What is your purpose?
Not totally certain?
Don’t worry – you are certainly in the majority! If you know your purpose, well… many of us envy you. But perhaps you feel like you once knew what you wanted to do with your life, and now that knowledge has changed, or disappeared entirely. This is because you have been told what your purpose should be. It’s been pre-packaged and sold to you without any prior knowledge or awareness on your part.
Some people can make it through school, college, and their first job or two and remain miraculously connected to their true selves. I think we all can agree that those rare, special folks are in the minority. One of them is my brother, bless him.
But, to make a long story short…. a big part of your life is a quest to reconnect with your purpose. The purpose you always had, and innately were aware of (perhaps not consciously) when you were a child.
The truth is, deep down, all of us are here for a reason. You are no different. Even though you sit at your job, making ends meet and paying the bills, acting like a responsible adult, there is a part of you that feels like something is wrong with your life, or that something is missing.
What went wrong?
The First Stage
What did you love to do as a child? Did you say, “Watch TV?”
It is true that television has created a definite change in childhood, and probably the last fifty years. It is singlehandedly responsible for the cold-blooded murder of millions of young imaginations everywhere. 
So if sitting in front of the tube was one of your instinctive answers, just erase that and start over. There had to be something else!
Ok… so you still came back to the television. I’ll work with you. Let’s try this: what types of television shows did you like to watch as a kid?
There we go! That should help. Travel? Cooking? Cartoons? Game shows? Think about it.
Now that you have some personal childhood interests floating around in your mind, think about this: is there any kind of relationship between what you do (or want to do) professionally and what you loved to do as a kid? I hope so. The closer you are to merging these two things, the happier you will be in your adult life. Not just your adult career – I said life!
Unfortunately, our culture tends to beat these curiosities and “hobbies” out of us in preparation for surviving in the adult world. We are expected to adapt; to hide our creative, curious and playful sides as we grow older to take on a more adult frame of reference. We learn what we are taught in school. We don’t act out, because that would get us sent to the principal’s office, heaven forbid!
Somewhere along the way on the unpaved road from childhood to adulthood many of us tend to forget our childhood fancies. We forget about our natural interests and become more worried about doing something practical. Of course, the practical doesn’t usually jive with our inner child, so we end up confused and don’t know what we want to do with our lives. Don’t believe me? Ask a young adult who is in college what they are going to do when they graduate. A surprising number of young people don’t really have a plan. Sure, they may have “majors” but they often have a major problem answering that question!
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Stage 1 – Learning to Earn |
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Stage 2 – Working for Others |
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Stage 3 – Self Connection |
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Stage 4 – Building Your World |
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Stage 5 – Passionate Living |
The Problem With School
I slam the current education system a lot on this website. The truth is, it isn’t “education” that bugs me. (Nothing could be further from the truth) It’s the way our system is set up.
Our teachers are conditioned to focus on repairing kids’ weaknesses rather than building up their strengths. If little Aaron isn’t good at math, he is sent to the “special corner” where he will have to play with little numbered workbooks all afternoon. Never mind that Aaron is an incredibly gifted athlete.
Should Aaron learn math? Of course. Does he need to do it to the exclusion of focusing on athletics? No. It’s his natural gift. He will succeed in life (and be happier) as an athlete than a mathematician.
Kids are also trained from a young age that in order to learn they need to be taught. They are not encouraged at school to further explore subjects they are curious about, but instead made to learn these subjects through the use of dry textbooks and a grading system meant to make them feel either inferior or lazy if they don’t measure up. It’s no wonder curiosity dies in elementary school.
Personal Story
As a young child I was a very gifted and creative kid. I loved to draw, create, and design. But, elementary school was not for me. I was expected to follow rules that seemed prohibitive at the time, when I was much more suited to working on my own. When I was assigned a project in school and I didn’t follow the directions exactly, I was given a bad grade. Never mind that I usually exceeded any reasonable teachers’ expectations while doing the assignment. I just couldn’t draw within the lines! As a right-brained kid, this was tough for me. I would say that I’m not the exception either.
