How To Figure Out What You Really Want in Life
Last week I have spent few days on a trip to Geneva, which turned out to be one of the most interesting trips I’ve ever taken. It started with a spontaneous decision to buy a flight that was leaving in a couple of hours and see what happens once I arrive.
Now, I consider myself an extrovert but there is a big introverted part in me as well. I enjoy both parts and the fact that I still don’t know when either of them is going to come up and rule the moment. In Geneva it was the extrovert that ruled my days. The extrovert which is not shy to approach random people and asking them random questions. The extrovert that searches for the meaning for the introvert inside and wants to create an epic life. But wait.. don’t we all?
With the social media generation, it’s hard to feel like we can keep up with all that’s thrown at us. Perfect pictures, perfect happiness, perfect lives. For real?! FOMO is real for most of us, we’ve got more anxiety about daily life than ever before, despite the fact that the standard of life has probably never been higher. Math isn’t my strong side, but hey, something does not add up here. Hence my search for answers. To those random questions. Which technically weren’t so random after all, but it was the variety of answers made me feel like they were.
And by the way, don’t think that I am immune to all that anxiety. Hell no. The fact that I am looking at how to create an epic life, does not mean that it is always all that epic. Or all that spontaneous, like the Geneva trip. Not even close. It’s just like yours, constantly surfing the waves of ups and downs.
All right, getting back to the point. You are probably wondering what were those questions and what answers did I get. Well, let me try to put them all in a clear order:
- What is the most important in life?
- Love
- Values
- Family
- The choices you make
- Food (legit answer)
2. What are the values you live by?
- I don’t know
- I have values, but I am not sure I live by them
- Doing everything with love
3. If you were to die tomorrow, what would you do differently today?
- I’d stop worrying
- I would spend the day with the people I love
- I would do what I feared most
4. What is the most important lesson you have learned in life so far?
- You can’t take words back
- The choices you make determine your future
- Other people really don’t care about you as much as you think
- The people you love are truly more important than anything else in life
Okay. A bunch of life questions and a bunch of random answers. But are those answers really random? Of course, there have been some elaborations on the answers, which I haven’t mentioned. For me, there is clear pattern that stands out though. The words that were often repeated were ones like — love, choices, values, fears.
Four words. Aren’t they the ones that pretty much rule our lives?
Let’s break it down a little. Values determine choices. The choices we make determine the actions we take and we act out of fear or out of love. I know, it’s very simplified. There are many other factors that come together on top of it all, but all those other factors are external, while these four are all internal (influenced by the outside world, but at the end of the day, entirely up to us).
Now, how do figure it all out? That depends on how well we know ourselves. For most of us it’s probably going to be a trip backwards. Take a look at your actions and they will show you your values, or at least the ones you live your life by. It might be a hard blow to some, it certainly was for me when I took a look at some of the actions I took in my life. Such retrospection is needed when there are times in your life that you find yourself in a place where something does not feel quite right. One one hand, everything is fine, but on the other, something is just not there, something is missing. Well, take a look at how you got here. It only takes a moment and you might need to muster up quite some courage for that, but it will give you the answers. That’s only one side of the coin. The other one is looking at all of that from the start, which I’d strongly encourage all of us to do, simply so that we don’t have to find ourselves in the situations where we ask ourselves — “but how did I get here?”.
Looking at it from the start isn’t much easier though. Because you’ve got all the shoulds and needs and musts and who knows whether they are yours, or was it your parents or friends or society that put them in your head? No fun answer — they certainly did. All those influences are most definitely in you. I know, it’s not the most exciting thing to read, but it’s the truth.
So how do we figure THIS out? I can really only think of one way. There are moments in life when you feel like you fit in and there are moments when you feel like you belong. The key is in figuring out when you feel what, thinking about your values, about your goals, dreams and aspirations. Does it feel like fitting in? Or does it feel like belonging?
See, most of us go for the fitting in either way. Because it’s easier. It’s easier to feel like you are liked and appreciated by most (if not all) and you can shift your persona like a boat balancing the waves on rough waters. To put it simply — it’s easy to be not authentic. Why? Shit, tough question. And I can tell you that despite the fact that authenticity is definitely one of my top values, I don’t always live by it either. For authenticity you need courage and vulnerability (what up Brene Brown! You don’t know Brene? Seriously? Here.). And you know who are the people that are courageous and vulnerable? The super confident ones. Yeah. Having guts to be yourself, to simply be just the way you are, it’s truly remarkable in our world nowadays.
That’s belonging. When you belong, you feel like… you simply belong. You feel accepted. You feel home. You feel like — yes, this is who I am/this is who I want to be.
You’ve got to remember that even when you cultivate authenticity, it doesn’t mean you will always feel like you belong. Not even close. What’s going to happen then is that you will start recognising where you are just trying to fit in and you will steer clear of those people/environments/places or moments in your life and instead you will spend more time where you belong. And if you ask me, this is how you become. Become who? That’s entirely up to you.
All right, lesson 1 — belonging. And the rest? Well, it kinda goes downhill from here. Once you know where you belong, it’s easy to make the list of your values. When you make the list of your values, it’s easy to know which choices you have to make. When you know which direction you want to go, you go. And if occasionally you find yourself where you feel like you don’t belong, retrace your steps and figure out where did you fall out of line and most importantly don’t worry if you do, because we all do it, all the time and it’s good — because it carves our path and shows us what’s really important and what’s not.
Now coming back to acting either out of love or out of fear — it’s still the case of belonging vs. fitting in. I’m sure you know where this is going already. When you feel like you belong, you act out of love. When you are fitting in, you act out of fear. Now we have pretty much completed the circle. It’s all there, literally, all of it.
You might be thinking — is that it? Is this article really going to end here? Well yes, it will. Because as simple as it is, at the same time it’s a complex subject and it means something different for all of us. And if you have any questions or comments — just hit me up. The extrovert is keen on diving deeper.
