If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false purposes you have been taught, says Jai Madaan
How often do we find ourselves asking the questions “what is my purpose in lifeIJ” or “why am I hereIJ” Humans feel most successful when they have fulfilled their purpose in this world and achieved something great. We spend our entire lives trying out new things, taking chances, experimenting with everything around us for the sole purpose of reaching a point in our lives where we have everything figured out, for once and for all.
In today’s capitalistic world, advertisements, brands, television, celebrities, and corporates — who employ various ways to influence our minds — always surround us. All they are doing is their job, they have to manipulate a customer’s mind to sell their product and earn profits. But is it okay to let ourselves be completely influenced by what others want us to thinkIJ A make-up brand will make you notice flaws you never knew even existed, and hence lead you to purchase more of their products. TV nowadays tells us what we should drink or how we should look and behave.
The first step in discovering the “real you” is to identify the difference between our external and internal self. We are told to never judge a book by its cover and often we forget to apply this to ourselves. Our external look or personality is something created by the material forces around us. We look to dress a certain way because people around us are looking like that. How many of us shun the logic of not caring about what people think of us as yet another motivational irrational logicIJ It does take a lot of courage to step away from the crowd and not get affected by what others think of us. The people we interact with at our workplace or social gatherings don’t always know the real us. Imagine receiving a gift with a beautiful packaging. But once opened, we realise it doesn’t appeal to us at all. It is a similar case with people. What others see of us is just one layer of our personality, the external layer. Just because they have a certain opinion of us does not mean we have to accept their opinion and let it define us. We are made up of the thoughts, opinions, likes and dislikes we harbour.
Discovering your true self involves a lot of introspection. So how to discover your purpose in lifeIJ While there are many ways to do this, some of them fairly involved, here is one of the simplest thing anyone can do. The more open you are to this process and the more you expect it to work, the faster it will work for you. But not being open to it or having doubts about it or thinking it’s a meaningless waste of time won’t prevent it from working as long as you stick with it — again, it will just take longer to converge. Here’s what to do:
Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in lifeIJ”
Write an answer that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.
That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counsellor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source.
If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false purposes you’ve been taught (including the idea that you may have no purpose at all).
We should always think about how we’ll react if we were stranded on an island without any technology or friends. Will we still be able to survive easilyIJ Once we are in harmony with our true self, no opinion in this world will affect us in a way it isn’t supposed to. Often people aren’t comfortable with spending time alone. But in order to discover our true self, it is essential that we get comfortable with the idea of being alone sometimes. That is when we will be able to introspect and focus on each thought carefully.
Reading good books is highly recommended as well. It expands one’s horizons and allows us to look at things from different points of view. An understanding of all sides of a story will help us analyse each situation better. It is important to interact with all sorts of people and indulge in meaningful discussions. Hearing a variety of thoughts on political, social and cultural issues exposes us in a way like no other.
It is all these small efforts that will put us on the path of self-discovery. Self-discovery becomes essential when we want to succeed in life and leave our mark. If we haven’t figured out who we really are how will we realise what we are capable of or where our true interests lieIJ Once we have figured out ourselves, it becomes easy to identify our strengths and weaknesses. We are prepared to face challenges, that earlier seemed more difficult. We finally get to focus on things that appeal to us.
It may seem like a trivial issue, but not knowing our true self and realising our true potential limits us in more ways than one. There is no security in living a life dictated by somebody else’s terms and opinions. By restricting ourselves to what others think is best for us, we set ourselves on the path of an unhappy and dissatisfied life. life truly is too short to not listen to your gut and follow your heart. So it’s important that we travel, explore, read and communicate as much as we need to learn to be comfortable in our own skin. And once we have discovered who we truly are, everything is uphill from there!
The writer is an astrologer and spiritual healer