Attractive Attraction

Why does it matter whether or not your life actually has a purpose?

Let’s take a few steps back and creep up on this question…

If you complete a task, and there’s no overall important context for that task, then the task doesn’t really matter. So you watch a TV show. It doesn’t make a difference there’s no larger context for it. But if you complete a task that’s part of a larger project, now it suddenly matters, at least within the context of the project. If you create a web page, and it’s part of a new web site you’re building, that task matters. It takes you closer to the realization of the completed project.

Now when does a project matter? Projects matter only within the context of a larger goal. If your goal is to increase your income, and you complete a project that is likely to facilitate it, the project matters. It brings you a step closer to the realization of your goal. But if you complete a project like digging a trench through your backyard, and there’s no real goal you’re trying to accomplish, then the project is pointless. There’s no meaning behind it.

If a project isn’t part of some larger goal, then that project has no context and is therefore irrelevant. You don’t need a complicated goal to give meaning to a project. It could be something simple like increasing your happiness or even just entertaining you for a while. But human behavior is purposeful, and we humans don’t tend to undertake projects if there is no good reason for doing so. People don’t often work hard at digging holes and refilling them for no reason.

What’s the difference between projects and goals? Goals are outcomes, objectives. They’re states of being a state where you’d like to be at some point. Projects are encapsulations of the actions you feel you can take to help you achieve a goal. Owning your own home is a goal. Writing a screenplay is a project.

So to reverse the order, you start by setting set some goals, create projects to achieve those goals, and perform tasks to complete those projects and thereby achieve your goals.

But now what’s the context for your goals? Why do they matter? If a task needs the context of a project and a project needs the context of a goal, don’t goals need a context as well in order for them to matter?

Say you set a goal to increase your income by 50%. Why is that relevant? Is it pointless? What is the context within which such a goal actually matters? Why is that goal any better or worse than filling your backyard with holes?

Goals do need a context as well; otherwise, they’re irrelevant too. A goal without a meaningful larger context is pointless.

One context that makes goals matter is human need, branching from the basic root need of survival. Goals that enhance your survival can be said to be important. Another human need is connecting with others; it’s been found that this need is actually hardwired into us from birth.

But if all our goals occur only within the context of physical and emotional needs, then all we really get out of life is survival and mediocrity. Making more money seems to help satisfy our need for security. Getting married and having kids helps with our need for socialization and connection. And then there are compound behaviors like learning new skills to advance in our careers so we can become better and better at filling these basic needs.

But there’s another possible context for our goals that goes beyond need. And that is the context of purpose. If your life has a purpose other than merely satisfying your own physical and emotional needs, now you have the ability to access a whole new arena of goal-setting. You can set goals that go way beyond the context of need.

Some people may argue that purpose is a human need as well, possibly a spiritual need. I suppose that’s a valid way of looking at it, except that it doesn’t appear to be as much of a NEED as physical and emotional survival it’s a lot quieter and easier to tune out. But for now I’ll treat purpose as something above and beyond basic physical and emotional needs.

If you only work within the context of need, then you automatically lack the ability to set and achieve certain types of goals. There are some goals you’ll just never be able to achieve. You don’t have a context for them, so you’ll never set them in the first place. Even though they might be grand and interesting goals, you won’t even consider them. People who achieve those kinds of goals that lie outside your context might include Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. They worked within a context beyond personal need. If your only context for goals is need, then you can never hope to get close to anything they did. Your whole life will only be about survival that’s as far as you’ll go. All you can ever hope for is mediocrity; greatness lies beyond your reach.

The second problem with having need as your only context for goals is that you’ll have a hard time pushing yourself beyond the point where you feel your needs are already satisfied. For some of you reading this, you’ve probably already done pretty well at setting and achieving goals within the context of your personal needs. I’ve been at this point in my life for many years. All my basic needs are met, and I expect I’ll be able to maintain that situation for the rest of my life without too much trouble. So there’s no real motivation in pushing myself to set more goals within the context of need. All that context can do is keep me maintaining the status quo, at best edging it up gradually. It can help me achieve more of the same and sometimes even an improved version of the same, but it can’t help drive me to achieve goals outside the context of need. And there are a lot of hugely interesting goals and experiences that don’t fall within the realm of need.

Some people get a lot more mileage out of the need context than others. For example, if you’re starting from a point of poverty, the context of need alone can push you to become extremely wealthy. Similarly, a bout with cancer can enable you to push yourself to a far greater state of health in the long run. But for most people, at some point that context of need runs dry. You can tell if this has happened to you if, when you think about big goals, they just don’t seem to matter; they appear to be more trouble than they’re worth. You have an underlying feeling that says, “Eh why bother?” I suppose this helps explain why 90% of the people working today can expect to earn within +/- 10% of their current income for the rest of their lives.

When you reach this point of stuckness, it’s time to move beyond the context of need. Think of your need context as being a project you’ve completed. There’s no point in continuing to perform tasks within the scope of a project that’s already done. If you’ve already made dinner and eaten it, you can stop stirring the sauce. The meal is done.

