Make Your Dreams Come True

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dreamed of.” – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

I recently watched the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire show with Jimmy Kimmel, and he asked his guest what she would do if she won the million dollars. She wanted to start a charitable organization, write a movie script, along with some other goals. At the end of her list, Jimmy Kimmel pointed out that she could do all of those things without the million dollars.

The contestant seems to be a dreamer. Are you one too?

There are many dreamers out there, but unfortunately they often get caught up in their fantastical dreams, rather than living in the practical reality. To make our dreams happen, we must fuse both together - dream fantastically, yet work within the constraints of the real world.

There are many reasons why we fail to make our dreams happen. Sometimes, we just make excuses. We feel like we couldn’t possibly do something because we don’t have the time or money. Yet if you really think about it, the time is there for most of us. You can find ways to free up time, perhaps using less of it on entertainment. Or you can organize yourself better to avoid wasting time. It may even be worth buying certain tools or services to save some time. And you may be able to get around the money issue. Perhaps you can teach someone a skill that you know, and they can teach you a skill that they know. This way, you can both shoot for your dreams without needing to spend money.

Interestingly, this is a time in history where there may be many valid excuses – many of us are legitimately suffering health or financial issues or some increased worry about these things. Some of us may have suffered the loss of a loved one. Any of these things will tend to put our dreams on hold. But that doesn’t mean we should forget them entirely.

For you: you, who have taken the time to read this article about making your dreams come true, I would urge you to question whether you have just been making excuses. This is not the time to be too hard on ourselves, of course. If you are worried about just getting by on a day-to-day basis, by all means, focus on meeting your needs. But if your needs are all taken care of and you are doing fine, take a moment to reflect on your dreams.

Do you know what your dreams are? Or have you pushed them aside and neglected them, perhaps even forgotten them? Think deeply, until you rediscover that lost dream.

When you think of your dream, consider: Is there a way to make your dream work online? (to avoid close contact in the age of Covid) Or with no money? You may be surprised. Spend a day searching online for ideas as to how to make your dream come true with no special technology, no professional contacts, and no money. Again, you may be surprised. Before you search too deeply, please be cautious about people online who want to sell you the road map to making your dream come true - especially if the cost is excessive. I would encourage you to seek out free resources and start there. Books can also be beneficial and not too expensive.

Another reason we don’t follow our dreams is that we are worried about failure or what others will think. These are intertwined. If you are worried about what other people think, you probably worry about what they will say if you fail. To me, the only true failure is not even attempting to do something that you truly wanted to do. The inaction, the giving up before you tried, is the failure. Not being able to get views, or attention, or sales, is not a failure. In fact, this is the default. It is what we should expect to happen.

We are all hyper-focused on ourselves and our own lives. If I start going door to door and telling people about my upcoming book, I expect nobody to care. They don’t know me. They don’t owe me anything. I am just a random guy to them. If someone actually cares, now that is a special moment. That is out of the norm. (For your information, I have never gone door to door to tell people about my books.)

What is the next big reason that we don’t follow our dreams? We build up the dream so much in our minds that we know the reality will probably never live up to this. When you have your dream in mind, use your excitement and energy to make something or build something, not to fantasize. If you overdo the dream and make it into a fantasy, then you’ve basically killed it. This could mean that you will never be satisfied in actually pursuing the dream. In fact, you are likely to set it aside another year, then another decade, and so on. You may come to see that your fantasy is so grandiose that working on actualizing it will either overwhelm you or let you down, as it fails to live up to your expectation.

Personally, my rule is that I don’t really talk about my dreams. I prefer to take action on them and see how it goes. Sometimes your dreams evolve, change, or they even die out, and new ones arise to take their place. That is fine. I don’t need the pressure of having someone ask me how my dream is going. I just do it.

I’m sure I have had many dreams that never came true, but that was okay. My life needs or wishes changed as I grew. Dreams that you wanted to come true at some point probably failed to do so, and maybe you were thankful for that. Maybe we don’t need to achieve everything we thought that we needed or wanted.

However, many of my dreams have come true. Perhaps I am doing something right.

For example:

I dreamed of reading 40-50 books per year. I have been doing this for about a decade. Before that dream, I struggled to read a few books per year.

