You’re always paying attention to something. If you want to live a more satisfying life, deliberately choose what that is. I dislike broad generalizations, but I think it’s safe to say most people live largely reactive lives. While it’s tempting to blame this on social media, and to a decreasing degree other mass media, I think much fault lies in our formal system of education. Outside of Montessori and other progressive models, education is a primarily passive process where the uninformed novice dutifully focuses their attention on some proscribed topic. After twelve to sixteen plus years of this, it’s not surprising that most have forgotten how to direct their own attention.
It’s no wonder then that public opinion is so easily swayed and that most of us struggle to maintain healthy interpersonal boundaries. Whether this be intentional, or incidental is irrelevant. What should matter is that it isn’t necessary. Each of us has the ability to control our own attention and to direct it toward purposeful, deliberate activity.
The diagram on the left represents me for much of my life. I was a good child, decent enough student, and later grew up to be a reliable employee and family man, in all cases admirably meeting the expectations of others. But what I wasn’t good at was knowing who I was and what were my own priorities.
About a half year ago I went through the seven levels deep exercise described by Dean Graziosi. After this exercise I had a single statement that described both who and why I was, my own statement of purpose. After, it became much easier to discriminate between the many competing calls for my attention. Of course, I’ve by no means perfected this. But today most of my time and attention is directed toward the goals and other non-goal priorities that correctly align with my life purpose.
There are many roads to the same destination. Likewise, there are many ways you might discover your own life purpose. But I will caution against confusing purpose with a goal or vocation. Your purpose is why. Why am I choosing this profession? Why am I pursuing this goal? If my purpose is to make the world more just, I might choose to start a non-profit. Or I might decide to become a banker, albeit a very progressive banker. The correct path is the one that takes you closest to where you want to go. So, a good purpose statement is specific enough to provide guidance but focuses solely on the why, not the how. Once you know the why, you can then choose the goals and other priorities that keep your life best aligned with who and why you fundamentally are.