Life, to some (or perhaps many?) people, is meaningless. They think everybody is going to die anyway, so why bother with having any aspirations. There’s no purpose, they say. 

Some people brag about not wanting money and fame, and are excessively proud of their slow life. They think they’re hip and cool for being able to detach from the materialistic world by not having any aspirations. 

These people are often sardonic towards others who show aspirations. 

While I think it’s hip and cool to be able to detach from the materialistic world, that we do things out of passion instead of doing things for money and fame, I don’t think it’s hip and cool to have no aspiration to develop and improve our talents. 

Slow life is good. But simply staring at the grass and clouds with no aspiration to develop and improve your talents, and then bragging about your so-called happy life, is not hip and cool. You’re wasting your potential and you’re inspiring people to waste their potential too.

Not only wasting your potential, over time, you’re also prone to feeling miserable from having to fake happiness as you’re aware that something is missing in your life. That ‘something’ is your potential. You’ll forever need to distract yourself with unproductive activities from feeling discontent for not optimising your potential.

In his book, “The Law of Human Nature”, Robert Greene illustrates this type of people as:

“having a great fear of trying and failing, of standing out and being ridiculed. It stems from sheer laziness and offers its believers consolation for their lack of accomplishments.”

Robert Greene, The Law of Human Nature, p.428

People with no aspiration often feel miserable. Many of them hate their job and when they’re not working, they’d usually spend their free time distracting themselves with unproductive, and often, self-destructive activities that make them feel good temporarily but feel more miserable afterwards. The most common self-destructive activities are: shopping for things they don’t need or can’t afford, gambling, gorging junk food, drinking excessive alcoholic beverages, and using stimulant or relaxant drugs.

Some others prioritise happiness so much that they jump from one high to another. Often looking like a chicken without its head. Keeping busy and distracting themselves with no particular purpose, often confuse themselves with what ‘living in the moment’ really means. They get bored easily but try hard to convince themselves that they’re happy while deep inside they know they feel empty and miserable as they get bored quickly.

Mark Manson confirmed that the pursuit of happiness is not a good idea. In his book, “Everything is F*cked”, he writes:

“The pursuit of happiness plunges us head-first toward nihilism and frivolity. It leads us toward childishness, an incessant and intolerant desire for something more, a hole that can never be filled, a thirst that can never be quenched. It is at the root of corruption and addiction, of self-pity and self-destruction.”

Mark Manson, Everything is F*cked, page 191

So perhaps, instead of being either ‘detached from everything’ or ‘attached to many things’ in the name of ‘happiness’, if you want to feel content with life, you’ll want to discover your life’s purpose.

Life’s Purpose: Definition

The definition of life’s purpose in this post is the reason for living. This reason is what makes your life feel meaningful. It motivates you to get up in the morning (or afternoon, if you do night shifts). 

If your purpose to get up is only to empty your bladder, eat, work a job you hate, engage in mostly short-term pleasures that have detrimental effects, entertain yourself with things that are potentially harmful or hurtful (to you or people around you), raise children you regret having, sleep, rinse and repeat, then I’m here to confirm that your life is meaningless. And boring.

The true meaning of life’s purpose, from what I’ve read, heard, studied, and experienced, is 

to align our life with our life’s task, which is to discover our uniqueness and bring it to flower to its full potential.

George Leonard, in his book, “Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-term Fulfillment” suspects that not fulfilling our life’s task (by not using our potential) may result in depression and discontent.

He writes:

“It might well be, in fact, that much of the world’s depression and discontent, and perhaps even a good share of the pervasive malaise that leads to crime and war, can ultimately be traced to our unused energy, our untapped potential.”

George Leonard, Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-term Fulfillment, p. 131

When bringing our uniqueness to flower to its ‘full potential’, we shouldn’t aim to be rich and famous, though it’s not impossible to be rich and famous as a side effect of following our life’s task. 

Robert Greene warns us about the false path, about doing life’s task for fame, money, attention, etc. 

This also applies to those who are living the lifestyle according to their parents’ wishes, thinking that they’re being good, useful children who dedicate their lives to their parents (as prevalent in some cultures, that children are born to please their parents).

The problem with this is that some (or many?) parents don’t recognise their children’s true uniqueness as they’re too busy brainwashing their children to either have a ‘normal’ life, or go the opposite way, being blindly rebellious (remember Karen? Yes, the one who wants to speak to all managers). Both of these types of parents don’t really pay attention to what their child is really good at, often dismissing whatever potential the child has when the parents find it not aligning with their own values.

The children get further and further away from their uniqueness, living a life just to please others, being resentful, trying to escape from their (often unconscious) resentment by various means, including unhealthy, or even destructive addiction. 

Therefore, having a true life’s purpose is very important for us to feel content with life. Note that I’m not using the word ‘happy’ because it’s impossible to be happy while we’re bored or sad. But it’s possible to feel content even though we feel bored or sad as we’re aware that they’re just temporary. And that we still have the motivation to progress instead of distracting ourselves with things or people we’ll soon get bored with again, creating a useless, vicious cycle. 

Here are 7 questions to ask about yourself if you want to discover your life’s purpose:

1. What Activities and Subjects Were You Interested in When You Were a Child?

According to Robert Greene in his book, Mastery:

“you possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task —what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live. In childhood this force was clear to you… In the intervening years, the force tends to fade in and out as you listen more to parents and peers, to the daily anxieties that wear away at you. This can be the source of your unhappiness—your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique.”

