Thinking Of Taking A Whole Year Off To Discover My Life Purpose - Thoughts ?

[Andrew]

Hey There 

I'm about to turn 30 in a month or so's time and so I'm taking Leo's advice and deciding to have an early mid life crises ! 

I currently work in Financial Analysis doing budgeting and forecasting I spend most of my day in excel .. columns .. rows ..you get the point. Needless to say I don't love my job and if I look back at my 20's and my working life I've never loved my work or what I do for that matter. 

So I'm contemplating taking a whole year off next year to discover my life purpose. I've already done Leo's life purpose course but I don't think I gave it the time or consideration necessary to get anything really meaningful out of it. Which is why I think a whole year is needed to dedicate solely to finding my life purpose and spending more time on self development work 

Things you need to know 

- If absolutely necessary I could move back home with family so finding accommodation or paying rent wouldn't be an issue 

- I am lucky enough to have travelled quite a lot around the world and while that was amazing I don't think I need to do any more wandering to "find myself" (It didn't work the first time) 

- The I first two jobs that I had were Full time employment gigs that lasted for about 2 years each and I absolutely hated both of them. For the last year and a half or so I have been contracting which means the maximum amount of time I stay in any one organization is about 6 months. This has worked well for me as I tend to get bored at any job I work in after say 4 months or so (as I said above I don't love my job) 

Questions I have: 

Am I being neurotic ? Maybe it's not necessary to take a whole year off with lifestyle changes or perhaps negotiating to work less I could find the time 

What if I take that whole year off and don't find my life purpose ? 

I feel like I need to do a whole life style change , I currently live in a big city , have many friends , spend weekends socializing. Do I need to totally change my life to find my life purpose ? or is that going to be too drastic a move or strategy ? 

Any advice , thoughts , opinions and constructive criticism would be much appreciated 

Thanks 

 

 

[MIARIVEL]

@Andrew I would suggest if you want to take a year off - have a plan so your time is not wasted. 

Start brainstorming some things you want to do or do more of what you enjoy doing and see if anything comes from that. 

Ask yourself if you could not fail at anything, what would you do? what type of person would you be? where would you be? think of all the endless possibilities. Sometimes we know what we want to do, we know the lifestyle we want to have and we dream of this telling ourselves.. one day I will.. or one day I will have. Very few of us make a plan to make it happen. You need a plan and also a plan B in case things don't go the way you expect. 

I didn't discover my purpose until I was 29 and I can tell you I have been in and out of jobs because I get bored easily, from working at Louis Vuitton to working for one of the largest finance firms in Sydney to working in a law firm to graphic design to the health and fitness industry. I tried a lot of things and when I started mentoring, then I went into counselling, then I decided to start a life coaching business and I have never looked back since. I fell in love and for me there is no greater reward in life than to helping someone else succeed and be all they can be. 

Where do you plan to do in your first month of finding your purpose? what about your second month? who are the type of people you want to meet? what do you want to know about yourself, your life?

Have you ever thought about hiring a coach to help you with direction in your life? 

Are there any books you want to read? courses you want to take? skills you want to develop? 

Start brainstorming a plan of action. Hope this has helped a bit. 

[ajasatya]

@Andrew do it. you're going to die eventually so what'd be the point to live the kind of life that you don't even enjoy fully?

my advice is: find a spiritual practice you can maintain naturally. i'd recommend zen with a sangha that practices zazen. also yoga and healthy nutrition.

maybe it's not about life purpose. maybe it's about finally stopping everything and living what you really are. the life purpose should come out of it as a consequence among many others.

[Andrew]

@MIA.RIVEL Thanks for your advice and insight. I like the part of asking questions as he who asks the better question gets the better answer. Recently I went through the Dream Lining exercise in the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss. This is a similar exercise to the one you describe above and he also has a fear setting exercise which is about capping your downside and helping people to spell out their worst case scenario in order to overcome it. 

If I'm totally honest I seem to be good at setting goals and following through on them but not actually getting what I'm after out of the whole experience. For example this year I set a goal to read 40 books on Leo's book list. I have read close to 20 books from the list and have at times given an honest attempt to do the exercises from the book but I don't feel like I "got" what the exercise was about or have anything practical I can now demonstrate as a result of doing the exercises from the book , I'm just collecting theoretical knowledge. 

Is this a motivation issue ? Do you have any recommendations ? 

Thanks for your help 

[Andrew]

@ajasatya Thanks for your advice. I listened to a great podcast today on finding your spiritual vision. Check it out below if you want 

http://lewishowes.com/podcast/krishna-ji/ 

This year I started Transcendental Meditation. I've been doing TM for almost 6 months now and just recently I feel like I've been getting something tangible from it.  How I got into TM in the first place was through Headspace and practicing mindfulness. 

Can you recommend how to deepen your meditation practice ? or even speed up the results you get from meditating ? 

Thanks 

Andrew 

[ajasatya]

19 hours ago, Andrew said:

Can you recommend how to deepen your meditation practice? or even speed up the results you get from meditating?

yes. you have to practice without goals. that's the best advice. just practice for the sake of it. practice for practice itself.

this book is perfect for this topic. if you want to deepen your meditation practice, it's the best modern source of knowledge i know.

[Aware]

Live a year in seclusion from worldly activities. All worldly entertainment, eat once a day simple food (morning), drink plain or distilled water (if its bad in your country).

Be alone, or with others with the same goal or wise people.

Set the goal of purifying your belief system, *intention, speech, act, livelihood, effort, attention and concentration.

Meditate observing your breath.

Challenge your old beLIEf system of what is taught on school (using for e.g internet): Ball earth, evolution theory, gravity and so on.

 

Sort out who was truly enlightened, which the teaching is still available today to learn from.

 

Surely, one discovers his true goal of life. Cessation of suffering, becoming truly happy.

 

* Truly right is the intention to seclude from ones job in order to find ones true purpose in life.