IT IS SAID THAT THERE ARE TWO DRIVING FORCES BEHIND THE PERSON known as “you”:

nature and nurture

Some argue that our genetics determine our behavior. Our personality traits and abilities are in our nature. Others argue that our environment, upbringing, and life experiences determine our behavior. But, according to the Canadian personality psychologist Brian R. Little, there’s a third driving force that shapes our personality:

our projects.

For example:

Occupational/Work:	Make sure the department budget is done
Interpersonal:	Have dinner with my friend
Maintenance:	Get a cartridge for my printer
Recreational:	Take cruising holiday
Health/Body:	Lose ten kilograms
Intrapersonal:	Try to deal with my sadness

Our projects shape our personalities. Human flourishing is contingent upon the sustainable pursuit of core projects.

“Human well-being is contingent upon well-doing.”

Your projects provide shape and content to your life. They shape your life by creating commitments that provide direction and coherence.

What you do affects who you are

Personal projects are about the future — they point us forward, they guide us.
By tracing their route, we can map the most intimate of terrains — ourselves.
We can learn to adjust our trajectories, riding over the rough patches and extending the smooth stretches to make our endeavors more effective.
Projects help define us by shaping our capacity for a flourishing life.
As your projects go, so goes your life.

Analyzing your personal projects may also help you to discern your God-given Name of Grace. Personal projects are constituent elements of our daily lives. They can range from the seemingly inconsequential acts (for example, ‘Take the dog for a walk,’ ‘Get a haircut’) to the overarching commitments of our lives (for example, ‘Accompany my mother on her journey through Alzheimer’s,’ ‘Found an organization to reach out to Sudanese refugee families’).

Personal projects can be formally defined as “extended sets of personally salient action in context”. Each term can be delineated as follows:

Extended: A project is not a momentary act, but typically a sequence that is extended in space and time (minutes, hours, days, or years).
Set: A project encompasses a series of actions that are considered interrelated by the project pursuer.
Personally salient: A project is a noteworthy aspect of the life of the person who pursues it, and can be defined as such only by that person.
Action: A project is not a passive response to external forces but an intentional sequence of behavior involving cognitive, affective, conative[1], and volitional processes.
In context: A project is enacted in physical, social, cultural, and temporal contexts that can facilitate or thwart project pursuit.[2]

You will experience more well-being if your projects are more meaningful, manageable, positively connected with others, and associated with more positive affect relative to negative affect.

All of us have a number of personal projects at any given time that we think about, plan for, carry out, and sometimes (though not always) complete. Some projects may be focused on achievement (“Get my arts degree”) others on the process (“Enjoy a night out with friends”); they may be things we choose to do or things we have to do; they may be things we are working towards. Projects may be related to any aspect of your daily life, your family, leisure and community, and others. Please think of projects in this broad way.

Some examples of personal projects

Cut down on junk food	Cook banana bread
Play with my cat	Write a book
Organise my room	Build a team
Work to build community	Paint a portrait
Clarify my religious beliefs	Become a good public speaker
Get a gym membership	Grow in confidence
Go to Europe next summer	Write and direct a play
Walk the Camino	Read The Gulag Archipelago
Learn to SCUBA dive	Understand postmodernism
Understand my sister better	Read a journal article on a subject each day
Become fluent in Spanish	Start a youth group
Manage my finances	Go to the opera
Encourage others	Renew my membership of Carlton FC
Learn how to self-care	Buy a car
Have a medical check-up	Grow in my capacity to listen

Our personal projects and God’s Project in our world

GOD, THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, CONTINUES TO ACT IN THE UNIVERSE. For Saint Ignatius of Loyola God was Deus operarius, “God the worker” who is continually at work in the world. We can think of the Universe as the one action of God the Creator, and ourselves as created agents who have the freedom to determine the future by our decisions and actions. So, our intentions need to be in harmony with God’s intentions. God’s intention, it seems, is that all human beings live as brothers and sisters in a community of faith, hope, and love, united with Jesus as sons and daughters of God our Father, and in harmony with the whole created universe.

