In Part One of this article series, I discussed the
importance of finding your passion, the use of logic and sound reasoning as it
relates to going to college and financial considerations. I also talked about
the importance of teaching our children to not only find their passion for a
particular subject matter, to realize that this should not be limited to
college related career paths, and to live within their means as much as
possible. The current cultural standard of going into massive amounts of debt
at the highest and most prestigious Universities to earn a Bachelor’s degree, and then only to get an entry-level position with it, is not a sustainable model
as it currently stands. It will be interesting to see how the next generations
approach the problem of the declining value of a college education in terms of
the increased number of people who hold a bachelor’s degree.
But what if you have already gone to college? Or you have
already chosen a career path? Perhaps you are even 20 years into it, what can
you do to have a passionate or even successful life at this point?
Passion and
Careers
In Part One I defined
passion as:
“A relentless need to do something, a very active drive, and
it is not a passive interest or mild curiosity.”
The first question you have to ask yourself is does what you
do, your job, meet this criteria? If not, that is actually ok. While it is a
wonderful thing to have your career built around something that you are
extremely passionate about, the reality of modern life, the responsibilities
that we have, sometimes makes this, at least for the present, not practical. I
understand this, I am fortunate to be thinking about these things at an early
stage of my life so that, hopefully, my career can revolve entirely around the
artistic and creative projects that I love and am very passionate about accomplishing.
Doing what you love full-time requires an enormous amount energy, time, patience
(working on this one), and may require some financial investment. This
lifestyle may not be for everyone for number of reasons, one of which are your
personal values and how you define success in your life.
Defining Success
How do we define success? Is it having the newest products,
technological gadgets, nicest cars or boats, huge homes, children, designer
clothes, most money in our banks accounts, perfect financial security with
large investment portfolios, prestigious jobs, accolades and awards, high
levels of respect, the most popular, looking the best, or being the most
talented? I could continue… but you get the idea. Every person defines what is
important to him or her differently, but did you notice the trend that all of
these desires have in common (none of them are bad goals in and of themselves)?
These goals will profoundly shape the types of choices that we make, where we
go or went to college, what career we choose; however, and this is the thing to
notice: almost all of these goals are all about the individual, about me and
what I want out of life, what I expect to get, living the American Dream, what
I feel entitled to earn in life.
Living a creative and artistic lifestyle, which I am
passionate about, may not get me all of these “successes” that I listed above.
I may not ever have the biggest home, the newest car, or the most financial
security. But are those things, while important to some people, and some are
even necessary for living day to day, the ultimate goal for my life? I
discovered that a radical shift of perspective occurs when we stop thinking
about ourselves in terms of success and we start thinking in terms of our
life’s purpose. When I stop focusing on trying to achieve this abstract even distant
idea of success, and focus instead on living in the moment, doing the
activities that I know I love: teaching piano lessons, painting, blogging—I am
essentially choosing to center my life on projects that can have a profoundly
positive impact on the lives of other people. When I do this, I am suddenly
much happier and not a “grumpy muffin” as my wife sometimes calls me.
What is Your Purpose in Life?
Really, what is your purpose in life? I don’t know if most
people really think about this much, maybe they do, but I know that I do… a
lot. Having a meaningful life is important to me. I have mentioned my
personality type is a “creative dreamer” or an ENFP using the Meyers-Briggs Type
Indicator[1] (I
really need to do a blog post on the amazing topic of personality types), and
people with my personality are likewise very concerned about their place in the
world and their purpose in it.
Here are five questions that you can answer to
maybe get a little closer to understanding your purpose in life—I am not sure
where I saw this on the Internet, but I found it helpful so I thought I would
share it here with you:
Who are you?
What do you do (role
in society)? If you are not sure ask
instead: what do you feel very qualified
to teach someone else?
Who is your target
audience or community or customers?
In what ways does
what you do interact that audience?
How do they change
from what you do?
Notice that these last three questions are not about you,
but are about other people. I don’t think our purpose in life should be
self-serving; instead, it should focus on those around us. If we want to find
meaning and purpose in life, if we want to feel happier, and to feel like we
are important, we should desire to have a huge and overwhelmingly positive
impact on our local communities. Or else, I ask, why even bother to do anything
at all?
My Life's Purpose:
Answering the Five Questions
Let me give a quick example of how I answer these five
questions: I will try to keep these answers brief.
Who are you?
Who am I? Well, I am many things… but
in the end I am just: Charles.
What do you do or what
do you feel very qualified to teach someone else?
Again I have many answers that I
could put here based on my varied interests, but I will narrow it down by asking
the second half of the above question: “what do I feel qualified to teach” and
the answer is: I teach Music.
Who is your target
audience or community or customers?
I teach Music to both Children and
Adults in my local community.
In what ways does what
you do interact that audience?
I interact with both Children and
Adults in my local community through instructive piano lessons each week.
How do they change
from what you do?
My students grow in their knowledge of music and how it
works, become excellent musicians both technically and artistically, with
performance experience, increased self-confidence, joy and appreciation,
self-motivation, problem solving abilities and more.
If you put that all together, I have a killer life purpose:
I am Charles, and I enable both children and adults to find
great joy, self-confidence, and skill mastery in the art of piano performance
though the instruction of music each week. To me, this is meaningful, and when
I focus on others and define my life by my purpose rather than my level of “success,” I am happier person and a more productive part of my society –and that is the
ultimate success.
Finding Your
Passionate Life
While no one can tell you what are passionate about, only
you can know that, perhaps this exercise of defining your life purpose will
enable you to live a happier life as we enter a new year. I know that I am
passionate about art in all its forms, and I sincerely hope that you will be
inspired by what you see each week on this blog. Perhaps you can try being more
creative and artistic in your life, and who knows, you may find that it is your
passion as well, but even if it is not, or even if you have to keep the
subjects that you are passionate about at the hobby level rather than as a career
or college major, go out there and focus on your life purpose, give it your
100%, and feel successful in life because of it!
Because the today is the opening of Star Wars VII, can’t
wait to see it, I will end with the famous quote from Yoda:
“Do or do not, there is no try.”
—Charles
If you enjoyed reading this article, please Subscribe to Impulsive Artistry either by likeing my Facebook Page; Follow me on Google+, or by email subscription to this blog (upper right-hand sidebar on this page). --------->
[1]
While there is some scientific debate on the accuracy of the Meyers-Briggs personality
profiling method, it has helped me to understand myself in a more direct way,
get past some of my natural defensiveness about what I am really like and how I
process the world around me. I was enabled me to understand other personalities
in a more complete way. As I child, I often wanted to know the motivations for
why people did the things they did, what was the intent behind their words, how
did they process the world, how did they think, and why? When I stumbled onto
the Meyers-Brigs Personality Types, it opened a window into other
personalities—people’s minds. I have become increasingly adept at personality
typing those around me so that I can communicate more effectively with them and
anticipate their tendencies and preferences.
No comments:
Post a Comment