Don't just drift through life, live with intention
If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life you want, you’re eventually going to be forced to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don’t want.
If we don’t have a ‘true north’ in our life our life can feel a bit glum. We operate in auto pilot, in a low energy kind of way.
“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Most people spend their whole life feeling largely unsatisfied and unfulfilled because they haven’t taken the time to get intentional with carving out a meaningful life. This is the key word here – meaningful.
If you want to experience true fulfilment, it helps to make your life about giving to something greater than yourself. Your life becomes meaningful when you contribute to others and the world around you.
Pursuing your purpose transforms your entire life
The positive psychologists who research this stuff have found that that it’s better to seek meaning over happiness. We become more happy and content by seeking meaning first. By just seeking to be happy and comfortable as our end goal, it may feel good for a while, but in the end our pleasures become dull and pain and dissatisfaction reappears. The meaningful life is no easier, and may contain more struggle and setbacks, but we will be more likely to feel deeper positive emotions like contentment, joy, and connection, and the deep sense that we are contributing our unique gifts to the world. Every path has struggle and disappointment in the end, so we may as well choose meaningful struggle.
“Pursuing your purpose transforms your entire life. You select your purpose, you invest yourself in it, you change yourself and your life for it, you improve the world through it – Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Perfect.
No matter where you are in your life, it is possible to start living a more intentional purposeful life. You will need to be willing to examine yourself honestly and to know yourself deeply.
It also has to be your unique purpose. Living someone else’s purpose on their behalf is not going to work well.
Firstly, start a personal enquiry
Ask yourself these 3 questions to start living an intentional life, with purpose.
1.‘What does life want from me?’
When we find our real purpose, provided it is built on the foundation of acceptance, compassion, kindness, lightness on the earth and not harming others (yoga values) then we find that it’s not so much about us, but what the world wants from us. Giving the unique gift of who we are becomes our greatest joy and we see our much greater potential and feel less separation from the world.
A good starting point is to ask ourselves:
How can I contribute meaningfully to the world?
What are my unique gifts? - Write down three words or phrases that describes the best of who you are.
What does life want from me? - How can I raise humanity, add value to the world, and others from a place of love and compassion for all beings?
2. ‘What are you scared of leaving?’
It’s scary leaving something you’ve done for so long. I have noticed, most people want to change, but they also don’t want to change. They like the idea of living a more adventurous life, a life of more freedom – but they don’t want to let go of all things that keep them comfortable and away from that freedom.
Having a compelling vision for life and actually living it out is risky, and therefore scary. That’s why most people don’t do it. Most people dabble in the idea of living out their dreams, but then crawl back to the comfort of the Monday- Friday job, or the relationship that’s not that fulfilling because it feels safe. It’s part of being human, we lean toward that which is comfortable, we seek security over freedom. It’s very comfy, but is it fulfilling? Heres’ the truth, you cannot have everything. Something has gotta give.
Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living from a place of fear. Fear of being emotionally or physically uncomfortable, fear of uncertainty, fear of being lonely, fear of being laughed at, fear of failing, fear of disappointing the parental voices in our head etc When we operate from a place of fear we grasp and hold on to something we think will bring us happiness. Living out our dreams means operating from a place of love, instead of fear. When we operate from a place of love, it can feel terrifying because we free fall into life’s experience! Living from a place of love means asking before every decision, how I can make this an act of love towards myself, someone else or the world in general? Our gifts of love don’t help ourselves or others to feel comfortable or safe in our bad habits. They are a challenge leading towards deeper physical and emotional health and wisdom.
3. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
Anxiety can hold us back from letting go of the comfortable and familiar, when we realise we need to follow our true calling. I find it helpful to acknowledge the these fearful thoughts – but do it consciously, butalso accepting that its only one part of who we are. I ask what is the worst-case scenario? Play it out in my head. And then ask, is that still going to stop me? Or do I have it in me to work around these obstacles and learn and grow? If we can choose to be a bit more curious than we are fearful, this allows us to still take-action through small but deliberate steps. We have a willingness to hold a place for both fear and curiosity for the adventure of the unknown.
