Attractive Attraction

How do you discover your real purpose in life? I’m not talking about your job, your daily responsibilities, or even your long-term goals. I mean the real reason why you’re here at all the very reason you exist.

Perhaps you’re a rather nihilistic person who doesn’t believe you have a purpose and that life has no meaning. Doesn’t matter. Not believing that you have a purpose won’t prevent you from discovering it, just as a lack of belief in gravity won’t prevent you from tripping. All that a lack of belief will do is make it take longer, so if you’re one of those people, just change the number 20 in the title of this blog entry to 40 (or 60 if you’re really stubborn). Most likely though if you don’t believe you have a purpose, then you probably won’t believe what I’m saying anyway, but even so, what’s the risk of investing an hour just in case?

Here’s a story about Bruce Lee which sets the stage for this little exercise. A master martial artist asked Bruce to teach him everything Bruce knew about martial arts. Bruce held up two cups, both filled with liquid. “The first cup,” said Bruce, “represents all of your knowledge about martial arts. The second cup represents all of my knowledge about martial arts. If you want to fill your cup with my knowledge, you must first empty your cup of your knowledge.”

If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false purposes you’ve been taught (including the idea that you may have no purpose at all).

So how to discover your purpose in life? While there are many ways to do this, some of them fairly involved, here is one of the simplest that anyone can do. The more open you are to this process, and the more you expect it to work, the faster it will work for you. But not being open to it or having doubts about it or thinking it’s an entirely idiotic and meaningless waste of time won’t prevent it from working as long as you stick with it again, it will just take longer to converge.

Here’s what to do:

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).

2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”

3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.

4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.

As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answer pops into your head as long as you just keep writing.

At some point during the process (typically after about 50-100 answers), you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel the urge to get up and make an excuse to do something else. That’s normal. Push past this resistance, and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass.

You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry they’re just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you’re getting warm. Keep going.

It’s important to do this alone and with no interruptions. If you’re a nihilist, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you’ll still eventually converge.

When I did this exercise, it took me about 25 minutes, and I reached my final answer at step 106. Partial pieces of the answer (mini-surges) appeared at steps 17, 39, and 53, and then the bulk of it fell into place and was refined through steps 100-106. I felt the feeling of resistance (wanting to get up and do something else, expecting the process to fail, feeling very impatient and even irritated) around steps 55-60. At step 80 I took a 2-minute break to close my eyes, relax, clear my mind, and to focus on the intention for the answer to come to me this was helpful as the answers I received after this break began to have greater clarity.

Here was my final answer: to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace.

When you find your own unique answer to the question of why you’re here, you will feel it resonate with you deeply. The words will seem to have a special energy to you, and you will feel that energy whenever you read them.

Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose.

If you’re inclined to ask why this little process works, just put that question aside until after you’ve successfully completed it. Once you’ve done that, you’ll probably have your own answer to why it works. Most likely if you ask 10 different people why this works (people who’ve successfully completed it), you’ll get 10 different answers, all filtered through their individual belief systems, and each will contain its own reflection of truth.

Obviously, this process won’t work if you quit before convergence. I’d guesstimate that 80-90% of people should achieve convergence in less than an hour. If you’re really entrenched in your beliefs and resistant to the process, maybe it will take you 5 sessions and 3 hours, but I suspect that such people will simply quit early (like within the first 15 minutes) or won’t even attempt it at all. But if you’re drawn to read this blog (and haven’t been inclined to ban it from your life yet), then it’s doubtful you fall into this group.

Give it a shot! At the very least, you’ll learn one of two things: your true purpose in life -or- that you should unsubscribe from this blog.

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

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So you want to make your life all that it can be. I am often asked by my readers for direct action plans to take them to the life they want to live.
It is a difficult question to answer, because everyone has a different dream. Here are a few things that can be a great asset and should be
incorporated into your daily plan for life.

1. Read something new every day. I can not stress
this enough. I have read every single day for the
last twenty years and have found that it creates
several wonderful effects. The first thing it does
is exercises my mind. When you are constantly
taking in new information, your mind will stay
sharp. You will be more aware of emerging trends
and be able to act on them from a good knowledge
base. The more you read, the better you will
write. Writing is an asset to you no matter what
you want to do in life. You will be a more
interesting person. Having new things to talk
about keeps you refreshing to those around you.
Have you ever been around someone who says the
same old things every time you see them? Also,
vary the subjects that you read. The more diverse
your knowledge, the more you will be able to be a
trend setter, rather than a trend follower. I have
many times come up with truly powerful ideas by
taking several bits of information from different
subjects and finding new ways to combine them.

