Knowing what you want to achieve in life gives you direction and purpose.
When people feel adrift and don’t know what to do or how to prioritize, it’s often because they are not tapped into a sense of purpose. It’s important to know where you want to be and what you want to do. This vision of your best life and the goals you want to achieve will fuel a felt sense of purpose and generate the passion and drive you need to pursue what you want.
Discovering a sense of purpose is a highly personal endeavor. People approach it in many ways—from writing exercises to vision quests and psychedelics—and providing a definitive answer to the question of how to find purpose is beyond the scope of this tool. If you’re not sure what approach will work for you, don’t allow the difficulty of the inquiry to lull you into inaction. Experiment. Investigate your passions. Ask yourself, “What do I want to achieve in my life?” Meditate on this question and listen to the answers that emerge. Keep in mind that you don’t need to find a single, permanent answer—the inquiry itself is bound to be fruitful, and you can always repeat the process in the future to adjust or reinvent your trajectory.
The kind of answers you’re seeking are concrete goals that you could feasibly attain. They are things that could be written on your tombstone. Your answers will be numerous and multifaceted because that is the nature of life. However, each part of each answer will serve as a guiding light, nudging you toward activities that match your goals and kindle your sense of purpose.
Write down the answers that come to you and keep them somewhere you can readily access them for review. Then, as you go about your day-to-day life, recall what brings you a sense of purpose and what your goals are. When you need to make decisions about your work, your personal life, and anything that has an impact on you, use these insights to provide direction.
For example, if you know you want to be physically fit as you age, you can focus on that goal to help stave off the urge to overindulge on sweets every night. If you know you want to become a medical doctor, use that point of reference to guide your schooling choices. If you know you want to retire as a very wealthy person, take the time to make financial decisions aligned with that desire.
It’s helpful to review your answers at regular intervals and to check how closely your actions match your goals. You may also discover that a particular goal has lost meaning and that you want to alter your trajectory.
The “Why” Matters: Setting Successful Goals: https://hsc.unm.edu/news/2024/01/setting-successful-goals.html
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