Finding Purpose, Chasing Dreams, and Facing Reality
Finding purpose can be one of the most challenging tasks for any person. This article is not intended to be a how-to handout for anyone looking for purpose, but it is the article if you’re looking for some motivation to go through life finding the one thing you’re after. Having that said, expect nothing but the truth about life. This is not another fiction story about the 0.00001% of people that make an investment decision and wake up with millions in their account.
When you approach life, you have multiple paths, and you have choices.
Great, right? Not really.
The more choices you have, the more you are going to be selective rather than purposeful.
Let’s dig into this.
When you get to the decision-making stage — most likely which college to go to — you will have a perspective about life.
That perspective is more likely not the same when you graduate, not the same when you get your first paycheck, and most likely not the same when you get into your career of choice with 10+ years of working experience.
How is that?
Your thinking will be different, you as a person will be different, and you will see things in life from a completely different perspective. Your biased opinions might change overnight, and you will feel like a different person.
What does this have to do with purpose?
Your purpose is the life sentence that will set you for life. All your actions, choices, friends, family, kids, food, countries to travel to, clothes to wear, your morning coffee, etc. All these choices will be different because of your purpose.
Think about this — take profound thinking and answer…
Why are you reading this article and not fishing in a wooden boat on the east coast?
Well?
Your purpose is the answer.
Your Purpose
You could’ve been in that wooden boat if you choose to.
You could’ve been in a university teaching MBA if you choose to.
You could’ve been a part-time employee at Starbucks if you choose to.
Let your imaginations go wild…The options are infinite.
What happened to destiny?
It is there, I believe in destiny and that everyone has a path to go through regardless of their choices.
The contradiction, you think?
Not really. Here’s the explanation…
I believe that there is a destiny for everyone.
The two things that confound your destiny and shapes it are your choices and your fate — things that you don’t control and happen regardless of your choices.
I’m not going into fate. It’s something that is out of our control and can’t change. Death is fate. Getting a traffic ticket is not. It’s a choice.
Your choices act as a chain reaction; one choice leads to the next and the next, and so on. Your choices are what shapes your path of destiny.
In the book “The Psychology of Money” by the award-winning author Morgan Housel. We can see that even our past financial choices are different from our present choices and more likely would be completely different in the future. This is why the author suggested having multiple mini-plans — say 5 years — distributed throughout one’s life instead of having one financial plan for 60 years. You can apply the same to your personal life and finding purpose as well.
Want a live example?
Before writing on Medium, I did not write anything online — other than quotes on Twitter. I did not have the intention to become a writer — at all. Now it’s the one thing that I can’t let go of, and I have high hopes to become a book publisher one day. From nothing to everything, you think.
When I graduated college, I was planning on becoming a web developer. I’m still developing and have a startup doing this, but I’m not passionate about it as I was before.
When times change, we change as human beings. The things that used to amuse me in my 20s are not in my 30s and probably wouldn’t be in my 40s. I started working out after graduating college around 10 years back. Before that, I wouldn't say I liked weight lifting. People change, and so will you.
Your Dreams
What are dreams? As you can imagine, dreams are the things that you don’t have/do at this point and wish to have/do in the future.
Simple, right? Not really. You can have a dream today that you forget about in 5 years. It’s not that you lack motivation and whatnot. You changed.
So stop chasing, and start acting.
Please, stop setting dreams for the next 20 years. There are exceptions, but they don’t normally work for everyone. Long-term dreams are hard to fulfill, leaving you with a void in your life if you did not fulfill them and stressing you out for no good reason. Set mini dreams, short-term realistic dreams that you can start acting on.
Here is what most people are saying when acting on your dream now instead of the future…
- Not enough money.
- Not enough time.
- Not enough resources.
- Not enough skills.
- Not enough positions/certificates/privileges.
- Etc, Etc…
These things should never be an excuse for not executing your dreams, and rather, they should be the path to your dreams. It doesn’t work in a prerequisite kind of way. Dreams have many options and paths, plan yours, plan on your resources, budget, capabilities. Otherwise, include the mandatory “prerequisites” into your planning and ACT on it.
Don’t wait for flowers to blossom without providing water.
Your Reality
What is your reality?
Hard one? It should be.
Finding purpose can be easy. Setting dreams is also manageable. However, doing all that and facing reality. Your reality can be daunting. Many might think that reality is what you have right now. Here are some examples to support this false thinking:
- If you were born poor, then that’s your reality.
- If you lost your job, then that’s your reality.
- If you can’t get into no university — for some reason — then that’s your reality.
- If you can’t work your relationships, then that’s your reality.
All these and more are false perceptions that people tend to believe to make them think they are not good enough. Some people use these false perceptions to make themselves feel better about themselves. To make them accept the reality. The reality of their thinking, rather than what can really be achieved in this world.
You’ve heard it before, “nothing is impossible.” People tend to either overuse this or not use it at all. I won’t get into the psychology behind this, but one thing can be for sure, people make excuses whenever they get the chance to do so. It is easier.
Ever wanted to go to the gym, got dressed, drove, then when you got to the gym parking lot, you couldn’t find a spot, gave up, and got back home? Even if there were empty spots far from the entrance, you found a good excuse — for yourself — to quit. It’s that simple, we believe and act on what makes sense to us. I can’t judge that you don’t want to work out, but what I can say about your decision is that you don’t have enough purpose for going to the gym.
We are not born to work specific jobs or get into specific communities. We have choices. We can set our own reality if we want. It’s not something that you get into and say: “Ops! I’m trapped.” It doesn’t work that way unless that is what you believe. In that case, you need to rethink your life purpose and act upon it.
After reading, answer the following…
1- What is my purpose?
2- What are my dreams?
3- What is my reality?
Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, it would be great to share it.
You can reach me at @alounpro on Twitter.
Have a lovely day!
— Ahmad Aloun
