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Figuring out what you are meant to do

12/13/2013

7 Comments

 
Deep down inside, everyone has a unique set of values that dictate what they do on a daily basis.  Your values subconciously drive your actions, and your actions help fullfill your life's purpose.  If it wasn't for your concious decisions, you would already spend all of your time fullfilling your life's purpose. 

Unfortunately, most people make their concious decisions around what they think they "should" do.  In other words, they spend their time and concious efforts according to other people's values.  The most common reason most of us make our decisions around what we "should" do is WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE INTERNALLY VALUE.  In this post, I'm going to help you fix that.

Not living according to your own values results in unhappiness, depression, frustration, and eventualy a mid life crises.  Simply living in alignment with your values leads to happiness, fullfillment, and a rewarding vocational carear (most likely financialy lucrative). 

After you become conciously aware of your values, the sky is the limit.  Let's pick up where we left off in last week's post with these three questions:

1.  What three things do you spend the majority of your time on during an average week day?

2.  What three things do you currently spend the majority of your time doing during a typical weekend?

3.  When you are alone in your car driving (probably to or from work), what three things do you most often think about?


If you didn't comment last week with your top three answers to these questions, please comment this week.  If you take the time to sincerely answer these questions, I'll take the time to read through and reach out to you via email in a sincere attempt to help you identify your core values.

The answers to these questions help to reveal what your subconcious self steers you toward when your concious decisions are not interferring.  You already naturaly do what you love to do.   Your task is to simply identify what it is. 

If you think it is your life's purpose to become a life coach, but you never find yourself serving others as a coach, there is a good chance coaching IS NOT your life's purpose.  If you think your life's purpose is to start your own business and earn passive income, but you havn't made substantial steps towards starting a business or earning passive income, there is a good chance owning a business and earning passive income is not your life's purpose.  If you think your life's purpose is to travel around the world, but you've never traveled, there is a good chance traveling around the world is not your life's purpose.

If the examples above are all true for you, it DOESN'T mean coaching, starting a buiness, and traveling will not play an important role in your future.  It just means these activities are not your core purpose.  They may still play a role in helping you fullfill your values, but they will be vehicles to help you get where you are going, not the destination itself.

Here are my answers to the above three questions:

1.  What three things do you spend the majority of your time on during an average week day?
Working on the side business I am trying to start at the time.
Organizing my construction site (my day job is a superintendent).
Listening to audio books and podcasts about starting new businesses (while driving to and from work).
2.  What three things do you currently spend the majority of your time doing during a typical weekend?
Spend time with my wife and kids doing whatever they want to do.
Manage my rental properties by keeping up on the accounting, collecting rent, or managing maintenance items.
Read a book related to self development.
3.  When you are alone in your car driving (probably to or from work), what three things do you most often think about?
Different possibilities for profitable side businesses.
Ideas to help out friends and family with their businesses.
I play out different economic senarious in my head and analyze how they will effect different investments and business types.

If you read through my answers you will see a common thread.  My subconcious efforts focus on finding a way to quit my current day job and replace it with a side business.  Post your answers below and I'll help you identify what your subconcious efforts focus on.

After we understand what our subconcious efforts focus on, we can start to disect why, which will lead us to our highest core value.  I'll disect my own highest value and show you how to disect yours in next week's post.
7 Comments
Debashish link
12/12/2013 11:54:32 pm

1. Blogging; Writing for clients; Learning SEO, copy writing etc.
2. Same as above
3. I don't think about anything while driving. Firstly, because I like to focus on only one thing at a time. Secondly, letting your thoughts wander while driving in India is like closing your eyes while running.

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Eric Young link
12/14/2013 12:13:50 am

Thanks for your responses Debashish! I emailed you some new questions, because in your case the three questions I selected in the post don't get to the core of what we're trying to figure out.

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Leaf
12/14/2013 12:59:53 am

Debashish, thanks for another perspective. Where I live in America driving is incredibly passive. My situational awareness is keeping track of 3 cars that are even remotely close and driving on a very smooth and straight road. In America driving can be so boring 100,000 crashes a year occur from drowsy driving.

