As humans we have to rely on our conscious decisions to guide us past dangers. We do the best we can when it comes to our career path and handling the inevitable setbacks in life. But in the back of our minds we can sense an overall lack of direction, as we are pulled this way and that way by our moods and by the opinions of others. The way to avoid such a fate is to develop a sense of purpose, discovering our calling in life and using such knowledge to guide us in our decisions.
As soon as our schooling ends, we suddenly find ourselves thrown into the work world, where people can be ruthless and the competition is fierce. With little or no life experience to rely on, we have to make decisions and choices that will affect our entire future. We tend to react in one of two ways:
Some of us, excited by all the changes, actually embrace this new order. We experiment, try many different jobs, have many different relationships and adventures. The downside of this approach - trying so many things out, we never really develop solid skills in one particular area. In relationships we have not developed the tolerance for compromise and bristle at the restrictions to our freedom
Some of us, react the opposite way. Frightened of the chaos, we quickly opt for a career that is practical and lucrative, hopefully related to some of our interests, but not necessarily. The downside of this approach - the career we committed to in our twenties might begin to feel a bit lifeless in our thirties. We chose it for practical purposes, and it has little connection to what actually interests us in life
A lack of purpose and true direction in our lives results in discomfort and pain. This pain comes in several forms:
We feel increasingly bored. Not really engaged in our work, we turn to various distractions to occupy our restless minds
We feel increasingly insecure. We all have dreams and a sense of our own potential. If we have wandered aimlessly through life or gone astray, we begin to become aware of the discrepancy between our dreams and reality
We often feel anxious and stressed but are never quite certain as to why. Life involves inevitable obstacles and difficulties, but we have spent much of our time trying to avoid anything painful
We feel depressed. All of us want to believe that we are connected to something larger than ourselves. We want to feel some weight and significance to what we have done
Strategies for Developing a High Sense of Purpose
The following five strategies are designed to help you develop or strengthen your sense of purpose:
Discover your calling in life: You look for signs of primal inclinations (naturally drawn to particular subjects or activities) in your earliest years. Examine moments in your life when certain tasks or activities felt natural and easy to you. This is a process of discovering yourself, what makes you different, what predates the opinions of others
Use resistance and negative spurs: The key to success in any field is first developing skills in various areas, which you can later combine in unique and creative ways. Most people, consciously or unconsciously, seek to avoid tedium, pain, and any form of adversity. They try to put themselves in places where they will face less criticism and minimise their chances of failure. You want to embrace negative experiences, limitations, and even pain as the perfect means of building up your skills levels
Absorb purposeful energy: We humans are extremely susceptible to the moods and energy of other people. For this reason, we want to avoid too much contact with those who have a low or false sense of purpose
Create a ladder of descending goals: Operating with long-term goals will bring you tremendous clarity and resolve. However, goals also tend to generate anxiety. To manage such anxiety you must create a ladder of smaller goals along the way, reaching down to the present
Lose yourself in the work: You have to handle many moments of frustration, boredom, and failure, and the endless temptations in our culture for more immediate pleasures. To offset this tedium, you need to have moments of flow in which your mind becomes so deeply immersed in the work that you are transported beyond your ego
False Purposes
False purposes lead downward, to the animal side of our nature - to addictions, loss of mental powers, mindless conformity, and cynicism. Here are five of the most common forms of false purposes that have appealed to humans since the beginning of civilisation:
The pursuit of pleasure: The pleasures we pursue can take various forms - sex, stimulants, entertainment, eating, shopping, gambling, technological fads, games of all sorts
Causes and cults: People have a profound need to believe in something, and in the absence of great unifying belief systems, this void is easily filled by all kinds of microcauses and cults
Money and success: If we make money our primary goal, we never truly cultivate our uniqueness, and eventually someone younger and hungrier will supplant us
Attention: People have always pursued fame and attention as a way to feel enlarged and more important
Cynicism: Cynicism involves some or all of the following beliefs: Life is absurd, meaningless, and random. Standards of truth, excellence, or meaning are completely old-fashioned. Everything is relative. People's judgments are simply interpretations of the world, none better than another
This post is a summary of information provided in the book - The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene