"How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements — how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!" - Seneca
What's Your Life Purpose?
Today's idea is inspired by the quote above by Seneca. If you have joined me before you may remember me speaking on the importance of being open to life, of learning to let go of your past, letting go of old concepts. We need to learn to be open to new ideas, new ways of living, new ways of being.
Today I want to speak about the importance of saying no. From this quote what I get is that we need to learn to say no to the things that don't matter. For our purposes, what are the things that don't matter? The things that don't matter, is anything that takes us away from our life's aim. This leads me to talk about creating a life aim. I think it is of the utmost importance for us to create a main and lasting life aim.
By formulating an aim for your life, this will help you to say no to the things that don't matter. It can help you to remember and keep you on track with the things that do matter. If you have not formulated a life aim for yourself, as an experiment you can think like this is the last day of your life. Imagine you're on your deathbed and you're just looking back on your life. What would it take for you to pass away happy. Looking back on your life you can happily say I accomplished my life's purpose. What kind of life would you have had to live?
Purpose Drive Life: Formulating Your Life's Aim
In order to help you formulate your aim, I'm going to share another idea. Which is to try to find out what kind of person you are. I will describe the three major types of people.
Maybe your life's aim lies in doing something, so you're the type of person whose aim lies in doing. What is it that you hope to do in your life? Maybe this is traveling around the world and seeing every country. So if you visited every country you could die a happy man. Maybe it's to start up a business that helps you to provide for your family and live comfortably. A life aim based on doing is where the majority of people find their happiness.
Another type is maybe your life aim lies in knowing. As long as you can come to know something then you can die happily. Maybe you want to learn ten languages, so as long as you can reach that then you'll die a happy man. Maybe you want to know how to love, you know if you can learn how to love somebody or love yourself then your life aim has been accomplished.
If you are of the last type of person your aim lies in becoming. This is the rarest type. This type is about actualizing your full potential, your life's purpose lies in spiritual meaning. Becoming something that you are not now, entails a complete transformation. This applies to realizing your True Self. We're utilizing your highest truth.
Life is an endless series of Forks in the road. The problem is that many of us live a life that's predominantly unconscious. We live a life where we are identified to our usual ways of thinking, of feeling, of our habits. Whenever we approach these forks in the road, our habits, our usual ways of thinking and feeling will ultimately choose for us.
Unfortunately because of our old habits sometimes we choose a fork in the road and we go down a path that we have to pay for with for with the rest of our life. Something that we end up regretting. These forks in the road we need to approach with awareness with consciousness. When we approach these forks in the road, we can refer to our life's aim. Then we can approach them much more intelligently. We can see that if I go this way or that way, would that take me closer or further away from my life's aim. If you can discriminate and see that this is gonna take me further away from my aim, then with that clarity you will be in a better position to make a more conscious choice.
Good luck and happy travels!