Welcome back! Today we’re wrapping up a series about discovering your path to a life of passion, mission, purpose, and freedom. The previous posts can be found here:
- Part 0: An Introduction
- Part 1: Your Passions
- Part 2: Your Missions
- Part 3: Your Purpose
- Part 4: Freedom
“Stop doing shit you hate.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk
Your life is simply too short to do stuff that you don’t like to do. To work at things that don’t matter to you or your purpose. There is simply not enough time here on this Earth to do things that don’t make you come alive.
I told you last week that it physically hurts me a little to think about how badly I want you to live a full, abundant life. When I think about all the time that I spent chasing money, position, or influence it literally does put a little knot in my stomach. I never got to world class income levels, but I was making pretty good money. No matter how much I made though, it was never enough. The thing I learned is that, no matter how much you have it will never be enough. There is never enough to satisfy. I always wanted more.
Why? Lots of reason I suppose. We don’t know how to be content with what we have. Our nature always craves more. For me, I discovered that part of it was because I wasn’t living out of my purpose. I didn’t even really know I had a purpose. I had passions, but they were misdirected. I thought this life was all about chasing money so I could provide better things for my family. Inside, it was destroying me. I was doing meaningless work, I was depressed, and I didn’t know how to handle any of it.
Fulfilled by Purpose
When I learned that there was work I could do that fulfilled my purpose, when I learned that I even had a purpose, things started to turn around for me. Not overnight, but slowly. Like a ship changing course at sea.
When you start to do things that matter, things that you’re passionate about, and that fulfill your purpose, it’s no longer about the money, or a certain position, or how much influence you have. I mean, I still want those things, but they are no longer the point.
Money, position, and influence. These things are not meant for me. If I ever have any of them, they are so that I can help other people.
I still need money to live, but I’m no longer chasing it. Now if I have money, it’s money in order to be generous, even if just to my family.
I’m no longer asking or seeking a high position. If I earn it and it’s given to me, then it’s so that I can use my experience to move things forward, not so that I can move forward.
If I am given influence it’s because helping others is way better than helping myself.
I won’t reject these things when they come, but I’m not chasing them anymore. My life is better for it.
Now, to read all of that you would think that I have it all figured out. That would be misleading you and couldn’t be further from the truth. I am still walking this out with you. I am still figuring out how to find the courage to step out of my prison cell each and every day. If you read last weeks post, you know what I’m talking about.
I’m learning how to really embrace the desires and passions that God has put inside of me. I’m trying to no longer brush them aside as I have done for so long. More and more I am understanding, with God’s help, what my purpose is. I’m discovering ways that I can bring my passions forward through missions to fulfill that purpose.
Your Dream Isn’t Just For You
Whatever it is that lies inside of you, whatever it is that makes you come alive, it is not meant just for you. “A light on a hill cannot be hidden,” the Bible says. It is your thing, and it will only come to fruition if you do it ,but it is not just for you. Other people need what you have to give.
By playing small and not going after what you know you’re supposed to be doing, you’re withholding something that someone else may desperately need. We’re all in this together. remember.
When you come alive and go after what you love, you provide something that makes this world a little better. When you, me, and everyone else start to live from what we were meant to do instead of what we think we “ought” to do, we start to fill in the gaps that we’ve left in the fabric of our world.
Because you’ve stepped out, other people start to see what’s missing in their lives. Maybe they start to realize there is something else hidden in them that they didn’t know they had. Maybe because they saw your courage, or because your thing affected them in such a huge way, they can also begin to step out into what they are supposed to be doing. They see your light and they realize that they have one that they can shine too. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, and it starts with you.
Don’t let comfort or fear or anything else hold you back from going after exactly what you know you’re supposed to. The first time that someone tells you that your thing changed their life it’ll all be worth it.
It’s Not About What You Know
I am the king of getting information. I know a lot of things about a lot of things that I do absolutely nothing with. Information is great, don’t get me wrong. We need to have information to make wise decisions. But if I’ve learned anything over the course of my life it is that information alone will not change you. It’s only action, and action taken consistently, that will change you. It’s what you do with the information that matters.
Remember science class in school? You can think of information as potential energy. You’re getting all kinds of energy built up and ready to do something. It’s only with action, when you actually do something, that the potential energy becomes kinetic (active) energy and you really get moving.
So it is with this series of posts. I’ve given you a lot of information. Hopefully I’ve encouraged you. Perhaps I’ve motivated you to want something more for your life than the status quo. At the end of the day, it’s just information though. It’s up to you to take that information and put it into practice. It’s up to you to do something with what you now know. It’s time to take that potential and turn it kinetic.
Let’s go back to where we started.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Discover your purpose. Dig deep and find your passions. Do things that point your passions at your purpose. When you do that, you’ll find the life that you’ve always been looking for. You will truly “suck out all the marrow of life,” as Thoreau said. You will come alive and you will change the world.
I can’t wait to see what you become.