Similarly, if you’re now living in a situation where your needs are adequately met, and you don’t seem to be getting any more mileage out of need-based goals, then you need a new context for goal setting. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with some lame and impotent goals. You’re probably in this situation now if you set a goal to double your income, and despite feeling like you should want to achieve it, you get nowhere with it. And you know it’s because you didn’t really put much effort into it. Again, it seems more trouble than it’s worth. You’re not impotent though your context for setting this goal is impotent. It doesn’t tap into your passion and talents in a way that sustains your momentum.

The next context beyond need is purpose. Purpose doesn’t conflict with need. It’s just a new context for goal setting. It can continue to coexist with need-based goals. Just as you can have multiple projects and multiple goals in your life, you can also have multiple goal contexts.

The cool thing about purpose is that it’s a much more expansive and interesting context than need. Need is pretty limited, as it’s focused around survival. But purpose is a much broader context that frees you from the limits of working on survival goals. Ideally, your purpose will be found within the overlap between your passion and your talents. If you need help identifying a context of purpose that’s right for you, here’s one way to do it.

I also find that the context of purpose works better than the context of need in several ways. First, it aligns better with your inner fire your passion. You can only get semi-passionate about meeting your needs, but when your passion is aligned with your purpose, you’ll have far more energy and get far more done. For example, if you’re trying to find a mate out of the context of need, like you don’t want to be alone the rest of your life, that’s very weak motivation. You can easily fail to achieve such a goal when it’s only motivated by need there’s little passion behind it more of a sense of desperation. And your drive will be inconsistent some days you’ll feel it strongly, while other days it will be weaker, and you’ll feel OK being alone. But when you come from the context of purpose, you’re feeling great about who you are as a human being, thinking about how much you have to offer a potential mate, and radiating that feeling to others you meet. And that passion will make it far easier to attract someone compatible into your life. Desperation turns people away, but passion attracts. Think about it how attracted would you be to a potential mate who is living his/her purpose vs. someone whose whole life is just about survival? And if you attract someone from your need-based context, that person will most likely be in that same context, so your whole relationship will exist within the context of need I need you; you need me. But contrast this with a relationship which forms within the context of purpose for both people; now the relationship itself can be much broader because it transcends need. The relationship itself forms out of the basis of achieving a greater purpose. These aren’t always romantic relationships either you can see outcomes like the relationship between Jesus and his Apostles, coming together from a context of purpose rather than need.

The second way that purpose works better than need is that purpose is a more stable context. Need is a great motivator when you’re starving, but it’s a lousy motivator when your belly is full. The more you achieve your goals within the context of need, the more that need is satisfied, and the weaker it becomes as a context for setting new goals. Purpose, however, is ongoing and doesn’t drop off in intensity as you achieve success. It maintains its power at more constant levels in fact, if anything it grows stronger the more you work within it.

Thirdly, self-discipline becomes easier. When your passion and talents are aligned with your goals (which is what happens within the context of purpose), everything down the line gets easier. Most of the projects and tasks which derive from your purpose-driven goals will fall within your talents, unlike need-based goals, which can lead to projects and actions that are very difficult and stressful. For example, if your purpose involves composing beautiful music, and you have a strong innate talent in this area, then your projects and tasks will likely involve spending a lot of time compsing music. You don’t have to force yourself into action, since you’re already good at this kind of work, and you enjoy it immensely too. But you don’t always have this luxury of aligning passion and talents when you work only within the context of need. That’s where you may have to do things that you dislike and which you aren’t very good at, like forcing the musician inside you to do accounting work. Instead of feeling energized all day long, you’ll feel drained and demotivated if you work too far outside your passion-talent bubble for too long.

Fourthly, you’ll find that when you work within the context of purpose, you’ll also be able to use this context to more powerfully satisfy some of your needs automatically. Think back to the lower level of projects. Sometimes if you complete a particular project, it automatically takes care of another project in the process i.e. killing two birds with one stone. You can do the same thing when working on goals from different contexts. And when this happens, it’s wonderful because you can achieve need-based goals while still enjoying the benefits of working within the context of purpose. An example here would be if you decide to pursue your passion as a musician, and you become very financially successful at it. So now you’re able to use your talents and passion to handle your physical needs without having to succumb to doing things you dislike or which you aren’t very good at. You’re able to satisfy your needs while staying within your passion-talent bubble.

This makes it pretty clear that knowing your purpose is crucial. If you don’t have a purpose in life, then you’re stuck working only within the context of need. It means your life is only about physical and emotional survival. Certain goals are forever beyond your ability to achieve. And your ongoing motivation for setting and achieving goals will become weaker the more successful you are at achieving them. The further you get, the weaker your motivation for continued goal-setting. The best you can hope for within this context is pretty darn limited. You’re basically doomed to live out a complicated version of life as a lower mammal.

However, when you know your purpose, now you have a whole new context for goal setting not only new but also a lot more powerful. Imagine spending your whole life up to this point working on a project that isn’t very interesting to you and which you’re not very good at. And then suddenly you’re given a second project which fascinates you and which is a perfect fit for your skills and talents. And on top of that, if you focus on this new second project, it will likely take care of the first project automatically, so you never have to work on the first project directly again. Now which project would you choose to work on?