To be fair to teachers, it is difficult to teach to 32 different learning styles in one class! You do the best you can with the curriculum you are given.
But this doesn’t mean that you can’t “unlearn” some of the “rules” that you were taught as a kid. That’s where this guide will come in handy. I want to help you reconnect with your inner child and find a good path for you, like I was able to do. To be honest, it took me far too long! But today I am a freelance web-developer, writer and designer. I love my career!
All this education and rule-enforcing behavior we must endure throughout our childhood does have it’s place, of course! I had its place in my life, and it also did in yours. Without it, it would be hard for any of us to function as adults.
School does teach us one important thing. We are essentially learning an effective way to make a living as an adult. It is a hell of a lot harder to do this by watching cartoons than by working as a financial advisor, fireman, or a sales rep! This is why we can’t remain children forever. But make no mistake about it – our education (all the way through graduate school) isn’t really about learning. It’s about preparation for entry into a confusing, often chaotic world that is about as far away from our inner child as you can get. It’s a training ground.
And once your robe-clad dean-of-all-understanding hands you that graduation parchment, his handshake seems to say “Congratulations! You made it through our tough educational institution and are gonna take on the world!” But what it really means is “Congratulations, young adult. You have learned how to earn a living.”
Unfortunately, many colleges don’t even prepare you to do this anymore!
You Are in The First Stage if…
You can be in Stage 1 until the day you die. You don’t ever have to leave, as long as you stay in school and are adverse to earning a living! Stage 1 is for anybody who is dependent on loans, parents and/or still in school.
The following checklist will give you an idea of general characteristics of somebody in stage 1. If you match 3 or more of these… well… welcome to the game, sonny!
People in Stage 1 tend to…
- Be full-time students
- Live with their parents
- Depend either partially or fully on their parents/guardian’s income
- Not have to pay all or any of their own bills due to a parent/guardian or loan helping them earn a living
- Live on loan money for school
It is possible to be in a later stage but then revert back to this one, of course!
How to Enter the Second Stage
If you are in the first stage (and you don’t want to stay there), it should be your goal to earn a living for yourself. The sense of freedom you will feel when you are finally making enough money to fully support yourself is exhilarating for any young person! It is a tough climate out there, so do not feel badly if you are having trouble making this happen. Some people live at home with their parents into their thirties these days. It isn’t easy!
Going to college is almost a requirement these days for job entry. If you are going to start a business, you don’t need it. This is a choice you will have to make.
If you are in school, or are thinking about going to school there are some things you can do that will really help you to make a living for yourself when you graduate:
- For God’s sake, pick a useful major! Do NOT waste your money in any of the following majors:
- Theater (You don’t need a degree to be in film/theater)
- Art (You don’t need a degree to teach yourself art. You either have it, or you don’t.)
- Lingustics
- Latin, or any other dead language
- Don’t go to an expensive school unless you get a full ride. It’s a waste of money. The whole “school rankings” thing is a load of hooey to help the Ivy-leagues make more money and stay competitive. You can have a fine life without going to Princeton or Yale.
- While in college work yourself hard. If you are going to spend the time and money to attend college classes do well while you are there and put in the effort.
- Don’t allow your parents to pay for your entire education. It’s ok if they help you out a bit (college is exorbitantly expensive these days) but it will help you learn to budget and plan ahead if you take on at least some of the burden.
- Get internships while you are in school. You’ll thank yourself for it later.
Things to Remember
School is all about learning how to survive in the real world and earn a living. Anyone who tells you that it is primarily about learning is kidding themselves, and being misleading. Of course if you are interested in the subjects and classes you are studying, that is wonderful! Your classes can be interesting and you can learn quite a bit.
If you are trying to get out from under your parents’ wings and earn a full-time living, it is important that you set a budget for yourself. Figure out how much money you will need in order to have your own place (or live with a roommate) and factor in your other living expenses. If you work hard at it, you’ll be in stage 2 in no time!
Resources
Here are some articles that will help you if you are in this stage:
Click Here for the next article in the series: Stage 2 – Working for Others
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