As I have previously written about (here) knowing that I’m heading in the direction of my hopes and dreams is a critical factor in whether or not I have internal peace (peace of mind) in my life. I believe that the same is true for all people. When we don’t have hopes and dreams (a purpose) in life we are adrift. Without a purpose we live from day to day and do not have any real reason (beyond basic survival instincts) to make one choice or another. Notice how when people mean to do something a certain way it is said that we do it on purpose. When we are on purpose we do things deliberately. We think things through. What’s the best choice to achieve our goal? When we don’t care we do what’s simplest or most convenient. That sort of approach to anything leads to quite chaotic results!
Given how important a purpose is then knowing your purposes in life is very important. Notice that purposes is plural! Maybe you’ll have a single purpose over the course of your life, but I highly doubt it! I believe that it’s common (and very healthy) that people have a variety of different purposes in life. They don’t have to exist at the same time but there will likely be times in your life that you are pursuing two or more purposes. This is a problem if you either have so many purposes that you can’t achieve any of them or if you have purposes that are the polar opposite of each other. Yeah, I’ve been in both situations and you probably have been too. Your purpose in life can only be healthy if it’s something that is ultimately achievable. Achieving sobriety, for example, while attending weekly Friday happy hours is impossible!
Okay, so how do we know what our purposes in life are at any given time? After all, there’s not a giant screen floating above your house that lists the hopes and dreams that you should strive for. It certainly would be nice if that existed. But it doesn’t! The bottom line is that you have to listen…to yourself. To your voice inside you. Yes, you do have a voice inside you. You can’t hear the voice out loud but it’s there. Your inner voice speaks by way of thoughts. When thoughts about something appear over and over again that’s a clue regarding what your purpose in life should be. When I was in my late twenties thoughts about writing continually entered my head. By that time computers had made writing a much simpler process and websites made it much easier to get writing out into the world. At first I resisted the compulsion to write and share ideas but eventually I surrendered to my thoughts and started. Once I started I realized how much enjoyment and inner peace I felt knowing that I was expressing myself.
It’s important to note that there are two sides to the inner voice. Your positive inner voice will lead you to your purposes in life and thus inner peace. Your negative inner voice will offer a shortcut to your personal destruction during which you’ll likely hurt others in the process. The negative inner voice must be ignored at all costs and if possible extinguished. The negative voice thrives under stress, abuse, and abnormal mental and physical pressures. If we fail to practice cultivating inner peace the negative voice will find fertile ground within our minds and begin to undermine our life’s purposes. When we’re young the negative inner voice can be most powerful because our minds are not yet mature and we’re susceptible to our environment without the tools to counter bad situations. Consequently many of us spend a good portion of our lives digging ourselves out of holes created when our negative inner voice was dominant.
There is much more to be said about the negative inner voice but for now the most important thing is to acknowledge that it exists and must be considered. Ideas that come from your positive inner voice will improve your knowledge, health, wealth and relationships. Each idea won’t necessarily meet all those needs but that’s okay. Different life purposes will enrich different areas of your life. I often say that the proof is in the pudding and in this case the pudding is your level of inner peace. If your inner peace has been enhanced by pursuing a particular purpose then you know it’s a good one. The feeling that you get from relationships is a great example of this. Sometimes people pursue romantic relationships that throw their lives into chaos and increase their stress levels. Thus, it’s your negative inner voice that’s guiding you to stay in the relationship. Meanwhile relationships driven by your positive inner voice will make you feel grounded, secure and more at peace.
You will find during your life that some purposes will arise that you will pursue but later abandon. I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to abandon certain hopes and dreams as long as you don’t do so in favor of drifting aimlessly in life. Sometimes we go down a road on this journey and realize that it’s necessary to double back. Beware of making a habit of abandoning your purposes though! Many people lead lives of frustration. Even though they find purposes in life frustrated people get into a habit of abandoning those purposes when the going gets tough. In another post I will explore the very complicated details regarding when it’s healthy to abandon a certain purpose. For now know that anything worthwhile takes effort and sometimes even a bit of pain to achieve.
In the meantime please focus on getting in tune with your inner voice. Write down and deliberately think about the feelings you’re having. Explore what it is that drives you to do different things in your life. In short, get to know you better. Take some time every day to tune out the noise of the world and let your inner voice guide you to inner peace.
In The Midst Of A Journey 