If you’re trying to find your purpose or values, this is what I recommend you do.

Take a vacation and go off-grid for at least a week to somewhere remote and quiet. No technology, no distractions. Maybe bring a book to read, or a simple game to while away the time if need be.

But your aim is to be bored. Let your brain get accustomed to being restless, fidgety, uncomfortable in your own thoughts.

And what will eventually emerge out of the cacophony of your internal mind is some semblance of an inner desire. A want, a need, that feels genuine, and speaks to your own personal character.

If need be, prompt your thinking with various questions:

• What is it that you want to do, and get out of life?
• For what purpose do you think you were placed on this Earth for?
• Is there something you want to make? Build? It doesn’t have to be a physical thing, it could also be something like community.
• In what environments do you feel most yourself in?
• Is there a burning injustice in the world that you feel should be righted?
• What kind of person do you want to be?
• What aspects of life do you want to encompass?

It’s totally OK to not have answers to these questions. Those kinds of questions are the kind of questions you check back with yourself regularly.

I find it interesting that a lot of people are very content to let life drag them along and they only react and/or adapt to what is thrown at them. It feels like people who are much more successful tend to be more intentional in their life direction and from my experience, to be able to do so boils down to what kind of inner values and desires one has.

At the same time it’s extremely easy to be distracted by what life has to offer. Not necessarily pure hedonism, but let’s face it, it’s very easy for adults to get themselves stuck into a regular routine of work, eat, sleep, and forget that they’re responsible for introducing variety into their own lifes. So they turn to distractions to while away the time.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, really. Just that it seems to be at some point that one gets bored with whiling away with their life, arriving at the question of “Is this it? Is that all life has to offer?” And I’d posit that those are the kind of people who’ve had not had sufficient time to figure out what direction they want to direct their life towards.

Anyhoo, if you happened to stumble across this post (because I purposely haven’t advertised this one on social media), I’m sure you enjoyed reading through my unnecessary posturing 🙃