Robert Greene, Mastery, Page 34

So try to remember what activities and subjects you were interested in when you were a child. 

2. What Are Your Interests Now?

Our current interests may differ from those in our childhood. If that’s the case, ask yourself: 

A friend told me he could watch documentaries for hours, forgetting everything else. I told him that it could be his calling, making documentaries.

So don’t assume that your ‘passive’ interest is ‘useless’. Question more on why you’re interested in certain activities, which part draws you the most?

3. What Do Others Appreciate About You? 

Start to listen more to what others say about your good qualities. Maybe they say you’re a good listener and a good problem solver, which can potentially lead to consulting jobs or being a writer of self-help books, helping other people to solve their problems. Or maybe they praise your cooking skills, which can lead to the food industry. Or perhaps you’re good at organising a night out and you could be a successful event coordinator. 

4. What Are Your Core Values?

Use your favourite search engine (Google, Bing, etc), type: “core value list”, and you’ll get millions of results, e.g. a list of 8 core values, or 200 core values.  

Pick 10 values that resonate with you and from that 10, pick 5. Then from that 5, choose the 3 most important values. 

For example, I end up selecting my top five: freedom, authenticity, fairness, adventure, and creativity. 

When I have to cut down to three, I choose freedom, creativity, and authenticity. I notice that I want adventure because I value freedom. But if I have to choose between freedom and adventure, I would choose freedom because I can get adventure when I have freedom, but I don’t believe I can get freedom if I prioritise adventure. 

Also note that I don’t put ‘money’ as my core value despite my love of money, because I know that in the end, I want money to get freedom. So my real core value is not money, but freedom as I use money to achieve freedom. 

5. Can You Align Your Core Values to Serving Others?

Serving others means serving something bigger than you, something outside you, something that is beyond personal concerns and direct personal gain. It may include, but not limited to, helping people (yes, strangers, not only your friends and family) in your community, disadvantaged people on the other side of the world, endangered species, abandoned animals and/or environmental conservation.

To add meaning to freedom, for example, help or inspire others to achieve freedom. For example, you may want to ask yourself the following questions:

1. When was the last time you helped someone to be free from pain or financial problems and you knew that this person can’t pay you back in any way? 
2. How did you feel when you saw that the person you helped felt better after you helped him/her to be free from something? 

Most people feel good when they help other people. 

Or maybe for some reason, you just don’t like people and you don’t feel good helping any of them. In that case, pay attention to how you feel when you help an animal that needs help. Study shows that most people would feel great as they produce serotonin after the act of kindness. Serotonin promotes good sleep, helps regulate appetite, and promotes learning ability, to name a few.

If you don’t feel good helping people/animals and even want to torture them instead, then I’d suggest you see a therapist as your anterior insular cortex (part of the brain that’s responsible for feeling empathy) may be damaged or smaller than the average people. If you do suspect that the part of your brain is damaged as you can’t feel any empathy, don’t worry. As long as you don’t commit to any illegal activities and don’t harm anyone (or any animals!), you should be OK living a ‘normal’ life. By normal, I mean, staying out of jail and so forth. But you may want to find another way to get serotonin and you would still have to try to align your core values to serving others to make your life meaningful, as someone who contributes to something to make a positive impact, no matter how small it is.

6. Can You Have a Job/Business That Is Aligned With Your Interests?

If you can, good, start now, no matter how small the salary is. If you can’t find a paid job or build a business that is aligned with your life’s purpose, find a volunteer job or internship that allows you to get involved in activities that are aligned with your life’s purpose. 

You may have to work two jobs, one is to pay your bills, and the other one is for your life’s purpose. But in the end, your goal should be to work or have a business that is fully aligned with your life’s purpose.

For further details about this, I recommend a book titled “Mastery” written by Robert Greene. The book shows you in detail how to discover your life task, go through the phase of mastering your life task from the apprenticeship level, find a mentor, how to activate your creativity, the emotional pitfalls (including complacency, impatience, and grandiosity) that you may be facing in your journey, to how to achieve mastery by fusing the intuitive with the rational.

7. Will Your Life’s Purpose Harm Others?

This specific question pops up in my head when I think of Hitler. I’m pretty sure Hitler believed that his life’s purpose was to unite Germany and repair its economic instability. While he was doing great in uniting Germany and repairing its economic instability, he ended up committing genocide against millions of Jews. Of course, that’s outright cruel and inhumane! Killing humans against their will is wrong. Don’t be Hitler. On a side note, I don’t think it’s wrong to kill those who want to die, provided that it’s done ‘properly’. I’m OK with you disagreeing with this, but watch a movie titled “The Sea Inside” and see if you can understand something deeper.

Conclusion

While it’s true that everybody is going to die someday, it doesn’t mean it’s useless to have the aspiration to develop and improve your talents and skills.

If you want to feel content with life, you’ll need to discover your life’s purpose.

Generally speaking, we need money to live comfortably–unless you can survive living without money like Daniel Suelo. 

But living comfortably shouldn’t be your main purpose in life. At one point, no matter how comfortable your life is, if it’s not aligned with your life’s purpose, you’ll get bored soon and will often feel empty. 

Avoid the false path, such as money, fame, and attention, when pursuing your life’s purpose.

Your life’s purpose needs to resonate with your interests and core values. They should be directed to serve something bigger than you – without harming others.