The 4 Truths to a Purpose Worth Living For

One of the most important questions is often the least asked.

What is your purpose or What makes you feel a sense of purpose?

Purpose is defined by its many synonyms:

• reason

• objective

• meaning

• intention

Being unaware of why you feel bad when you don't get what you want is frustrating.When someone treats you in a way that you don't like, you compare your perspective against theirs and determine them to be "wrong" when they're simply reacting based off a lifetime of experience.

You don't understand what purpose these actions serve someone when you're on the side that doesn't feel good.

What about when you are making yourself feel bad?

I know a lot about making myself feel bad. I used to self-deprecate because I let people's words affect me so heavily that I assumed it was the truth about me.

True story time:

In the thick of my last depression, I felt like I wasn't good enough. Though I was trying my hardest as a stay at home dad, it never felt like anyone woke up thinking "I sure would be sad if I didn't have my dad anymore" it was always "get me this, I want that, why isn't this done?"

I had no income, no family who worried about me, no friends who wanted to hangout with me. There was a severe lack of the things that make us feel like we have a purpose in this world.

Luckily, I found the motivation to go on until I could discover how to build my own purpose in life by helping others combat their mindset problems.

We judge ourselves frequently because we have a comparison complex against people we view as better than us. Your enemy who is doing better than you in "x" creates a need to downplay another part of their life.

When you tear someone down with negativity, you are attempting to bring them down to your level in your mind. This is very ineffective in reality, but feels good in the moment by comparing one piece of the whole.

The comparison effect

Subconsciously you're making little calculations against others based on your own perception of life everyday.You can help this by being aware in the moment of what you are feeling.How does this affect your purpose?

If you are not focusing on what you can control, you are working against someone else's purpose. This takes the importance out of what you're doing for yourself by satisfying the ego instead of striving for what really matters to you most to you.

Defining your reason why

Every action has a purpose. What you need to do is understand what purpose it serves.

This will be the why behind it.

We are constantly having mini battles with our childhood. Everything that has become a threat to your existence is programmed as having caused damage to you in the past.

When you're in this place of feeling like you're not good enough for too long, you will be over-anxious and unable to see the path forward.

You're in survival mode.

You want to switch your body out of survival mode and into a thriving state.

This one technique will help you get into that state:

1. Take a 20 minutes for yourself

2. Write out where you want to be in one year

   1. This will help you set intentions outside of the current day, week, and month

3. Once you have a long term goal, write down as many steps as you can think of

4. Fill in the gaps with books, podcasts, coaching, YouTube, newsletters. Long form content has the answers you're looking for.

When you are thriving, you're working towards what will benefit you in the future, not in the moment.

The problem with your reasons why right now are they are aimed at getting you back into a comfortable place. We need to make comfort look different for you.

Objective seeking behavior

I'm an avid World of Warcraft player and I wear that proudly as it's helped me gamify my life in ways that I didn't know were important until recently.

You're on a path in life (the main quest line) but along the way, you will encounter many people who want favors from you (side quests) and that will keep you from moving forward.

If you stop making progress in a personal pursuit, you lose your sense of purpose.

With the plan above, you will have set your intentions, creating a mental path towards your goals without having to recreate an image of what you want to achieve for your life everyday.

You will always have a list of side goals to maintain, but when you have the end in mind, the process becomes meaningful.

Find meaning in everything

You create a real sense of purpose when all the steps you took to get to where you are now happened for a reason.

Agonizing over something as being wasteful or unfair is a sure way to reject what happened. This will cause friction in your understanding of the meaning for when life is painful.

The truth is, life is a balancing act.

When you seek out a challenge (or short term pain) then you'll be rewarded greatly for accepting that life simply works this way.

When you do something that is easily gratifying like:

• doom scrolling

• smoking

• drinking

• overeating

• blaming others

You will get immediate pleasure but you will not find any relief in the long term problem.

Meaning is a result of the intention you have going in.

Intention, the final truth

Having the ultimate focus on where you're going is the key to fulfilling the purpose you intend to.

Read that again, slowly.

If you allow life to happen to you, you have the subconscious intention of letting someone else make all the choices for you.

You can make life happen for you if you set your intentions.

One of the most simple ways to consciously do this is by writing them out daily.

Having goals is important, but if you're not creating a bridge to get to them you will find your way there more slowly.

Pulling the 4 truths together

A strong purpose will have you acting with as much intention as possible to make meaning out of what is important to you through objectives.

When you become disenchanted with life, you feel a low sense of purpose.

This is remedied by taking hold of something in your life that you are proud of.

3 questions to find your strong purpose

What can I do to give my life meaning?

This is something that you do that nobody else can do for you.

Three areas to focus on:

• Creative

  • writing

  • building

• Movement

  • walking/biking/running (cardio)

  • lifting heavy weights

• Understanding

  • books, podcasts, newsletters (think long form)

  • practicing techniques learned

These are personal responsibilities that when done by anyone else will not benefit you.Doing them will give you a meaningful reason to exist.

What are my intentions in life?

When you plan to have money, love, kids, or any other long term goal then you have to chart a course for that destination.

A lot of people will have a rough map of how they would like their life to look, but knowing and setting your intentions (daily for the best benefit) will give you the definition of how to attain those goals.

Practice this:

Write out one goal everyday. EX: I will have a loving relationship.This will prompt your subconscious to find the best way to attain and maintain that relationship. Think about it like this - do you see many failing relationships worrying about how loving it is or do you see them thinking about how detrimental the other is to them?

What can I do to help others?

This is the selfless tasks you do to make life better for the people you care about.

This will give you purpose for someone besides yourself which is crucial to feel like a part of the whole.

If you are financially successful but still don't feel like you have a purpose, this could be where you find yours.

Giving advice is not the answer to this question (that's worth 2 cents)

It's how you benefit a person by enlightening them on a subject they know nothing about.When someone is asking you for guidance in life, that means you have become knowledgeable in that area to the point of helping someone get to your level faster.

If you're a strong person and people need help moving things, that's helpful.

Hell, even if you're the best at organizing the house, that's a skill you could help people with.

There are several ways to be helpful, just as long as you're doing it by choice and not as a "chore" then you accept this is how you can serve a purpose greater than yourself.

This newsletter got a little more wordy than I intended, but we're talking about life fulfillment through finding your purpose so it is a pretty important topic.If you still struggle with finding your purpose please reach out on Twitter:

Thank you for reading

-Thanson