the part that said "When I get the big thing, I’ll be whole"—completed the game beyond all reasonable standards of success… and then, suddenly, it all turned to ash in their hands.

And they were left facing an accumulated, unacknowledged despair.

I would rather burst my clients' bubbles when they are smaller, sketch it out on a whiteboard, and hold space for them as they realise how clever but unwise they have been.

People see, often, that they have been beating the shit out of themselves—ramming themselves like a square peg into a round hole.

And without realising it, they have recruited me to collude in their ongoing self-abuse and denigration of their heart’s desire.

None of this is conscious.

---

Client: "Hi there. My deep-seated heart’s desires, which come from my right brain—the wisdom centre and seat of my soul—have been sabotaging my exhausting attempts to maintain a status quo that only serves my parents' needs at the expense of my own path. As a result, I have developed these physical and mental symptoms. Can you help?"

Therapist/Doctor: "Yes! I have been trained in a codified system that helps people force themselves to live a ‘good’ life."

"We can use behaviourism, heavy medication, or cognitive strategies (which we will call mental hygiene) to fix you."

Client: "What if my soul really protests?"

Therapist/Doctor: "We can just label that as a psychopathology and medicate you into oblivion!"

Client: "What about all the inevitable side effects?"

Therapist/Doctor: "We have pills for those too!"

"Plus, we’ll be so busy managing the second and third-order downstream effects that we’ll never have to go near those pesky conversations about your soul’s desire."

"Where is the soul, anyway? Can you see it on an fMRI? No, you cannot!"

Client: "Will this at least make my day-to-day more tolerable?"

Therapist/Doctor: "For a time, yes."

Client: "And then?"

Therapist/Doctor: "Then we ratchet up the psychological ‘hacks,’ behavioural protocols, and medications."

"If the drugs stop working—once we’ve maxed them out to the point where even other doctors warn us about metabolic or systemic damage—we’ll just tweak an old drug and repackage it as a new solution."

Client: "What happens when that doesn’t work?"

Therapist/Doctor: "We’ll turn the tables and say you have ‘treatment-resistant depression’ or a ‘personality disorder’—without running you through a full, holistic diagnostic process."

Client: "So, after years of this, I’ll have spun both our wheels, made some small wins towards hollow goals, and then blamed myself when my soul’s whispers became screams?"

Therapist/Doctor: "Yes! And it’s a great business model for us!"

"You’ll knock around for a decade or two, and by then, you’ll mistake our regular meetings for a genuine therapeutic alliance!"

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There is absolutely no point in:

Getting up at 4:30 am

Taking ice baths

Staring directly into the sun for morning sunlight exposure

Eating a ketogenic breakfast

Doing Zone 2 cardio

Writing in a gratitude journal

Listening to podcast about lipid levels

… if the thing you do all day is a way to avoid following what your silent heart is yearning for. You don't want a longer life. You want a less hollow one.

The heart’s desire is a radically under-indexed factor in modern mental wellness and medicine.

If you ignore it long enough, your body will collapse—in small ways or catastrophic ones.

This isn’t a scientific law. It’s not something a materialist therapist can refute with a study.

Because I am not making a scientific claim.

Bob Dylan wasn’t making a scientific statement either when he said:

"It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody."

Know who the goals serve. Often the stupid, ridiculous goal you are too afraid to follow is the true master you should serve.

You don't get to pick the altar - only whether or not you worship.