Secondly, take some practical steps
1. Take action by making uncertainty your friend
How can you cultivate some relatively unplanned adventures? Can you take action without knowing exactly how it will work out? How comfortable are you with the idea that the true nature of life is in fact, uncertain?
Its great to think our life like an artist’s canvas. Obviously, we need a few necessities, some basic needs that need to be met. But when we fill up every hour in our day, and plan every weekend with social events, or the regular routine chores, we start to feel like we are on the treadmill of life.
There are many ways of living. Life’s most memorable moments don’t usually come from an overseas package holiday. It’s the moments where our plans are disrupted, or our life goes in a whole new direction. You encounter people and places, and experience unforeseen acts of kindness that you never knew would bring you so much fulfilment, you would never have experienced if you took that path most travelled.
Look outside the options presented to you, there are always lateral options – Tim Ferriss
2. Just take the first step
You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. The difference between who you are and who you want to be, is what you do. Most of us stay stagnant because we over think our grand plans and then become paralysed by all of the ways it might go pear-shaped. You don’t have to feel fully confident to start with, by taking action step by step you will gain confidence in doing so. Start before you are ready, do your best, embrace your flaws. There is always something to learn with this approach. The one who falls and gets up is so much stronger than the one who never fell.
A ship in harbour is safe but that’s not what ships are built for – John A Shedd
3. Take action when resistance is strong
I attribute this idea to Ryan Holiday, and his work drawing on the ancient wisdom of Stoic philosphy - The Obstacle is the Way. Most people choose security and comfort over freedom and growth. We over think what could go wrong and this keeps us stagnant. In a moment where we have an opportunity to go to the gym, or sit around eating chocolate – we choose chocolate, because its comfortable. Chocolate tastes good in the moment, but it’s not an action out of love. Choosing love means doing what is uncomfortable, so that in the long run it benefits our body and mind so we are not a burden to society and can give back to others because we are healthy vibrant and strong. Taking action when resistance is strong AND when you really don’t feel like it, creates consistency. And this creates results.
4. Visualise what can go right
Get a note pad and write down what you DO have. Leverage your strengths, notice what you do have. Are you a compassionate person? Are you skilled at something you don’t often get to use? What makes you unique, or a little weird? Could you get a part time job that’s not perfect but allows you to bring your strengths to the workplace in some way? Human beings are really good at noticing all the dramatic problems that could make our plan fall over. The only way to live out your dreams and pursue your life’s purpose is to train your mind to visualise what could go right, and notice the inner gifts you currently have that will help your plan come to fruition.
5. Carve out a day to be a little rebellious
By this I don’t mean go and break the law. I just mean make an effort to do a few things that would be ‘out of the norm’ for you. Hang out with people you usually wouldn’t. Have a day just for yourself to explore the outdoors and have a day of self-care to ‘reset’- even if it means the chaos will unfold around you. In our modern world, conforming to a ‘perfect’ ideal can eventually end up squeezing the life out of us. Breaking your own rules a little might just give you a new perspective, a fresh palate to redesign your life in an inspiring way.
6. Do whatever the hell it takes to make you feel real again
Everything falls into place when you’re authentic. Listen to your heart, carve out a few days, a week to yourself to be in nature. Or even just an afternoon walking the Port Hills. Just allow yourself to go quiet. Ask yourself what do I really want? As opposed to ‘What will make me get attention?’. If you don’t fit in, you are probably doing the right thing. Be who you are, not who the world wants you to be. The more wisdom you attain and the more conscious you become, the crazier you will appear to others.
You will never influence the world by trying to be like it
Don’t change if you don’t want to
I believe we don’t have to force change in our life. This is not some kind of head game won by clever arguments or force of will. Instead, it’s a more gentle heart centred process. Listen to the clear and inspiring voice that comes to you in moments of quiet reflection, or through the world’s wisdom traditions, art and creativity, the rhythms of nature, and your dreams…
A yoga and/or meditation practice each day can also put us in touch with this deeper layer to being human.
We can then start to allow (not force) our purpose, and ‘our calling’ is likely to be revealed to us, along with the clarity of what we need to do.
Learn more at the upcoming One-day Wellness Retreat Saturday 2nd March 2024
*This blog was first published 20th April 2022