FINDING YOUR PURPOSE

My last post was called “LIVING YOUR LIFE FOR YOURSELF”

It was about a big change in my life that I have made in order to follow my dreams.

In this post I received a question from “TheFourthIdiot” owner of the blog http://inspiringinfinity.wordpress.com/

His question was essentially this:
How do yo proceed down your path if you are not even sure if it is the right path? How do you develop the unshakable faith required to take great leaps towards this dream in the face of risk?

First, I will speak about my general perspective on finding life’s purpose and then I will give practical tips to help you find out what your purpose is, or build confidence in the purpose you already feel.

I have always struggled with the idea of a single purpose or dream.

I wrote an article about this some time ago when I was contemplating the future in a panic, wondering if I’ll ever figure out what I want to do with my life.

I had tried so many things and failed spectacularly at every single one of them. I had gone deep into different paths and realized that none of these things were right for me.

But what I didn’t realize back then was that each path had led me to the next. Not only that, each path gave me new tools to carve my way through the next.

Learning drums taught me the universal truths to learning anything. Being in a band taught me how to get people to work together towards a goal. Doing sales taught me the ability to articulate myself more efficiently and convincingly.

Alas, none of these paths were right for me. I’m writing this blog and doing these videos right now and I still can’t be sure if this is my life’s mission.

But now I have confidence that moving forward down this path will give me new tools and lead me where I need to go.

Your dream will change as you grow.

This is inevitable. You aren’t meant to just do one thing with your life.

But you are meant to pursue things in your life that are meaningful to you. If you aren’t going after any dream then you won’t be lead to the next one.

My main point here is that you should never fear whether your path is right or wrong.

You will never have to retrace your steps on this path and start over.

If it isn’t meant to be, a new path with appear somewhere down the road when you are a new person with new tools and different perspectives.

But you have to start somewhere.

So here are my practical tips for figuring out what you should be doing right now.

Some questions with some important answers.

Answer this list of questions over the period of a week. Keep them in the back of your mind and write down anything you come up with throughout this time.

What are you hobbies/passions?

I don’t just mean flying kites and collecting stamps. Write down anything you do that you don’t get paid for and enjoy nonetheless.

Blogging, video games, gardening, meditation, yoga, fitness, dieting, helping people, building, drawing, photography, knitting and a world of others can fall into this category.

What are your talents/skills.

What have you learned throughout your life that you are good at?

Can you play an instrument? Are you good with your hands? Are you good with words? Do you have a knack for organization? What have you shown an aptitude for in your current and previous jobs?

Write down all of your talents because more than likely some of these things will be incorporated in your path.

When have you been happiest?

Think back to your past jobs, experiences and hobbies to further define what makes you happiest. These things will be clues to what the overarching theme of your life should be.

What do you want to be remembered for?

This is a question that gave me a lot of insight into what I wanted to do with my life.

After much thought I realized that I wanted to be remember for helping people. I didn’t know how I would help people or who I would be helping, but I knew that I wanted to make people’s lives better.

How do you want to be remembered? As a millionaire business guru? As a creator of beautiful works of art? Or as someone who raised a beautiful family that will go on to improve the world?

Combining these answers with the next exercise will get you that much closer to knowing what you should be working towards.

Invigorate or debilitate?

Write down everything you do for a week, even the boring tasks.

Breakfast, showering, playing video games, projects, work, social life, everything.

Once you have done this I want you to create two columns on a “T Chart”. One for things that invigorate you, giving you energy/happiness, and one for things that debilitate or drain you.

Split everything you have done that week into these two columns.

You will often find that the path you should be working towards involves things you are already doing. Look through the list of invigorating things, combine it with your list of passions and your list of skills.

Lay it all out in front of you and look at it every day. Let these things cultivate in your mind.

Now that you know what you enjoy, what you are good at, the things that invigorate you in your life, the times you were happiest and the way you want to be remembered, I am confident that your next path will appear from the fog.

No one can tell you what your path is.

And you can’t even be sure that you will stay on the same path for the rest of your life.

But follow the path that lies before you now, one that leads you to a dream, and you will gain new tools and perspectives that will open new paths in the future.
That is what will give you the confidence to move forward.

You never have to worry about failing. I’ve failed a million times, but moving forward towards a dream has always lead me in the right direction.

But being afraid to follow a dream, that will only lead to nightmares.

With love,
Steven Farquharson, 2HG.

The King of All Lists

I’ve been doing to-do lists for a long time. Every single morning, I wake up and write down exactly what I want to accomplish by the end of the day.

As I crossed things off that list, I felt a sense of pride and accomplishment. Crossing things of my goal list is extremely gratifying.

In my opinion, to-do lists are amazing. They give you an outline of the day. They allow you to complete your goals and promote generating/implementing a routine.

They’re built for people that use the common excuse; “I don’t have time,” which, I’ve discovered, is quite a large number of the population.

Outline Your Day

Wake up every morning and write down exactly what you want to accomplish by the end of the day. Keep it short and concise.

Long lists prevent you from completing them, which knocks you down a peg at the end of the day. Make you sure you keep it small.

Have a set of constant goals that you must achieve (more on this later). For me, it’s daily affirmations, learning Spanish, and going to the gym. These are my constant goals to attain each day.

Make Time

For all intensive purposes, I consider myself a busy person. I blog, make videos; attend school and work, and constant learn (or read) something, which sucks up most of my time.

“How do you have time?”

The answer is quite simple. I make time. This is something magical about the to-do list. Having those goals on my to-do almost force me to make time. I know the feeling of not completing that list.