We need to discern the mystery of God at work in the world through prayer, reflection, and contemplation. Ignatian spirituality is apostolic, which means that

“Our contemplation of the Gospel is incomplete until the graces we receive in prayer are incarnated (made real) in history. Ignatian spirituality is taking our graces, our inspirations, and our holy desires to serve God, and transforming them into action in everyday life.”

In an apostolic spirituality, all the particular spiritual practices I engage in are for the sake of uniting me to God as the one who is engaged in a tremendous project in our world, who is laboring that it be transformed and brought into final union with the divine. All the projects and practices of an apostolic person seek to unite the person to God’s project, the reign of God. This is the profound dream and desire God yearns to realize in the world and beyond it, but not without our creative cooperation.[3]

Here is a way of reflecting on your personal projects

Take 10-15 minutes and write down as many personal projects and activities you can that you are currently engaged in or considering — remember these need not be formal projects or even important ones — make sure you include the everyday kinds of activities or concerns that characterize your life at present.
Now select 10 projects from your list that you feel are important to you or typical of your life and copy them onto the matrix on page 26. If you have many more than 10 such projects, choose those that you expect to be actively working on in the next couple of months.
Once you have written in all 10 projects you may begin to reflect on them.
1. What do you think about what you are doing?
1. How do you feel about what you are doing?
1. To what extent is each project consistent with the values that guide your life?
1. To what extent do you become engrossed or deeply involved in each project?
Identity. All of us have things we do that we feel are typical or truly expressive of us. These things can be thought of as our “trademarks”. For example, some people engage in sports every chance they get, others prefer to read, others prefer to socialize. Think of what your own personal “trademarks” are, and then rate each project on the extent to which it is typical of you.

Longer-term projects

Some personal projects exist in isolation, but most are usually undertaken as a part of a larger, longer-term goal. On the next page, you will see a series of bank columns. In the first column please write down your ten most important projects. For each project ask yourself: “What longer-term or larger-scale project (or goal) is this project a part of?” or simply “Why am I working on this project?” For example, if one of your initial projects was “Work to build community”, you might ask yourself what larger project will building community help you with (or why do you want to build community)? You might decide it is linked to the bigger project such as “reach out, as a community, to the homeless in our area”.

When you have decided which larger project(s) your initial project is related to, note it (or them) down in the blank areas in the next column (to the right) that are joined by arrows to the original project. If there is only one longer-term project related to your initial project, leave the other lines blank. You may also decide there is no larger project connected with your initial project, in which case go on to project 2. For example, if your initial project was “Be a better father”, you might decide that it does not relate to any larger project, but stands on its own.

Next look at the one or two higher-order projects you have written out in column 2 and for each of these, ask yourself the same question: “What longer-term or larger-scale project (or goal) is this project a part of?”

For example: If your first project was “Work to build community” and the higher order project was “to reach out, as a community, to the homeless in our area”, you would now ask yourself: “Why do I want to reach out to the homeless?” And the answer might be, “To help homeless people to recognize their inherent dignity” and ultimately, “To work with God to bring about his Kingdom”. For each of the projects in the second column decide on whether there is a larger goal associated with that project and then write it in the appropriate space in the column to the right. Once you have completed this column, continue until you find that you have reached the highest-order (longest-term, largest-scale) project associated with your original project #1.

For example: An original project of “Pass my Canon Law unit” could possibly be related to a series of larger projects:

Personal project	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4	Column 5
Work to build community	To reach out, as a community, to the homeless in our area	To help homeless people to recognize their inherent dignity	Bring the Good News to the poor	Work with God to bring about God’s Kingdom
Learn to SCUBA dive	To challenge myself	Meet a different group of people	Explore the sea and photograph different animals	Grow in awe and wonder at the beauty of God’s creation
Understand postmodernism	Comprehend the context in which young people live	Learn new ways of evangelisation in a post-Christian world	Bring the Good News to people	Learn new ways of evangelization in a post-Christian world

Table 5: What larger-scale project is each of my personal projects a part of?

Personal project	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4

[1] Endeavour and striving.

[2] Little, B, & Coulombe, S. “Personal Projects”. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 17, p. 757. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.26100-X

[3] Brian O. McDermott. “What Is Apostolic Spirituality?” America Magazine, November 11, 2002.