I’ve woken today and postulated the concept of purpose; what should I be doing? What is a waste of time? Again I think it comes back to beliefs and how you perceive the information you take in as well as the application of this new knowledge. I’ve begun to understand recently that you can know something but can’t truly acquire the learning until you’ve experienced it fully. For me personally I’ve experienced my own circumstances with life’s current two powerhouse commodities – time & money. I invested a great deal of time to earn a great deal of money (comparative to the coaching service I provided) but couldn’t spend the time with my partner, friends etc to the capacity I wanted. Then through a restructure of the time for money concept, I earnt more money in a given time (giving me more time) but the frequency dropped as the quality of service diluted which in due course left me with less money. Now I’m left in a position where I have flexibility to “do what I want” but almost to a point where I’ve got so much time that I’m not doing what I want! This is something you often here described with money. A Princeton study in 2010 informed us that happiness did not increase further from an annual income of US$75000 (almost AU$100,000 as of 2017). I would tend to agree as this was the threshold I was beginning to reach and as a mentor of mine Tim Bishop once said “more money simply helps you arrive at bigger problems with style.” Again this rung true. I wasn’t concerned with bills, food and fuel costs, buying new clothes, equipment for my business, presents for festivities etc. However, now I’m operating at about half of this but my psyche hasn’t really recalibrated to an impoverished state of consciousness.
I’m not entirely sure why that is. I just “feel” like everything is happening for a reason. Yet I don’t know what my belief system could be categorised into. Should it be? We as a species have an inherent need to categorise and label things simply so we can take a position. The ego needs to be heard. The abundance of time now have due to leaving part of my old profession in rugby league strength and conditioning, in an attempt to design a mentoring and training business for player growth has left me exploring an assortment or new interests.
It’s allowed me to internalise that what I enjoy most about anything I do is the contact with other people. The fact that I can support someone else’s desire to improve themselves physically, mentally and emotionally gives me significance. Not to mention the variety that we each hold as individuals and collective groups of society. Therefore I’m truly excited about what it is I’ll be doing 5, 10, 50 years from now! As long as there are people I will always feel the need to help them in any capacity. This is where the fear of poverty stops with me I suppose. As long as I can provide value to someone I will always have “enough”. What enough is I don’t think is ever really quantifiable, nor will I actually know or probably feel like I have enough. It won’t be until I pull myself out of the present to reflect that I’ll have the ability to exercise gratitude and perspective on the situation.
So to you, the reader. When postulating your own purpose, I encourage you to exhibit delayed gratification. It’s something I know a lot of people struggle to implement in so many lenses of their life. Yes, it’s partly due to the instantaneous rapid-fire society we’ve established. However, could it be that you want something that requires the one commodity you don’t want to waste?…TIME. I’ve noticed an irony with how we as humans experience time. Firstly, picture an activity you really enjoy. Now recall whether that time went really quick or really slow. Counter that with a memory of an activity you don’t enjoy. Again, did time go slow, or fast? My guess is the activity you enjoyed went fast and vice versa. Speculation around this dilation of time has something to do with the frequency that we operate when we are enjoying something versus when we don’t enjoy something. Generally when you are enjoying something you’re learning via engagement through conversation or perhaps executing a flair of creativity, whatever that looks like to you. This would indicate to me that happiness is something you notice upon reflection, rather than feel in the moment. That the more you focus on utilising time now the more you steer away from the enjoyment you get around fulfilling a purpose which reflects time in the future. I can’t stress about trying to build a model that will channel the most growth (in a financial sense) in order to help the overall well-being of rugby league players. Otherwise I’ll gravitate towards perfection of that structure as opposed to just engaging with players because that’s what I love. Your creativity around the aspects of life you enjoy is how you restructure your path in order to stay present.
In summary, purpose is your why. That why should make you feel every emotion you thought you could ever experience and regardless, you’ll show up and deliver. At the risk of coming across a little Zen. Stop trying so hard to confine and label. Instead just do and be. That “do” and “be”, action and identity will change. If it doesn’t, you’re fucked. Now, go forth and conquer…
Life as Benny 