Wanting something is a pure motivation to live from within, this is why not wanting anything is a bad signal. Understanding what you truly want gives energy, focus, and meaning of minutes on Earth (as limited as they can be). Finding the goal of life takes time and effort, but when you find it, you know it.
There will be no ray of godly light shining on you at this moment. However, you will gain inner peace and confidence, as well as more energy to change the world around you.
Inability to answer “what is my goal in life” and understand what you truly want can get you into depression quite quickly. It can be equally hard to bear it when things are going bad around you and when everything in your life seems to be well. For me it took around a couple of months of very tiring state of body, mind and soul to get these things right and sounding good for me (and I still question them from time to time) as everything was good at that moment, but something important was missing.
Buying brand new Porsche and saving the world from cancer are equally important and great life goals if they truly mean something for a person. Let’s be a bit individualistic here and understand what you really need and want. Life without meaning is like a boat without a captain, it goes nowhere.
Money is not a goal, money is not a happiness
Sometimes, people tend to give simple answers and say that there is a magic pill that will make you rich and, as a consequence, happy. The things is that money are essential for a certain level of life satisfaction, but it is not enough for achieving true happiness. Happiness is a lot more complex thing (some really interesting research on this topic)!
Some people say that happiness is not about money. I do believe them in their particular cases – they may struggle in daily life, but they have something else to be happy about, rather than money. We are different, and the childhood, the genetics, the beliefs and cultural norms shape our inner feeling of happiness. Money is something good to have, but in fact money is just a means to achieve something we really need, not more than that.
What I can say for sure – a lot of people that I have talked to and read about name pursuit of goals as one of the happiest things they could have. The fun part is that the achievement of a goal is not so satisfactory as the actual path to this goal. I remember hard workouts with my teammates, the smell of medicine and antibacterial ointment, losing weight dressed in trash bags before the championship like a bunch of idiots. However, I do not really remember moments of glory in the end of wresting championships, as they did not really make me happy. The way to getting to the goal did.
This is why achieving goals that you care about will certainly bring more happiness.
How to understand life goals
There are many exercises that are abused by “money coaches” and “successful life consultants”. However, I will tell you about one of these exercises, as it is free and it is effective.
The exercise is simple – assuming that you are not limited in resources, what would you do? If you imagine bars, fast cars, beach houses – well, this is fun, but let’s fast-forward to the next stage. Next goes after you satisfy all your immediate desires, help all those you love and find yourself in your dream place, unbelievable rich and incredibly healthy. What are you going to do next?
Surprisingly, at this moment the core of a person starts showing up and people start discovering what really matters for them. It can be a new bridge to their home village. Or it can be some heavy investments into the improvement of daily life of people, or as-much-as-possible-independent journalism. You name it, it is your life, and only you can come up with the goals.
Take a deep breath, enable airplane mode in your phone, close the drapes and pause. Do not overthink it, throw away pictures of successful lives that you discussed with coworkers the other day or seen in social media, get to the bottom of what makes you happy. Do it soon, so you dedicate the remainder of your life to it (spoiler alert – tomorrow you will have one day less to live).
After you have an idea what is important and what you want to pursue – time to act and to achieve your goals.