You don’t have to master the survival context to begin working in the purpose context. By it’s very nature, you can’t really ever master survival the better you get at meeting your needs, the weaker this context becomes. And you needn’t abandon the survival context either. Keep setting need-based goals. But add that second, more powerful context of purpose right alongside it. Now you have a new dimension to start setting goals that have nothing to do with your survival needs.

What can you do within the context of purpose that you can’t do within the context of need? You can create an album of your own beautiful music with no concern over making money from it just the desire to share it with the world. And you can have it matter deeply to you and not feel irrelevant and pointless. What are some goals you can set within the context of purpose which lie outside the context of need?

When you expand your goal-setting into the context of purpose, you expand your life. Right now I’d say I’m spending about 80% of my work time on goals within my purpose context and about 20% in the need context. A year ago it was about 80-20 the opposite way. This has made a huge positive difference for me, with the best part being that I’ve been experiencing life in ways I’d never have been able to access from the context of need alone. Often it’s possible to take a need-based goal and transform it into a purpose-based goal. So you gain access to all the motivational benefits of the purpose context while still taking care of the basic need.

If you don’t yet know your purpose, it’s worthwhile to take the time to discover it, so you can get past the dull need context and start working on some far more interesting purpose-driven goals congruent with your deepest passion and your greatest talents.

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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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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The best place to invest your money is in yourself. The rate of return from investing in your own knowledge and skills will be much higher than anything you’ll see from stocks, real estate, or other investments.

In some cases you can even measure the rate of return. Say you buy a book. Even add in the cost of your average hourly rate multiplied by the time it took you to read it. Many books will be lousy. But every once in a while, you’ll get one good idea that gives you a huge rate of return. Like 10x the cost in a matter of months. This is especially true with business and personal productivity books. But often it isn’t a breakthrough idea but rather the continuous exposure to the same ideas presented in different ways that produces a steady return over time. And the results go way beyond monetary. If investing in your own knowledge finally gives you the idea you need to quit smoking, you can measure the lifetime financial savings in the cost of cigarettes, but what is the increased level of health worth to you? What is the idea that allows you to meet and connect with your future spouse worth? What is shedding 50 pounds of fat and knowing you can keep it off the rest of your life worth? What is building a career that totally fulfills you worth?

A trick I learned from Brian Tracy is to invest 3% of your income on your own personal development. I don’t know why he specifically uses 3%, but that seems about right to me. So if you earn $5000 per month, you’d invest just $150 per month on your own personal development. You could buy about 10 paperback business or self-help books; those are typically $12-16 each (but that’s a lot to read in a month). Or you could order about 3 six-cassette or six-CD audio programs; those are usually around $50-60 each, often $20-30 if you buy them used. Or that $150 could go toward the cost of a seminar or conference. Most one-day personal development seminars I’m familiar with are around $100, with 3-day or longer ones typically in the $200-600 range (although they can go much higher, well over $10,000). I find it best to mix and match different types of learning. For example, last month I bought an audio program, a few books, and went to a 3-day seminar.

You don’t have to spend that exact percentage every month. It’s fine to underspend one month and overspend another. But aim for about 3% for the year on average. If that amount makes you uncomfortable, start with 1% the first month and build up gradually. Or just start with a fixed amount like $20 until you get the hang of it.

You can use this budget to invest in improving yourself any way you like. So that includes not just knowledge, but also equipment and services anything that helps you grow and improve. For example, I used this budget to put together a home gym with a weight station, an exercise bike, and lots of free weights. If you’re feeling stressed, you could use the money to get a professional massage (in my area those are usually $40-100 for an hour). My wife likes spending half a day at the Luxor Spa now and then. If you feel it would be a growth experience for you, go for it. Take sky-diving lessons. Tour a museum. Join a club or association. Buy software to learn to type faster. Take flute lessons. Take tennis lessons. Get a PDA.

This is a pretty easy habit to develop too. Just write on your calendar on the 1st of each month: “Invest 3% in myself.” Then when that date comes up, figure out how much money you made the previous month, and then decide how you’ll spend it. If you can, spend it right away easy when you order online. Remember that this is an investment; the money you spend here will be repaid in the long run based on how you invest it.

If you run your own business, you can decide whether you want to invest a percentage of your gross or your net income. I use the gross, which obviously gives me a higher budget. Use whatever figure you feel most comfortable with.

Even though I’m shopping-challenged, this is the kind of shopping I enjoy. You can give me a $10,000 shopping spree at the local mall, and I won’t be able to find anything I want. But when it comes to investing in knowledge and skills, suddenly I have no trouble coming up with a wish list. It’s fun to think, “OK, I have $X to spend on my own personal growth. How shall I do it?” Let’s buy 30 shares of better health, 10 shares of financial prosperity, 5 shares of communication skills, and 20 shares of relationship building.

Happy spending!

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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