The Art Of Walking The Path Of Purpose
It’s not what you see with your eyes that makes a difference in a person’s life. It’s not the kind of job they have, their financial means, their family situation, or their good health. It’s all ephemeral and fleeting if not based on the right actions, sustained good habits, and a life of purpose.
It makes a huge difference whether you’re charging into life with intention and positive action or simply coasting with the flow in a mode of constant passive reaction.
Happiness is such a misunderstood word. Happiness results from satisfaction usually expressed in meeting every need and aspiration, but this is a mistake. Satisfaction is just a fleeting momentary feeling that goes away just as soon as you meet a need or satisfy a whim. We, as human beings, get bored with what we already have, and desire is the only contact in our lives driving us forward from all feelings of satisfaction, and in turn, happiness.
Circumstances change as life goes on, the world changes, the weather changes, the economy changes, plagues ravage the world, wars consume millions, natural and manmade disasters uproots communities and we have to adapt to all of this, and so, even if we, as people, do not change, the world outside does change, constantly.
But the fix is in because we are of and from this world and change inherently is part of our composition. we, however, have a choice to make, This change that is bound to happen whether we like it or not can be intentional as in we face it with forethought and went into it with steady feet, or just unintentional, reactive, submissive that just waits for the blows of fate like a tree leaf in the autumn wind.
"If one knows not to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." —Seneca
You can follow the steps of innumerable other human beings who have walked this earth before us and make every change in your life with purpose and intention. You have the power to change yourself from within step by step, action by action, day by day, and habit by habit.
Most dramatic changes that happen to people's lives are the result of compounding interest in consistently pursued habits that lead to a life of mastery, purpose, and fulfillment. The slow build-up of knowledge and skills can have a tremendous and monumental effect on your life if you pursue the right habits and install the right systems in your life.
All success in life, especially great success, is the result of astute positioning of one's own life in the right vector towards a worthy goal. And no, you don't have to have that all figured out by the age of 6, no one can. You may always start with experiments. Tip your toe into whatever pool on your path and see if you like the water, and you may try it out for a little while and then move on to something else if that wasn't the right kind of thing into which you want to immerse your entire life. The more experiences you subject yourself to as early on as possible in life, the more options you will have, and the more the path will clear up before your eyes. None of us is born with the gift of insight and premonition, it comes along after a certain amount of accumulated experiences in how to deal with this world and the people who live in it.
All you really need to do is to grasp the spirit of your time and ride with it with passion and enthusiasm. The right goals will show themselves to you and you will start to create your own vectors of motions towards achieving said goals.
The kind of motion that will get you closer to your goals is building a system of habits, actions, and smaller achievable sub-goals and effectively lining them up and stacking them atop one another to shape your life the way you want it to actually be.
You may want to create a system towards maintaining your health with proper nutrition, exercise, and abstinence from certain addictions which will lead you to the optimization of your health, sharpening your focus, and giving you plenty of energy to pursue your other endeavors in life. You may build another system for acquiring a set of skills and knowledge that will attain you a mastery level in some field you feel is worthy of your time and of being your life's work. You may create another system to maintain healthy relationships with family, friends, and charity towards other people, another for spirituality, and another for self-reflect, and so on.
A good life is something you have to build on your own, brick by brick, action by action, habit by habit, simply by choosing a direction and then placing one foot in front of the other.
At the beginning of a new year, try to pick up a new set of habits, and add one to the others bit by bit, and just keep at it. One day things will change dramatically for you.
Good luck.