I work to avoid that feeling! I don’t have any extra divine time. I just make sure I fit it in. The to-do list encourages me to complete everything.

Build a Habit

To-do lists help build a routine. As mentioned, I have certain things that stay constant. Gym was always a constant habit, which I internalized early on.

However, affirmations and Spanish was something that never came easy. I constantly forgot to complete them or decided to avoid it for just one day.

Here’s where the list came in. Including those things on my list gave me extra motivation to complete it. I couldn’t allow myself to sleep without completing my list, even though it included a difficult Spanish lesson and time-consuming affirmations.

Now, those things are a constant event on my list, but I don’t need them to be. I’ve built the habit. I know, even without including them on the list, that I have to complete them before the days’ end.

Now, including those goals are formalities. Use your to-do list to build and internalize new habits.

“To-Don’t” List

I used to have a terrible nail-biting habit. My earliest memories included my fingers in constant pain and bleeding. I can’t place any early memories before nail biting.

I’ve pretty much done it my entire life. This was a hard habit to break.

How did I do it?

To-Don’t lists to the rescue. I started my day by writing “Today, I will not bite my nails.” And every night that I didn’t bite, I crossed it off.

Boom. Instant gratification.

The problem with people and bad habits is that they visualize the distant future. They see one week or month into the future and breaking the habit seems almost impossible.

Not biting my nails for a FULL week? Not drinking for a FULL week? Not smoking for a FULL week? That seems torturous.

Instead, focus only on today. Today is the only day that matters. Get through today. And then, tomorrow, get through that today. Time doesn’t exist outside of today. Time is just a series of todays.

Similar to the to-do lists, not being able to cross it off at the end of the day, felt terrible. My decision always includes gratification and today I will achieve it.

Be bold, be free, and love on.

One Simple Fitness Principle

I definitely need to preface this by saying that I am not an expert in this field, nor have I received any formal education on this topic.

I am purely speaking from life experiences and a compendium of research, that I have personally sent through my bullshit filter. Keeping that in mind, please consult your doctor before engaging in any physical activity.

In the purest understanding, fitness is a very subjective topic. Everyone has his or her own opinions on what works and what do not. Fitness is a combination of ‘research’ and bro-science.

For this reason, fitness has become a convoluted topic, with varying opinions filled with incredibly adamant people affirming their knowledge.

My base understanding of fitness consists of one core principle: Be active everyday. By being active everyday, I mean, doing any sort of physical activity. I intentionally make it sound vague.

When I first started ‘working out,’ it consisted of playing unorganized sports with friends. I wasn’t naturally gifted in any sport, but I enjoyed the act of running around with a basketball or a soccer ball.

Key Principle – Be Active Everyday

Find something you thoroughly enjoy doing and all of the other elements of fitness will fall into place naturally. To stay fit in the long run, you need to see fitness as children do – for fun.

When it starts becoming work, you slowly consume willpower and eventually fall off. You have a limited amount of willpower each day. As we get older, we use up willpower on chores, kids, wives (and husbands), making dinner and taking out the garbage. Often, fitness is the first thing on the chopping block.

When you do something you enjoy, you take willpower out of the equation. Your natural inclination will be to gradually increase your workout. You continue to do it because you want to and enjoy it.

When you’re active everyday, your body feels good about it. Your brain releases endorphins (more on that topic here) and it will become easier to continue. It slowly becomes a daily habit and your natural inclination for variety will drive you to do more stuff over time.

I don’t recommend any sort of workout plan or system for fitness. Why, because what works for me, may (or may not) necessarily work for you. Everyone is different.

No matter how charismatic that exercise guru on your DVD sounds, don’t believe that someone else’s fitness plan will work for you. What you need is a natural and easy way to evolve into a fitness routine that works for your brain and body.

Any fitness routine that depends on willpower, will inevitably fail. Or worse, another part of your life will get affected when you divert willpower to fitness.

Routine

Construct some sort of scheduled routine for daily exercise. Join an organized team; exercise at around the same time everyday, or workout with a partner, friend, or spouse.

This will be the core to constructing a habit. Taking rest days between exercise days breaks up the pattern that creates habits. It becomes too easy to say today is a one of your non-exercise days, and maybe tomorrow too.

No Pain, No Gain

I’ve tried the ‘pushing yourself till you can’t’ system a few times. It has always failed for me (but maybe you’re different). For me, the ‘no pain, no gain’ system takes too much willpower. If I suck up willpower at the gym, I can barely resist binge eating after.

Secondly, this system puts additional stress on my body. My body is sore and debilitated. The soreness is like a penalty for exercising. When I had a penalty every time, it gave me a reason to stop and it was usually along the lines of “I’m too sore to workout today.”

I Don’t Feel Like Working Out

So how do you muster up the energy on those days where you just want to sit on the couch with a bowl of chocolate almonds and sloth out? The system that I found works best is setting a time frame.

On those days, I usually tell myself that in X amount of time, I will get up and go be active. I will allow myself to sloth out a little bit, but as the deadline to activity slowly approaches, I feel my energy begin to rise.

Another method that I have tried is putting on my workout clothes and going to the gym. When I’ve arrived at the gym, I usually do some form of activity because it would be a large waste of time otherwise.

Regardless of how you personally view fitness, the central point is to be deliberately active every single day. Being active is one of the essential maxims for good health – diet, being another maxim. Be active for your spouse and kids. But more importantly, be active for yourself.

Be bold, be free, and love on.