WOTW: 5. Purpose

If you are familiar with my post “From GGibberish to Purpose” you know that the whole point of my blogging is to determine my purpose in life, so I especially looked forward to seeing what Word of the Week’s Chapter 5 titled Purpose had to say on the topic.  It doesn’t seem like mere coincidence that the Determination and Purpose chapters are next to each other in this book.  In fact, there are 3 quotes that I purposefully did not write about in my last post WOTW: 4. Determination because I felt they were so closely tied to things said in Chapter 5 that I wanted to write about them together.    

The first is “Determine what you are not going to do.” In the Purpose chapter it talks about how babies will refuse and push away any food they do not want to eat.  The author provides a gentle reminder “We can learn from that” and further prompting to think about everything and everyone you are interacting with in your life. Chapter 5 takes it a step further by pointing out, “(It is) Powerful, life-changing stuff when we realize what we don’t want.” 

This made me think of a time in my life a few years ago when I made a point to say yes to everything that was feasible for me to follow through on regardless of how I felt about it.  The reason I made a conscious decision to do this was because I felt I was being too introverted and discerning to a point that I was doing myself a disservice by saying no to almost all social events and losing out on potentially beneficial outcomes.  When I would get asked to do something, my default line of thinking would include some of the following:

• That is going to take time that I would rather spend doing something else I want or need to do instead.
• I am making myself uncomfortable by forcing myself to be social with people, some of whom I didn’t even like, when I’d much rather prefer to stay at home alone, being the true introvert that I am.
• I am wasting money doing an activity that I don’t want to do. I’d rather save that money or spend it on an activity I enjoy.  

The one surprising thing that I learned by saying yes to random things, such as going out to eat, hanging out with people, and doing activities that didn’t appeal to me is that I could end up having fun, making happy memories that I otherwise would not have had if I defaulted to my typical declinations. But of course I also reaffirmed some of my previous thoughts such as, “Yeah, that was a total waste of time, I would have been better off staying home and reading a book.” and “I really don’t like hanging out with this person because they’re a jerk”.  However, despite that, I don’t consider any of those moments a total waste of time and/or money because I gave something a try and confirmed for myself what I don’t want to do or who I don’t want to hang out with moving forward. 

In the Purpose chapter, it tells you to ask yourself if you are intentionally choosing to do something for a reason aligned with a specific purpose or simply accepting disagreeable spoonful’s of experiences and people for other non-purpose related reasons, such as external expectations, obligation or fear. It goes on to say that what is important to understand is by accepting something that is not in line with our purpose we are ignoring our inner wisdom and poisoning ourselves in the process. Taking what I read into consideration, moving forward I will be more purposeful in my decision.  I won’t always say yes or no to anything, but rather I will determine if it may be in alignment and beneficial to something related to my goals, passions and purpose.  After all, just because I don’t want to do something does not mean I should not do it either.  For example, I don’t ever want to go to the dentist or go running, but my goal is to be and get healthier and those are things I do to achieve that goal.  

The second quote from the Determination Chapter says, “Determine what you are going to give up. Sometimes you can’t have what is in front of you if you’re not willing to let go of what’s behind you.”  I have heard so many people say “Let go of what no longer serves you.” in the past year alone, probably hundreds of times now.  That is almost always followed by the sentiment that only after releasing will the good come to take its place.   I believe taking this a step further by focusing on what you are going for moving forward, specifically in alignment with purpose will propel you towards attaining them much faster.  

There are several things to give up and let go of in my life so that I can move forward.  Here are a few of them.  

1. Let go of my negative thinking and self-talk so that I can achieve positive confident thinking moving forward.
2. As I have already given up watching tv, I also want to give up mindlessly scrolling through social media because it is a time suck.  I can be more productive with my time, such as reading any one of the long list of books I want to tackle or even getting half an hour more of sleep.  
3. Let go of the grudges I have for people who are no longer even present in my life currently, by learning forgiveness, because living my life with multiple chips on my shoulders only negatively impacts me.  I no longer want to feel the uncomfortable physical effects when I think about certain people, such as an upset stomach, or my heart pounding in anger or my throat clamping tight with resentment.  

“Determine your destiny.” from Chapter 4 matches well with another quote from Chapter 5 that states, “When we align our lives with purpose, we become who we were always meant to be.” The Purpose chapter also says, “When you think in terms of purpose…your decisions become more succinct.”

From small decisions on the daily to larger longer term actions, if basing those on our purpose, I would like to believe that we will eventually become the person we were meant and destined to be. Who I am meant to be is still to be determined, but I can say that the decisions I am making with my free time feels succinct and is much more often tied to my purpose. For the past couple of months, I have been making small decisions every day to align myself with discovering my purpose. From trying to meditate daily, reading and researching various subjects related to discovering myself, doing a gratitude practice and diving into my passions, shadow, and inner child while expanding my knowledge and experience with various spiritual practices, all this is done in hopes to find myself, discover my passions and determine my purpose in life. I only hope in time, I can finally say that by thinking in terms of my purpose when it comes to my decisions and aligning my actions to it, that I successfully determine my destiny and become the person I was meant to be.

Lastly, there are many fill in the blank prompts in the Purpose chapter, but the only one that I’ll go into is what I feel is the most important of them all. “The PURPOSE of my life is _______.” Granted, this is not something that I can simply haphazardly fill in with random thoughts that come across my mind right at this moment, but this is the first of many times that I will ask myself this question and continue to ponder and meditate on, to evolve the answer as I myself grow and change.

That being said, here is my first attempt at answering that life defining question. The PURPOSE of my life is to find genuine happiness starting from within, by loving myself first. This is achieved by understanding who I truly am and accepting all that I am, including the the parts that I or others may consider bad. The PURPOSE of my life is to find genuine happiness by doing the things that I am passionate about and being authentic and purposeful in what I choose to spend my time doing every day. I am determined to have these be the things that bring me joy and happiness. The PURPOSE of my life is to share my spiritual journey as I do all the aforementioned things, which will be in some way beneficial not only to myself but to others as well.