I’ve written a few blogs about our purpose in life but I have neglected to talk about how to align our lives to our purpose when it’s so easy to simply exist.
Mindfulness is not just about feeling our breath in our body or the chair against our bum. Mindfulness is being alert to whatever is a focal portion of the present. The present consists of an infinite number of focal points, so our free will gets to choose where we direct our attention. But take note that humans are both thinking creatures and creatures driven by purpose. The assumption is that what we do, we do to achieve a preconceived and desirable outcome. Yes, I know, this is very often not the case because impulsivity exists and people can often just go through the motions without thinking too much about it. But doing that fails to achieve your outcomes; rather it blindly achieves those of others, and we are way too awesome to succumb to that.
If you want to be more than an automaton, robotically going through life, for all actions you must ask yourself “why am I doing this?” And if the answer is anything but the outcome you want to achieve, then you need to change tack. Doing this aligns your actions to your objectives, and in the process assumedly also expresses your values and preferences. This is how to live life deliberately and in a way that achieves success on your terms.
Let’s start with a complex example. You want your kid to feel loved and your kid likes to play hockey, however your kid is not doing well in school and therefore should not play hockey and rather concentrate on his studies. Do you bring your kid to Sunday practice? Yes, if your objective is for your kid to feel loved. However, if your objective is that your want to kid to be loved, and loving someone often means doing what’s best over what’s most enjoyable, then the action changes completely and junior stays home to hit the books.
Now let’s use an easy example. You are texting with your partner and you’re in some big bloody hurry. You ask yourself why you are texting. If the answer is to resolve who is picking up the loaf of bread after work, you can be mechanical and logistical. However, if your objective (which may not be front of mind while you’re all busy) is to ensure you get your Wonder bread and to make your partner feel loved or special, you will need to sprinkle in some flirtation, care, or some other kind of relational magic that really costs you nothing but achieves so ridiculously much.
Per our examples, answering why really defines who you are. In the first example you chose to be either a buddy-parent or a parenting-parent, and in the second example you chose to be a mechanical bread beast or a loving, thoughtful partner who also loves gluten. The choice is yours to be whoever you like, and as you see, the difference in a relational context is mindblowingly vast simply from the slightest nuanced tweaks in the answer to the why question. So take the time to question “why” of all of your actions, and for each, give ’em a tweak to align to your objectives. And if your objectives suck, stop sucking. It’s too easy to be awesome and show some love and care and thoughtfulness in any exchange.
