Purpose

Why do we do what we do?

Evergreen question - what is the purpose of life? why are we here? why do we do things what we do? What was purpose of our grand grand parents' life, did they got their share or what they got what they ought to achieve?

I thought of survival is the something I explore more while trying to find the answer for this question - good health is the key to survival, for good health - not only physical, mental too, you need reasonable resources - steady income, healthy diet, good relationship and habits. so the goal is increase your time on earth, and everything else is placed during the life time helps or works against that goal. (still explore more on it, so may connect here in future post)

Overall its good to ask yourself that question, as if you ask that question often - you will have chance to be true to yourself. It also overlaps with previous write up on invisible scripts. Once in a while its good to ask and go deep why you are doing what you do, but you should avoid doing this exercise all the time - as it can make you stop doing certain things, because if you go deep on everything the answer always comes out - It doesn't matter! As all lives comes with expiry date, and the things which you do will have hardly have any impact on individual basis but it will surely have impact when the efforts been assessed on the group level or gradual change, or impact it will have on your family, loved ones or industry where it provides service. Thats why companies have mission statements and vision (at least I think that way).

• Interesting thread about happiness and purpose by Snigdha Sur

Snigdha Sur @snigdhasur

But what if we defined *exactly* what we wanted for the rest of our lives and stuck to it? My friend Dan (anonymized) did exactly this. He told me all he wanted was: a) to work out every day, b) spend time with his family, c) spend 4 months a year in [Tahiti* *place changed]

Few year back I came across this beautiful video of Sadhguru talking to Shekhar Kapur on Stress, it touch upon the same thing with very well explanation.

It's strange to think people often talk about 'I need to manage stress' - as normally you would mange your relationships, or money, as things which you want to grow or get in control. It can get stressful when you do things which comes without direction, or interest. It’s easy to do task or activity when you love doing it, and it won’t even feel like work.

Here is another way to look at - If you are working and moving forward year over year, without having some goal, it can make you feel empty, or underachiever, and you may feel like you get pushed in different direction. That’s why life with invisible script with generic routine, or corporate ladder is gamified to keep people chasing those instead going wandering. e.g chasing some title, increasing revenue or asset by some number, buying home, getting married, or kids or visiting some place, spending time with family - so now if you have not set some of those criteria, it will always feel like you could have done more or you set your benchmark by looking at your colleague or neighbor, friend or coworker. Which may be good for them, but might not work for you. So after spending some time/years, you realize - I wasted so much time, or it makes you think - ohh I could do that, or I should do that. It’s fair to ask some questions to yourself and have awareness, on what you want, what you are willing to sacrifice for it and then create some plan to reach there. Once you have setup some system that helps you to keep yourself accountable and gives you opportunity to seek help when those not met or either find help that can get you there. Because without those goals, milestones, there is surprise factor of what you going to get and it’s possible that most cases it will lead you to disappointment.

Next - so what do you do when you reach that goal? I guess you set new one, and it's possible that you may (and mostly) find the previous achievement non significant as you keep progressing towards the next one. That's the idea, that shows the progress and also makes you pause learn from the past process, and update on the execution and set the new goal with more preparedness. Also, most important thing, its very likely that when you reach there, you may find that I don't think this is what I wanted, and thats discussion for some other day. :)

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash