I don’t know about you, but growing up, I was often asked by family members, teachers, coaches, and friends the same old questions:
What do you want to do with your life?
Where do you want to go to school?
What kind of job do you want to have?
Who do you want to marry?
When do you want to start having kids?
Where do you want to live?
My answer became routine and thoughtless. I want to go to a good college, get a degree, find a good job, get married in my twenties, have kids in my thirties, live in a nice place with good weather, blah blah blah...
I didn’t actually know what I wanted to do with my life, I was just telling people what I thought they wanted to hear. I’m sure you can relate.
The thing that annoyed me the most about this line of questioning is that people never bothered to ask what I believe to be the most important question: why?
Figuring out what to do and how to do it is the easy part, but it’s finding the why that gives it purpose.
If we started with the why questions first, we would have much better answers to the other questions. The why is what gives our what its purpose. We can go to college, get a degree, find a job, get married, and have kids. But why? Because that’s what society tells us to do? Because that’s what our parents tell us to do? Is it because it’s what we want to do? If it truly is because that’s what you want to do, then do it! But if it’s not, then say f*ck it and do what you actually want to do.
I know it can be very difficult to find your why and there's no one way to do it, but here’s my suggested method of doing so.
1. Take Inventory
You need to first take inventory of yourself. I encourage you to write down your thoughts, feelings, desires, likes, dislikes, aspirations, and ideas. It's even better if you can get into the habit of doing it on a daily basis. You can even do some simple journaling about what you did throughout the day. This will increase your self-awareness and give you a better idea of your current situation in life. Without this first step, you really can't do the rest of this method.
2. Values
Second, write down a list of everything that you value. Whether it’s family members, a significant other, a car, a house, money, freedom, security, happiness, affection, etc. It can be anything, just make sure you write down the things that you value the most in life.
3. Passions
Third, write down the things you are passionate about. This can include things like an activity, a sport, an art form, a TV show, a band, helping people, charity work, being healthy, literally anything. What gets you excited? What are the things you are always thinking about?
I know this section can be difficult, so what I like to do is ask myself this: if money were no object, what could I do every single day for a ‘job’ and never get sick of it?
One of my favorite sayings is, “work is better when you don't need the money”. Meaning, nothing is better than working on something you truly care about without having to worry about whether or not you’re getting paid for it.
Another way to find your true passions is to look at what activities you already do that seem effortless to you—that don’t feel like ‘work’. When you’re working on something and you get lost in the flow state, when time seems to vanish and hours later you realize you were ‘in the zone’—that’s a passion.
4. Put It All together
Now that you’ve hopefully gathered some more information on yourself, created a list of what you value and what you’re passionate about, you should have a better idea of your why. I'd like to add that it's likely that you won't find your why immediately. It will take some time. It could take a week, or it could take a decade. For some, it may take 50 years. However, I believe that eventually, something will click in your mind and your why will become so obvious you'll be wondering how you didn't see it the entire time.
5. Take Action
What do you do with this information, you might ask. Well, now you take action. Start making plans and creating a road map for yourself on how you can pursue those passions with the end goal of meeting your values. It’s much easier said than done, but taking the first step is always the hardest—and you’ve already done that. Now keep going.
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