If I were to ask you - "What is one thing that makes your life worth living?"
🥀🏵🦇🕊🦃
How would you respond?
For me, one thing that makes my life worth living, is my wife and kids.
There are a few other things that I call my Life missions. It just means a sort of quest in my life that's meaningful to me. And fulfilling these missions gives my life a sense of purpose and significance.
Life missions are the reasons that make life worth living --- and what makes me look forward to pursuing each day.
It's a concept I follow to ensure the life I'm living is full of purpose and contentment. And I'm not reliant on extrinsic motivators like wealth or status to determine my happiness.
Because the life missions I pursue are intrinsically motivating, they are things I pursue on autopilot and I don't need to rely on artificial rewards or punishments to motivate myself with.
Going back to the idea of intrinsically motivating - a meaningful life mission must fulfill an inner desire, which is basically what you really want deep down.
Whenever you take any action, it's always for a reason. You're trying to satisfy some sort of need or desire. And when the desire is strong enough, it will get you off your butt to put in the time and effort!
For me, I've categorized my life missions into 6 life aspects:
- Physical Health
- Family & Relationships Fulfillments
- Work & Career Prosperity
- Money & Wealth Satisfaction
- Spiritual Wellness
- Mental Strength
You might be wondering, how do I set a Life mission?
To find out what they are, we have to ask questions that goes beyond the surface to dig deeper into your inner self.
For example, on the surface you might have been wanting to lose weight for the longest time. But losing weight is just an outcome, and not really an inner desire.
The idea of losing weight alone doesn't give very much passion or drive in of itself. So to dig deeper, you've got to ask why.
Why do you want to lose weight? What's the desire behind it? What outcome will it give you? And how will it make you feel?
For some, it might be to feel more attractive and confident. For others, it might be to stay fit enough to keep doing the high energy activities that they love.
Those reasons, are the real motivating factors - the inner desire.
Unfortunately, many of us aren't always honest enough with ourselves. Many times, we might be doing something for the sake of another person’s inner desire and not our own.
So to create your
own Life missions, you've really got to dig deep and try to understand yourself - a process for your own self discovery. And the thing about Life missions too, is that they aren't set in stone. It'll keep evolving because life is a flow! So you learn to clarify or build on them.
But one thing that will stay constant once you're pursuing after your Life missions, is the sense of fulfillment and happiness that comes from you, and no one/ nothing else!
I've created a simple worksheet that can help you identify some Life missions, which you can download here.
And after, if you want to know the full framework that I use to carry out my Life Missions, then check it out here.Cheers,
Leon
Comments