What am I meant to do? I like taking an active approach to this question. People will spend a good portion of their lives doing some sort of work to make a living. If you are just going through the motions you could find you spent your work career just doing what others have said. Real world example, do you actually remember placing your keys down after the last time you drove? How about the 10 individual steps to get to this computer screen? We have a tendency toward autopilot because our human perception can only take in so much at any given second. A the very minimum a person should check out of autopilot and into critical thinking about their profession once every 6 months. So here is my critical thinking about my job.

My job is very good. In America if you make $83,000 per year you are in the top 10% of people. My goal of working is to make income so I am happy to be in the top 10%. My boss says, you manage the lab and then gets out of my way. So job freedom is a check. My division budget is basically unlimited so no constraints there. The people that work for me are great at their jobs. Only area for improvement here would be positive attitudes. I do correct attitudes when and where I can. The job has normal stresses of deadlines and quality control. If I am listing negatives my number 1 complaint would be I am maybe a little bored by the job at this point.

So what about moving on? I went out and earned an MBA so I could go upper management. Problem is upper management is 50 so it would be 15 more years. Also I enjoy the science and technical aspect of the lab. Upper management jobs seems to be 90% political. I am probably to straight forward with people to excel at the political aspect. I could get a PHD in something to increase earning potential but I could not support my family for 4 years while earning the PHD. I could start my own business. Issues with starting my own business 1. finding the intersection of profitable and passion 2. taking on risk when I essentially have 0 risk currently 3. Starting a business in the regulatory climate of America

Summing thoughts - I would like to have more money. Would I ever have enough money? Does risk and stress outweigh reward of more money?

Pie in the sky life dream - Owning a acreage capable of complete off grid operation. Also capable of sustaining food production. estimated cost 1.5-2 million dollars.
Downsides of this plan - running a self sustaining acreage is not profitable and also happens to be a full time job. I do enjoy the closeness of family and friends in suburban living.

Looking forward to any responses. Please forgive me for the format of my post. I kinda just went stream of thought.

Leaf

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Eric Young
12/15/2013 09:24:39 am

Leaf - Although your current situation is comfortable, wouldn't it be even better if you could spend your working hours doing something you love and is deeply meaningful to you? Since we only get to live ounce, I want both: Quality time with my family and a fun and meaning career doing what I love. Isn't it worth trying to figure out?

Leaf
12/15/2013 03:00:20 pm

It think it a great task to figure out what is deeply meaningful to me/you and make it a career. I think you are ahead of 98% of people in that worthy en-devour. Certainly half the people I work with would rather complain than make actual positive forward moves. They possibly lack motivation, like to complain, or have fear? For myself I work in a fairly sophisticated lab controlling multiple products in 4 different locations. So for me I would say that has some meaning. Also I do find the science and technology fairly meaningful. I still thing I should check in with myself every so often to evaluate where my career should go. It's possible making profit for other people would not be the best option for a intelligent self improving individual. Not everyone in the world is intelligent and self improving. Luckily, I would say 100% of people reading this are.

Touching on meaningful work. This is different for everybody but here are some jobs needing to be done that would carry no meaning for me personally- garbage person, human waste treatment, accountant, perfume sales. That being said, I do appreciate my trash going away and my toilet flushing.

Leaf
12/15/2013 03:00:53 pm

It think it a great task to figure out what is deeply meaningful to me/you and make it a career. I think you are ahead of 98% of people in that worthy en-devour. Certainly half the people I work with would rather complain than make actual positive forward moves. They possibly lack motivation, like to complain, or have fear? For myself I work in a fairly sophisticated lab controlling multiple products in 4 different locations. So for me I would say that has some meaning. Also I do find the science and technology fairly meaningful. I still thing I should check in with myself every so often to evaluate where my career should go. It's possible making profit for other people would not be the best option for a intelligent self improving individual. Not everyone in the world is intelligent and self improving. Luckily, I would say 100% of people reading this are.

Touching on meaningful work. This is different for everybody but here are some jobs needing to be done that would carry no meaning for me personally- garbage person, human waste treatment, accountant, perfume sales. That being said, I do appreciate my trash going away and my toilet flushing.

Eric Young
12/16/2013 10:15:13 pm

Leaf - Since learning what is meaningful to you is a process, there will always be people who can pick up trash and make sure your toilet flushes while they are on their journey to finding what is meaningful to them. You don't take a job as a trash man unless there is some aspect of the job that you are drawn towards to begin with.

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    My name is Eric Young.  I started this blog to share my ideas around helping people create success online businesses.

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