2. Gear your mind towards solving problems.
The people who are most successful in life are the
people who make it their job to solve problems.
Problems exist all around us. Everywhere we go
there are things that can be done better, cheaper,
or faster. Opportunities are all around you. Open
your mind to the idea that you can solve the
world’s problems one at a time.

3. Write down your goals at least once a year.
I like to work backwards on this. I project my goals
far into the future and then plan my actions from
that point to the present. Also, I always set my
goals farther than I really believe I can achieve.
This is for two reasons. The first is that I will
not be the same person a year from now. I will
have aquired new skills, gained new experience and
refined my tastes. The second is that I can
achieve far more setting my goals higher than if I
kept them reasonable.

4. Study management at every opportunity. You can
begin this one with observing your boss at work.
Start asking yourself what makes them a manager.
Figure out exactly what they do. Employees think
in terms of what they have to do to complete
tasks. Managers think in terms of who they need to
get tasks done. Managers also think of ways to
combine tasks, eliminate steps in a process,
reduce costs and increase productivity. If you
learn to think like a manager, you will immediately
see your life getting better.

5. Always give yourself the first cut of any money
you aquire. This applies to dividends, paychecks,
gifts or any other money you receive. If you set a
percentage that you routinely take out of all
money received and set it aside for yourself, you
will always be one step ahead. Use this money to
invest in investments that provide a good rate of
return and allow the power of leverage to spring
you forward financially!

If you do these five things every day, in one year
you’ll be amazed at what you have accomplished!

Rasheed Ali (#1 Adversity Consultant) and Bill White (Syncronicity Expert) have just launched http://www.SleepYourWayToRiches.com — a powerful new success and wealth creation website and http://www.SolutionCoach.com –
a powerful business and success coaching site.

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The other day I went for my walk and decided that I would trek up a very steep hill near my house. It’s a little over a mile to the top of the hill. About 5 minutes into the walk I noticed my spirit dropping as I focused on how much more I still had to climb. And yes, it was starting to feel more like a climb up a mountain than a walk up a hill.

With each step I became more and more overwhelmed and seriously considered turning around, thinking, “There’s no way I can do this in the amount of time I have to complete this walk.” It was then, that a little voice inside my head said, “Turn around and look back.” Of course! I was focusing my energy in the wrong direction. Instead of looking at what was in front of me I needed to look back and see what I had already accomplished. Once I turned around and saw a very steep part of the hill already behind me, my spirit, and energy level soared. I knew, if I could get through that part of the hill that quickly, the rest would be very doable and I would be finished in plenty of time.

How many times in your life have you been told, “Don’t look back. Looking back doesn’t do any good. The past is the past and regrets aren’t going to keep you moving forward.” Well, what about looking back so you see all the things you’ve already accomplished in your life. The things you did that you never thought you could do. I’m sure you’ve had thoughts like, “How will I ever get this project off the ground, create a career I’m passionate about, raise happy and healthy kids, find the love of my life, buy my first house, ask for that overdue raise or even make it through this day.” Just knowing you did some or all of those things can make you feel a little bit better and realize that what’s in front of you now, will be yet another accomplishment you can add to your ‘looking back’ list.

Maybe you’re someone who doesn’t give yourself enough credit most of the time. Or, you focus more often on what you need to accomplish instead of enjoying, from time to time, what you’ve already completed. Give yourself a break and take some time to really assess all the wonderful things you’ve done in your life so far. Make a list so you really see what there is to be proud of. It doesn’t matter if it’s simply getting out of bed on a day that you were in a lot of pain emotionally or physically. No matter how small or big that something was, you wanted to do it and you did!

Don’t dismiss things because you may tell yourself, “Anyone could have done that.” You did it and that’s all that matters. It’s irrelevant if someone else could or did. Life isn’t a contest. If you constantly compare your accomplishments to others you will consistently disappoint yourself. Why? Because there will always be someone, somewhere, accomplishing something that you haven’t. So let go of that one. It’s a lose/lose every time.

Pay attention to the fact that you’ve gotten through more than you may think you have and that whatever lies ahead of you, you can get through and accomplish as well. Especially, when your heart knows it’s true.

Copyright 2005, Linda Salazar all rights reserved. This article may be reproduced in its entirety as long as all credits are included.

Linda Salazar
Certified Personal Life Coach, Author, Speaker
310-375-4800
Awaken The Genie Within

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