Identifying Your Limiting Patterns Part 5
You owe it to yourself to have a good long think about what you really want to do with your life. What would make you answer the “Why do you work?” question differently? Maybe you would like your answer to be “so I can make a difference in the world”, or “so I can create good experiences for my family”. You might even realize that you’ve never really thought about this before. That’s okay too! It’s a good time to consider your values and what’s truly important to you. You have spent many years hearing what everyone thinks is best for you but when was the last time you stopped to think about what YOU think is best for you? Have you ever? Or have you just internalized what you’ve been told and accidentally tricked yourself into thinking you came up with it on your own? This is an incredible opportunity to reflect and redefine the trajectory of where your life is headed. What kind of person do you want to become?
It helps to think about this on a smaller scale at first, because the bigger picture is sometimes harder to conceptualize without some details. When we think about what we want to do in the big picture, we don’t always realize what it entails. What would you like your everyday life to look like? What kinds of things would you like to do each day? Think actual activities, like writing, answering emails, talking on the phone, drawing, etc. Would you like to work 40 hours, or would you like to work more or less than that? Would you like to work from home or do you prefer to work somewhere in person? Would you like to stay in one place, or travel regularly?
Many people have gotten what they thought they wanted, only to find out that it makes them just as miserable because they don’t like the actual work they’re doing daily. For example, if you want to work from home but hate answering emails, you might not want to take an email heavy position. You would do better with something that focuses more on coding or answering phone calls perhaps. Wouldn’t it make much more sense to figure out what you actually want to do every day first, then find a way to design your life around that? Instead, what we do too often is think that we must have a certain level of income or status to be happy, and we deal with the work we don’t like, accepting it as a necessity. You don’t have to live like that! There is no job, no amount of money that is worth your sanity. Furthermore, there is simply no need for this anymore, we live in a world with endless possibilities. There are jobs you never even dreamed of existing, ways of making money without a job that you never considered, and plenty of life paths that I might not even be aware of myself that could make you happy and fulfilled.
It's within your power to determine what kind of lifestyle suits you best and take steps towards achieving it. This is what I mean by living intentionally rather than reactively. Yes, there will be circumstances we will have to react to in life, there’s no avoiding it. However, when you have a sense of purpose that you’re heading in a direction of your own choosing, you can react in a way that keeps you on that path. You can inform your decisions and reactions with your values and intentions so that you continue to make progress on your life. You can deal with things without derailing yourself. If you’re proactively and intentionally moving your life forward with a purpose and plan each day, you will have much more control over the outcomes and reduce the chances of things going sideways.
Thanks as always for reading,
Aaron Frank
