“When life demands more of people than they demand of life – as is ordinarily the case – what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death”

- Tom Robbins

What do you demand of life?

David Allen used that quote in his “Getting Things Done” book, and I remember reading it and thinking about the amount of work that I did for others, and how little I demanded in return.

I don’t refer to compensation; money by itself does not represent anything real. Neither do I mean getting something back out of a gesture… a good deed that demands something in return stops being good and becomes a service.

I’m referring to how many of your initiatives you do for yourself, and what do you ask in return of your sacrifices.

In college, one of my teachers spoke of “Responsible Egoism”; this was a concept that changed me in a fundamental way: “Not feeding your ego, taking care of those that surround you, but never forgetting yourself”

There is this social stigma with individual thinking, the threat of being called “egoist” and the way we demonize the “taking care of #1”  concept, leads us into being embarrassed any time we try to care for our future and interests.

It’s just that there is so much more to life than getting up in the morning to go to work, chasing the “Friday” rainbow for the “weekend” pot of gold, and every time it just goes 7 days away again. This total lack of attention to things that make you happy generates the anxiety that leads to our generation’s favorite addiction: work.

“If I only got a raise, I would have enough money for…”, “It’s just for a little while then I can focus on my dream”, “the economy is tough”.

Yeah, ok, many of those things are true in certain situations, but what I ask is: What are you demanding in return?

“I demand to spend more time with my kids”, “I require respect at work”, “I need that all new project teaches me something”, are all valid responses to any sacrifice you have to make in a particular situation.

Money is important as a trading tool, but on a “reality” level, its hard for our brains to wrap around the concept of a million bucks, even if I transferred them to your account today, it would not provide a feeling of wholeness and completion. It would probably be very exalting, and surely it would be key to achieving many dreams, but the mere existence of the cash in your account does not provide self-realization, this can only be achieved with goals that transcend the material and a number, and must be demanded out of life.

So take stock of how much you are giving away, and make a balance of what you are asking in return, and in some way, try and get more out of life.

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol,

What is my purpose in life?

This question has frozen a lot of us in our tracks, the extent of the answer and its ramifications are so huge that it looks like an impossible riddle.

Any problem you tackle in life is made easy if you do two things:

1. Achieve a clear understanding of the problem.
2. Fragment it into smaller, easier problems.

If the objective is to find your purpose in life, you can divide the problem into 10 small steps, which can be done in a week each, and in only 3 months it’s possible to get a clear vision of something that was murky and hard to define.

The motive behind each article in this program has been to find the pieces of the puzzle that is called your life. So if you have been following the series of articles during the past 3 months, it’s now time to sit down and put it all together, on the contrary I invite you to start at step one.

For this step you only need a quiet place to think, your lists, pencil and paper.

The process is:

1. Check your commitments list to make sure that your projects lists is complete, an inventory of the end points of all current efforts.
2. Read the projects list carefully, trying to find the inherent pattern inside it, this is akin to decoding a cipher: there is no recipe that always works. But I can assure you that there is something your projects have in common, a series of Macro-Projects that are almost never more than 7, they can be in the type of “Getting a promotion” “Be a better father” or “keeping my spouse happy”.
3. When you find the 7 Macro-Projects, imagine that 10 years have passed and every one of them was successfully completed, visualize that future self and ask the question: Is this who I want to be?
4. If the answer is affirmative, I congratulate you and admit to some envy… in my case it was very different, I noticed that my Macro-Projects, the things that all my tasks had in common, was a road that others had chosen for me and was leading to someone who I did not want to become. I didn’t know what I wanted, but at least I was clear that my life was being led down the wrong road.
5. Once you get the big picture clear, try to relate this pattern with the journal, finding entries in common with the Macro-Projects. Evaluate which of the entries are happy, and which are sad… remember that our feelings are like an internal compass that helps us find the correct direction. Now ask yourself: Which of my Macro-Projects gives me the most joy? In your life and in your actions there is happiness, and in it is the key to discovering your mission and destiny.
6. Think of the Macro-Projects that point you in the happiest direction, and try to find the pattern contained within them. There you will find your purpose in life.

This exercise was one of the most revealing moments in my life, and even though a lot has changed from that day, every time I do the exercise I’m surprised to find out that my end goals have not changed, even though I do.

It’s like a central anchor point, where you can always return in times of trouble, part of my purpose is to help others find that center and even though the actions I take to achieve this change over time, the final objective remains the same.

Never lose sight of that goal, even though it may sometimes seem unattainable and frustration makes you want to give up, someday a surprise will come and you will find out that no step was taken in vain.

I would love to read your goals; you can post them on the comments section of this post or at my @alexmrv twitter.

Happy decoding!

Alex.