How do you know your life’s purpose?
For countless hours throughout the day, I find myself daydreaming and pondering on what I would ultimately love to achieve in life. I’m fascinated by stories of successful people overcoming adversity and other overused phrases to become amazing individuals who have actualized their potential.
Over time, I’ve come to recognize that you can’t just sit and dream about your goals. This type of action is not what will get things happening. You have to take real action to ensure that dreams happen—otherwise, they’ll just stay trapped inside your head forever.
All our lives, we’ve been taught that we can achieve anything we want. We’ve been conditioned to believe that the sky is the limit—and depending on your profession, sometimes even the sky is a meager goal. I have a good grasp of the proverbial “sky,” but I find solace in the fact that I’m not to the point of being jaded just yet where I disagree completely with that sentiment.
What I’m curious to know though, is what factors affect motivation? And I’m not just talking about getting up in the morning, day-to-day kind of motivation; that type of motivation is absolutely crucial to making sure things get done (as I wrote about previously). What I’m interested in is big picture, life’s purpose Motivation. The kind of motivation that blind sides you after some near death experience.
I’m talking about the kind of motivation that people spend all their lives seeking and sometimes never find. One of my biggest fears would be to die and never have recognized what I was put on this earth to do (that and drowning). That scares the shit out of me!
I don’t like to be inefficient with my time (typically—unless I’m goofing off or procrastinating), but it seems like I can’t be focused and put my nose to the grindstone about any goal that I have unless I know for sure that it will eventually be worth something In The End.
But how would I ever know that? I know that I can’t know anything in life for certain, but I’ve come to question my gut feelings more and more as I grow older.
The part that’s the most frustrating though, is the fact that I know a lot of what does put me in the right frame of mind, day-to-day. Workspace is a major one. My desk has to be just right in order for me to feel ready to work. Mindset is another big one; if I’m sleepy or tired, I tend to drag my feet more when it’s time to work.
These are all pretty universal issues and ones that are easily fixed if you find they’re stopping you from work. If your desk isn’t functioning properly, you can get a new desk. If you’re tired, have a nap (or eat something/stop eating something—it’s probably food-related).
But when you’ve got that perfect desk setup and you’re sleeping enough and you’re eating well, how do you know what you’re working on is “it?” If you’re life’s purpose isn’t working out, you can’t really just go to Office Depot to pick out a new one.
At this point, I wish I had some resolution or some huge epiphany to tie this post up really neatly—but I still don’t. I’m trying to stay open to the answer and hopefully someday it will come. From where I’m standing though, that’s the most I can really hope for. Hopefully when the answer does come, it won’t involve CPR and the deep end of the pool. Comments on this post would be greatly appreciated—right now, I need all the insight I can get. What do you think?
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Completing the quarter-life crisis cycle are we? Unfortunately, this seems to be an evergreen question. I think you’ll find that at every turning point or iteration in life, the nagging question of “purpose” will rear its ugly head. What I’ve found to be most comforting is to understand that the unknown is to be left as so. Being a control freak and overly Virgo, the sheer idea of this makes me want to throw stones at life. To keep sane, enjoying the now and what you’ve accomplished may be the best route. Otherwise, the purpose becomes more of a blindness.
But, really, what do I know. I’m obvi fighting my own crazy right now. :)
“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln
Most of the great people in life were great because they were true to themselves. They followed their heart, they mastered their passion.
That being said, most of the great people in life weren’t recognized until much after the fact of their life. Your happiness is your own, regardless of perceived impact.
In a nutshell, your purpose is excel at being you. In the end, that makes a difference.
I think we should head to Progress soon, that’s what I think. Partly so we can chat about this subject, but mostly so I can open my Santa’s Secret envelope.
//
PS: I’m inclined to think that there are no easy answers for this, but there are many simple methods for discovery. It’s a highly individualized quest.
It’s tough to avoid cliches when writing about stuff like this, but I’m being sincere, here: It took me until my senior year in college to find something worth busting ass for. I had to set some very high, very abstract goals, and I finally realized one day that all the hard work… didn’t really feel like work at all.
That was my first revelation–finding something I loved doing. It’s not hard to muster Motivation when working is one of your favorite things.
A lot has changed since that revelation (namely, I’ve completely changed fields and career direction) but I used that feeling of “loving what I do” as a guide. But then came revelation #2: Don’t worry about your purpose. It’s already there.
It’s funny you use the deep-end-of-the-pool analogy, because I use that one a lot: diving into the deep end with your career path, and taking a risk to pursue that thing you love doing. But with all the risks and all the uncertainty, I think if you keep busting ass and love your work the path will unfold very naturally in front of you.
For me, it took
1) A realization that I loved the general field of science and wanted to integrate compassion into my every day life;
2) One big plunge–a gut-driven, impulsive decision to invest the rest of my twenties in getting an MD. Whoops! and
3) A commitment to that very abstract goal (doing something…anything…that is totally awesome).
I’ve left myself open to all the possibilities that “awesome” allows for, and it’s been like following an invisible magnet that gets a little stronger every day.
Our generation (and imho, our social group in particular) is pretty smart and enterprising. Assuming those three steps up there are even remotely universal, have faith about the whole path-unfolding-in-front-of-you thing. There’s not really any such thing as a dead end with Life Purposes. If indeed your current line of work “isn’t working out”–it’s just a process of elimination.
I fear that may have been too long and on the preachy side, so I apologize in advance. I warned you about the cliches!!
Interestingly enough I was just having a similar conversation about this with another friend, and talking about how they were unhappy because they felt they hadn’t found their purpose. While I understand the feeling, I also told her that its less about the purpose as your willingness and perseverance in doing something that you love.
You will always impact the world with what you do, and you really can’t plan for what that will be. The best you can do is to make sure you’re positively impacting your own life everyday. You can’t help the world if you can’t help yourself.
I’ve hit the reset button on my life the last few months. I needed it. I’m happier. I’m busier.
We have a ton of great friends as Becca mentioned who are the type that scares the hell out of the general population because of how smart and passionate we are. Our group is full of people off doing crazy things, and thinking up great ideas, and some of us are capitalizing on those ideas. You’re in the right group to help you achieve any goal you put yourself to achieving, and this is one thing that I knew, but didn’t know how to access before.
Quarter life crisis or not, we all have thoughts that we are not doing enough. Make a change… don’t change your desk… change your mentality if you can.
Stop daydreaming about what you want and go kick some damn ass…
- Michael
It’s funny that two of my favorite and creatively brilliant friends wrote posts about life’s purpose on the same day. Yours is asking a question and Kelsey Ruger’s(http://j.mp/7dyaSL) is my answer to you: Your life is an occasion—rise to it. If you think what you’re doing right now ‘isn’t working out’ or you don’t absolutely love it, only you have the power to change it up. I know you can and will do this. I’m looking forward to seeing the story unfold for you, Mr. Torres.
Sounds a lot like stuff I was struggling with a few months back, and still think about now, but I’ve found ways of keeping the what-is-my-purpose-blues from coming around. One of the ways is to keep yourself from ignoring it. Just like ignoring a dog that wants some food long enough makes it eat your shoes and piss on the floor to train you, ignoring your gut telling you it isn’t feeling full causes it to takeover a few days of your life with confusion and depression.
Side note: I always seem to be at the same restaurant/coffee shop within a few hours of you…maybe we could sync up those schedules and hang out for a few hours.
I know the feeling. Wish I knew the answer. I’ve got a ‘dream job’ and I feel the same way. When my passion is with me I can accomplish anything. When it’s not work can be torture. What is the American dream anyway?