“Your first priority is to identify what you want and then make sure you take the path that’s going to give you that. There’s nothing sadder than to see someone get to be seventy-five or eighty years old and look back regrettably because they pursued the wrong target.”
One of the paragraph in the book Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Abraham Lincoln
Having a goal, having a purpose, having a destination, it’s all fine but what if you don’t know where to go, you are not that self-aware, you are very early in the process, you could be a college graduate or you’ve passed out but you don’t know where to go. It’s a problem for the majority of people because most of the people are not self-aware, they don’t know what they want from life. It’s very obvious why most of the people are not happy in their life.
So, if you don’t know the destination or a goal, how will you then start?
To answer you, You just start by finding something you like or you are passionate about, you could have knowledge of many things and maybe you are good at so many things, so Pick One. keep doing that and if you see some potential in that, add some more things to it. The trick here is to Start Something. You can always change your mind later.
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
-Abraham Lincoln
If you are a procrastinator, just try many things and start with one thing that you like. For you, the procrastinator, you can’t manage your time so manage your attention. It’s the game of attention. Give attention to those things that you find interesting. Work on that.
Here's the verse from the Bhagwat Gita (one of the book I read again and again) that says that work is the only thing that you can control because the outcome is not in your hands.
Bg. 2.47
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्à¤ूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥ ४ॠ॥
Translation;
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.
So, if you are finding your goal, your prescribed duty is to know yourself by doing many things so that you can get a glimpse of what you like, what you are good at and where you must lead your life towards.
One thing that you can practice while doing these things is that embrace the uncertainty because you won’t know where are you going, just faith is what you have. The more you embrace the uncertainty, the more things will get easier for you.
That’s the thing about the process because the process will keep you alive. It’s the mystery on that path because only you are the one walking on it. Think of it like you are writing your life. You are the Life.
People will tell you the path but don’t believe it because they may not know what they are talking about. Even if they do know, Your interpretation of what they are saying could be different, so you can’t apply the exact thing they are saying. Here comes the role of listening. So the more you can listen clearly, the more you can understand things deeply. Listening in itself a deep topic that I'd cover later.
If you don’t know yourself, This is completely fine, Because you are on a journey of finding yourself. So find out what it means to live. Find out what it means to be completely self-aware. The voice that you hear early in the process is not the voice of yours. This is the outer voice. What you are going to do is find your voice by using your voice. YOU CAN’T FIND YOUR VOICE IF YOU DON’T USE IT. The best chapter in one of my all-time favourite book Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
If you don’t know where you are leading in life, people will make fun of you and that’s fine. Know that this is the process. Every person who is making fun of you is contributing to the part of the process. That’s the way of an artist. Be an artist. Survive every situation that is coming to you. Because every situation is making you every second. And you are making choices in that situation. So think and choose wisely.
Plato said, “The life which is not examined is not worth living.”
Examine every action of yours to get self-knowledge and self-awareness. If you are just living, day by day passing time, that means you are not living your fullest. Somewhere there would be some kind of emptiness that will pinch you from inside. If you don’t know who you are, things get very messy at the end. Don’t waste your time in wasting your time. TRY, don’t be afraid.
Figuring out is a lifetime task, if you are 18, you’ve to figure out, if you are 25, you’ve to figure out, if you are 45, you have to figure out, if you are 85, you’ve to figure out because… that Time is new for you, things have changed, you’ve evolved. Somebody who is just starting their career right now has a different mindset and is in a different position altogether than the person who is now 85 and has their grandchildren in front of them. Every second is a new one. You haven’t lived THIS TIME BEFORE. The time of the NOW.
Whatever your age is, doesn’t matter. One thing I can tell you is that you would be happiest if you were able to find a state of flow where you work as you play in games. Time, at that time, flies. That’s why I told you earlier that try as many things as possible, and have patience because life is long. You are not going to die tomorrow for sure. The probability of you dying tomorrow is very low, do not bother about that.
All I can say, is that It is never a bad time to start something new. It is never a bad time to start what you like. It is never a bad time to change something you are attached to, for example: your career. Start Anew!
Marcus Aurelius says in Meditations: “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live properly.
Comments
Post a Comment