What are you drawn to?
All moths are the same.
For the right species, if you light a candle, the moths will show up. They’re drawn to it for little-understood reasons related to how they’re wired.
Just as moths seem to be the same, humans manage to be different.
How do you spend your unscheduled time? What distracts you or moves up your priority list?
Perhaps you’re drawn to danger.
To conflict.
To hedonistic pleasure.
Perhaps you’re drawn to take actions that avoid criticism.
To shiny objects or new opportunities.
To crossing things off the endless to-do list.
It could be that you can’t resist fixing a typo in someone else’s work, or that you’d rather win at a team sport than just about anything.
Maybe you want to do things that feel safe. Some people want to do things that actually are safe.
For many, it’s either the avoidance of trouble or the desire for praise, but rarely both at the same time.
It could be that the highest priority is to fix what appears to be broken. Or it might be to avoid what appears broken and to run to the new, unsullied opportunity instead.
You might need to turn off all the lights and make all the beds before you leave the house. And you might be willing to trade everything just to be sure that the world at large doesn’t think for a moment that you’ve faltered in your work.
The extraordinary variety of our urgencies makes it obvious that we’re not moths. The opportunity lies in understanding if what we’re drawn to is actually helping us achieve the outcomes we seek.