I dreamed of one day making a living selling books. I have been for years, with most years being better than the last. When I started, I was lucky to make just a few sales per day.

My wife and I dreamed of one day living in Europe and visiting many countries there. We lived in France for a few years and traveled to Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, and other countries.

I think that when you have a dream you really care about, you can find a way to make it happen. We just need to search deeper. It may not come easily, but there should be a way to make some progress.

A great lesson I’ve learned many times is that we should not wait to be discovered. The people who are the best at what they do just do it. You can learn to make music and then make it. You don’t need someone else to tell you that you are good enough. The same with writing fiction, or dancing, or countless other domains and skills. If it helps, forget the gatekeepers. Create something, then share it online for the masses to decide whether they like it or not.

If your dream is too big, perhaps narrow it down a bit to make it more achievable. Perhaps you want to travel to Europe, but the realities of life make this quite unlikely. That is understandable. But do you even know your own country? Or your own state? Have you truly explored it? Perhaps there is a lot to see and learn there as well.

What is your dream?

As I’ve said, I have had many dreams. Some of my dreams now are to write a perennial seller, to buy my dream home, and to write a book of poetry that I am proud of. I suspect if you get back to me in 10 years, some of these dreams will have come true. Or the dreams may change, and that’s fine too. But I find that my dreams tend to come true simply because I truly care about them, and I work on them now, rather than waiting for some perfect situation or time.

As an example, I write poetry, yet I have never studied poetry. I can’t guarantee that my poetry is good, but this is a meaningful project for me. I write it, and then I spend time improving it and conveying the story or message that I find important. Of course, this is something I do for fun in my spare time. Some dreams will be for fun, others may involve your career, and others may involve your family or your health.

If your dreams haven’t come true yet, pick one today, and dedicate yourself to making it happen. Stop making excuses, stop worrying about what others will think, and get busy. Either that, or acknowledge that it wasn’t your true dream, to begin with, and look for another one.

The quote at the top of today’s post is simple, yet it has been quite impactful in my life. I will restate it here:

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dreamed of.” – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Where is Your Life’s Blood?

One of the most important things is to have something in your life that energizes you. To accomplish this, I actually try to forget any rational and practical life plans I’ve made for myself.

I’m not talking about a desire to move to a nicer place, finish that degree, or even find a special someone to spend your life with. I’m not talking about accumulating money or things.

I speak of something that runs deeper in us, in our life’s blood.

Today, I am curious how you may answer some of these questions:

• What is the last time you felt alive, truly alive? What were you doing?

• What gets you excited when you can pursue it? Having it is not the most important thing – simply being able to pursue it is wonderful on its own.

• What would truly disappoint you and make you feel like a part of you had died if it were taken away from you? (e.g., this may be a person, place, thing, action, passion, or idea)

• What gives you the feeling of flow? A feeling of timelessness, complete focus, great challenge, and yet finding joy in that challenge, of getting lost in the moment. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, one of my favorite books.)

• When are you so happy that you stop caring about all the problems you face?

• What is the source of this life’s blood of yours? Is it your will to love? To be loved? To help? To challenge yourself to your limits in a way that is still enjoyable? To feel a thrill? To be a hero?

• Is there something you do that carries great risks? Yet despite the risk, it’s well worth doing to you?

• Is there something you could do all day, and you would be happy to do it? Even perhaps without pay or acknowledgment?

• Is there someone or a group where you feel like they are your true family? They awaken a deeper part of you that you didn’t even know was in there?

As I write these questions, I am aware that some of these could point toward clearly negative behaviors such as drug abuse – of course, I’m not encouraging anything of that nature. I am hoping to get you to find something positive that energizes you.

Unfortunately, sometimes as the days pass us, we can slip into a sort of comatose version of ourselves, just going through the motions, just putting in the work to get us from point A to point B, responding as we think we’re supposed to respond, just working toward that next promotion so that we can work toward the one that comes after it. If this sounds familiar, you may be stuck in the busy, entertained, exhausted cycle. Perhaps we all slip up in that way sometimes, but this is not the way to live our lives.

If you find that happening to you, I hope you can ask yourself where your life’s blood is. What truly excites and stimulates you and is worth doing on its own? Bring more of that into your life.

Perhaps you haven’t found it yet - that is fine, then you must work on finding it.

I see some people sometimes, and I can’t help but ask: Where has their life’s blood gone? I can’t judge too much. It has happened to me in the past. Perhaps it happens to all of us at times. The important thing is not to get stuck there.

Dealing with Barriers on the Path to Living Your Purpose

Often people begin on the path to their purpose, and they come across a barrier that holds them back from accomplishing what they want to. Sometimes this barrier presents a huge weight on their shoulders, constantly reminding them that they cannot make much of a difference after all.

This tends to crush our spirits. Sometimes we have studied many, many years and obtained multiple degrees or worked our way up the chain of command to get to the position we had dreamed of finally.

Then, nothing goes the way it is supposed to. Plans do not work as intended. The resources aren’t there. Budget cuts. Downsizing. The right talent is lacking.

We tend to have this ideal vision of our lives, and reality rarely lives up to what we had imagined.

Are there any barriers in your life holding you back from meeting your objectives and living out your purpose?

Barriers can come in many forms. They may be:

• Colleagues that are too competitive and which do not help each other, rather than working as a team

• The lack of funds, without a clear path to acquiring them

• Personal problems such as health issues (in yourself or a loved one)

• Too much bureaucracy or paperwork and procedures that must be followed (or not enough of them when they should be in place)

• Too many demands on your time and energy, leaving you drained

• A lack of clarity in what path to pursue to meet your objectives

• A realization that no matter how hard you work, you cannot truly meet your objectives, which becomes discouraging

• A boss with a different vision, temperament, or perspective than you and that wants to impose his way on you

• A complete lack of motivation, probably due to some other barriers you are facing

A simple way to know if you have found your purpose is to ask yourself:

Is this worth doing even if I fail? Is this worth doing, even if it presents me with immense challenges? Is it worth doing even if I don’t earn quite as much as I would like?

Many of us are worried about failure. I say, “So what?” Failure is not the worst thing. Failure will present you with the opportunity to learn and grow and decide whether what you are doing was truly worth it to you, to begin with.

Ask yourself this about your chosen path:

Ultimately, is it worth doing even if I realize that no matter how hard I work, I will never accomplish my goals in the way I want to?

Some people may come to realize that they cannot meet their goals. If your goal is to save lives, you may come to understand that there is no way for you to help everyone. Some patients will die, and there will not be anything you can do about it. Then you have to ask yourself if it is worth doing even though you can never meet your goals perfectly. More importantly, is it worth doing your best and trying to help everyone that you can, even when you know that sometimes it will not work out in the end?

Also, ask yourself:

Is this a field where I can look forward to the great challenges I will face, rather than expecting it always to be easy?

Hopefully, you will get to a point where you look forward to the challenges you will face. You will want to be challenged because, with those challenges, you will only improve your skills and get better at successfully fulfilling your purpose.

Understand that even if you have found your purpose, this does not make life easy, counter to what many may think. Even after finding purpose, people still struggle to be motivated in the face of obstacles. They still struggle with the need to earn a certain amount of income. They still struggle with being uncertain as to whether they are even on the right path.

The reality is that barriers will always be there. It doesn’t matter whether you work for yourself or someone else, whether you have the support of your colleagues or not, whether you are motivated or not. It doesn’t matter whether you are working on your true purpose or just a job where you can get paid.

There will always be obstacles on your path. The question is: Are they worth dealing with? Do you believe strongly enough in what you are doing for all of this to be worth it?

I will urge you to find a field to work in and find a purpose for yourself where you are excited to work on it despite the barriers that will inevitably come up. Find something so worthwhile to you that any barrier is just a temporary setback.

No barrier should truly hold you back from working on your purpose-driven goals.

When you are working on your purpose, don’t allow the barriers to take your sight off your true objectives. If you have clients – return your focus to helping them meet their goals. If you are doing research, return your focus to doing good science. If you are a student, return your focus to learning what truly matters to you.

You may need to return to the fundamentals to remind yourself what you are after.

Perhaps one day, you get yelled at by your boss in front of your colleagues, and it’s not even for a good reason. This is obviously a difficult situation to deal with, but are you making progress on goals that are deeply important to you? Ultimately, this is what matters. Is your boss yelling just a minor obstacle on the path to living your purpose?

Consider this:

Are you working on your purpose now? