Discovering your purpose
1.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR OF SHIT SANDWICH AND DOES IT COME WITH AN OLIVE?
Ah, yes. The all-important question. What flavor of
shit sandwich would you like to eat? Because here’s the sticky little
truth about life that they don’t tell you at high school pep rallies:
Everything sucks, some of the time.
Now, that probably sounds incredibly
pessimistic of me. And you may be thinking, “Hey Mr. Manson, turn that frown
upside down.” But I actually think this is a liberating idea.
Everything involves sacrifice.
Everything includes some sort of cost. Nothing is pleasurable or uplifting all
of the time. So the question becomes: what struggle or sacrifice are you
willing to tolerate? Ultimately, what determines our ability to stick with
something we care about is our ability to handle the rough patches and ride out
the inevitable rotten days.
If you want to be a brilliant tech
entrepreneur, but you can’t handle failure, then you’re not going to make it far.
If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your
work rejected hundreds, if not thousands of times, then you’re done before you
start. If you want to be a hotshot court lawyer, but can’t stand the 80-hour
workweeks, then I’ve got bad news for you.
2.
WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT YOU TODAY THAT WOULD MAKE YOUR 8-YEAR-OLD SELF CRY?
When I was a child, I used to write
stories. I used to sit in my room for hours by myself, writing away, about
aliens, about superheroes, about great warriors, about my friends and family.
Not because I wanted anyone to read it. Not because I wanted to impress my
parents or teachers. But for the sheer joy of it.
And then, for some reason, I
stopped. And I don’t remember why.
We all have a tendency to lose touch
with what we loved as a child. Something about the social pressures of
adolescence and professional pressures of young adulthood squeezes the passion
out of us. We’re taught that the only reason to do something is if we’re
somehow rewarded for it.
It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s
that I rediscovered how much I loved writing. And it wasn’t until I started my
business that I remembered how much I enjoyed building websites — something I
did in my early teens, just for fun.
The funny thing though, is that if
my 8-year-old self had asked my 20-year-old self, “Why don’t you write
anymore?” and I replied, “Because I’m not good at it,” or “Because nobody would
read what I write,” or “Because you can’t make money doing that,” not only
would I have been completely wrong, but that 8-year-old boy version of myself
would have probably started crying.
3.
WHAT MAKES YOU FORGET TO EAT AND POOP?
We’ve all had that experience where
we get so wrapped up in something that minutes turn into hours and hours turn
into “Holy crap, I forgot to have dinner.”
Supposedly, in his prime, Isaac
Newton’s mother had to regularly come in and remind him to eat because he would
go entire days so absorbed in his work that he would forget.
I used to be like that with video
games. This probably wasn’t a good thing. In fact, for many years it was kind
of a problem. I would sit and play video games instead of doing more important
things like studying for an exam, or showering regularly, or speaking to other
humans face-to-face.
It wasn’t until I gave up the games
that I realized my passion wasn’t for the games themselves (although I do love
them). My passion is for improvement, being good at something and then trying
to get better. The games themselves — the graphics, the stories — they were
cool, but I can easily live without them. It’s the competition — with others,
but especially with myself — that I thrive on.
And when I applied that
obsessiveness for improvement and self-competition to an internet business and
to my writing, well, things took off in a big way.
Maybe for you, it’s something else.
Maybe it’s organizing things efficiently, or getting lost in a fantasy world,
or teaching somebody something, or solving technical problems. Whatever it is,
don’t just look at the activities that keep you up all night, but look at
the cognitive principles behind those activities that enthrall you. Because
they can easily be applied elsewhere.
4.
HOW CAN YOU BETTER EMBARRASS YOURSELF?
Before you are able to be good at
something and do something important, you must first suck at something and have
no clue what you’re doing. That’s pretty obvious. And in order to suck at
something and have no clue what you’re doing, you must embarrass yourself in
some shape or form, often repeatedly. And most people try to avoid embarrassing
themselves, namely because it sucks.
Ergo, due to the transitive property
of awesomeness, if you avoid anything that could potentially embarrass you,
then you will never end up doing something that feels important.
Yes, it seems that once again, it
all comes back to vulnerability.
Right now, there’s something you
want to do, something you think about doing, something you fantasize
about doing, yet you don’t do it. You have your reasons, no doubt. And you
repeat these reasons to yourself ad infinitum.
But what are those reasons? Because
I can tell you right now that if those reasons are based on what others would
think, then you’re screwing yourself over big time.
If your reasons are something like,
“I can’t start a business because spending time with my kids is more important
to me,” or “Playing Starcraft all day would probably interfere with my music,
and music is more important to me,” then OK. Sounds good.
But if your reasons are, “My parents
would hate it,” or “My friends would make fun of me,” or “If I failed, I’d look
like an idiot,” then chances are, you’re actually avoiding something you truly
care about because caring about that thing is what scares the shit out of you,
not what mom thinks or what Timmy next door says.
Living a life avoiding embarrassment
is akin to living a life with your head in the sand.
Great things are, by their very
nature, unique and unconventional. Therefore, to achieve them, we must go
against the herd mentality. And to do that is scary.
Embrace embarrassment. Feeling
foolish is part of the path to achieving something important, something
meaningful. The more a major life decision scares you, chances are the more you
need to be doing it.
5.
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD?
In case you haven’t seen the news
lately, the world has a few problems. And by “a few problems,” what I really
mean is, “everything is fucked and we’re all going to die.”
I’ve harped on this before, and the
research also bears it out, but to live a happy and healthy life, we must hold
on to values that are greater than our own pleasure or satisfaction.1
So pick a problem and start saving
the world. There are plenty to choose from. Our screwed up education systems, economic
development, domestic violence, mental health care, governmental corruption.
Hell, I just saw an article this morning on sex trafficking in the US and it got me all riled up and
wishing I could do something. It also ruined my breakfast.
Find a problem you care about and
start solving it. Obviously, you’re not going to fix the world’s problems by
yourself. But you can contribute and make a difference. And that feeling of
making a difference is ultimately what’s most important for your own
happiness and fulfillment.
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
“Gee Mark, I read all of this horrible stuff and I get all pissed off too, but
that doesn’t translate to action, much less a new career path.”
Glad you asked…
6.
GUN TO YOUR HEAD, IF YOU HAD TO LEAVE THE HOUSE ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, WHERE WOULD
YOU GO AND WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
For many of us, the enemy is just
old-fashioned complacency. We get into our routines. We distract ourselves. The
couch is comfortable. The Doritos are cheesy. And nothing new happens.
This is a problem.
What most people don’t understand is
that passion is the result of action, not the cause of it.2,
3
Discovering what you’re passionate
about in life and what matters to you is a full-contact sport, a
trial-and-error process. None of us know exactly how we feel about an activity
until we actually do the activity.
So ask yourself, if someone put a
gun to your head and forced you to leave your house every day for
everything except for sleep, how would you choose to occupy yourself? And no,
you can’t just go sit in a coffee shop and browse Facebook. You probably
already do that. Let’s pretend there are no useless websites, no video games,
no TV. You have to be outside of the house all day every day until it’s time to
go to bed — where would you go and what would you do?
Sign up for a dance class? Join a
book club? Go get another degree? Invent a new form of irrigation system that
can save the thousands of children’s lives in rural Africa? Learn to hang
glide?
What would you do with all of that
time?
If it strikes your fancy, write down
a few answers and then, you know, go out and actually do them. Bonus points if
it involves embarrassing yourself.
7.
IF YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO DIE ONE YEAR FROM TODAY, WHAT WOULD YOU DO AND
HOW WOULD YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED?
Most of us don’t like thinking about
death.
It freaks us out. But thinking about our own death surprisingly has a lot of
practical advantages. One of those advantages is that it forces us to zero in
on what’s actually important in our lives and what’s just frivolous and
distracting.
When I was in college, I used to
walk around and ask people, “If you had a year to live, what would you do?” As
you can imagine, I was a huge hit at parties. A lot of people gave vague and
boring answers. A few drinks were nearly spit on me. But it did cause people to
really think about their lives in a different way and re-evaluate what their
priorities were.
This man’s headstone will read:
“Here lies Greg. He watched every episode of ’24’… twice.”
What is your legacy going to be?
What are the stories people are going to tell when you’re gone? What is your
obituary going to say? Is there anything to say at all? If not, what would you
like it to say? How can you start working towards that today?
And again, if you fantasize about
your obituary saying a bunch of badass shit that impresses a bunch of random
other people, then again, you’re failing here.
When people feel like they have no
sense of direction, no purpose in their life, it’s because they don’t know
what’s important to them, they don’t know what their values are.
And when you don’t know what your
values are, then you’re essentially taking on other people’s values and living
other people’s priorities instead of your own. This is a one-way ticket to unhealthy
relationships and eventual misery.
Discovering one’s “purpose” in life
essentially boils down to finding those one or two things that are bigger than
yourself, and bigger than those around you. And to find them you must get off
your couch and act, and take the time to think beyond yourself, to think
greater than yourself, and paradoxically, to imagine a world without yourself.
