We hear and read again and again about the importance of the “meaning of life” and its impact on personal happiness.
The meaning of life. Find out what you really want.
It can’t be that difficult, it’s not a quantum computer 🙂
People often read tons of books, attend courses, think about it for days, weeks, years without actually changing anything afterwards. This blog claims to be particularly honest and open, even if the truth is often uncomfortable and popular.
Basically, the answer to the question “what you really want” is usually very simple.
What you really want can be found out relatively quickly, the implementation is usually the challenge. But let’s take one step at a time. Basically, this article is not an article, but a worksheet with suggestions and assistance to help you in your self-discovery. For the time being, don’t worry about how your ideas can be realized. The only important thing at the beginning is to know and define them.
C H R E I B E N !!! PLEASE !!!
With the following small exercises you can approach your passions in a playful way. Take a piece of paper and just write down what comes to mind as answers to the questions. Do it for yourself!
Without further babble, let’s dive in:
1) Small mental exercise to loosen up
You are on holiday in French Polynesia and you lose your passport, money and credit cards. Now if we borrow money and/or leave out “yelling for help”, how and with what could you spontaneously make money?
What skills and talents could you use to enthuse people and convince them to pay for your food, your room and your return trip? Which activity would you also enjoy?
Cooking, driving a taxi, waiting tables, organizing, managing…
…something with flowers, something with animals, something with sports, something with teaching, some music, the list is almost endless… write down whatever comes to mind coming!
Bora Bora
Caution, this exercise is very dangerous, because maybe you will soon be on a plane to French Polynesia and throw your passport, wallet and smartphone in the trash can on arrival :- )
If you don’t like islands, beaches and sea, the exercise also works in the mountains, or in New York City (If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere), anywhere in Australia or just at your home!
2) The poll
Our genes, our upbringing and our experiences shape our self-image. This embossing does not necessarily have to have anything to do with reality. Often we don’t see ourselves as we really are or as we could be because of beliefs transmitted by parents, teachers and educators in us like ingrained mantra.
Self-assessment is often difficult, and it is difficult for us to recognize our own strengths. We also live in a time when criticism, negativity and evil sell much better than “Sound of Music Idylle”.
So how and from whom should we know that we can do something special! A survey can help.
Ask friends and acquaintances what strengths they see in you, what qualities they value in you. Don’t ask your best friends, your parents or siblings, they are often not objective, don’t want to hurt you or have their own ideaslungs as you should be. Write down the answers, value-neutral, without comments, without discussion.
3) I am wealthy
How would you spend your life if you didn’t have to work for money? I mean now, after the phase of “hanging out on the beach, with a beer in your hand and a joint in the corner of your mouth” and after the consumer dreams of “a house by the lake, a sports car and a trip around the world”
How would you shape your life, what would you do? Think this through really well:
The Bored and Rich
You get up in the morning or later when you’ve just slept in, you’ve shopped and there’s enough to eat, all the bills have been paid, there’s still a lot of money in the account, no matter what you do, it doesn’t get any less, clothes are ready, everything happens to have been washed, ironed and tidied up, the lawn mowed, no child screaming, the car/bicycle/scooter/Vespa repaired, refueled, filters, batteries, replacement LED lamps ordered from Amazon, watered all the flowers, drank the 2nd coffee, …… what do I do now???
Don’t forget to write down whatever comes to your mind!
4) NEVER EVER
This exercise shouldn’t be underestimated and… it’s a lot of fun.
Write down on a NEW piece of paper what you don’t want to do. Then underline the points that you absolutely do not want to make. Also write down the people who should NOT play a role in your activities. Let your imagination run wild, be completely honest with yourself. You never have to show this sheet, but it is important that you write these points down once and then look at them and read them over and over again. Capitalize “NEVER” as the heading and think about WHY you definitely don’t want to do these things. Write it down, just below “NEVER“.
5) DO IT
Now looking at your slips of paper, you should have records of your French Polynesia exercise, the “Poll Results” and the “Wealth” points in front of you. If there are items on your “Never Ever” list, cross them out. It could be that friends see qualities in you that you never want to use 🙂
Put the remaining points in order, in a kind of “ranking”, at the top “preferred” and so on.
This is my personal ranking of my favorite activities
Take the first item on the list and try this out. Use your free time, your vacation or a weekend and simply test this activity or this job.
Invite someone who already does this job to lunch and let them tell you. Ask companies if you can try it out for a day. Craft businesses or smaller family businesses are happy about any support, offer your help free of charge and you get a good insight into the processes and whether it is really your dream job. The more often and the more you try, the better you will find out what you really like.
Everyone has desires. Every day and a lot. People want to be happy, beautiful, rich and famous. People want great relationships, success, careers, recognition. All these wishes remain wishes forever if nothing else happens.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote:
“A goal without a plan is just a wish”
…. and will always remain just a wish.
Self-discovery has a lot to do with defining these desires. Without a definition, we don’t know what to do. Only when the wishes have been defined can we think about what we have to do to achieve them.
Only then can we look for a way, because the wish has become a goal. When the path becomes the goal, we are already very close to perfection.
Greetings from sunny Italy
Bergwolf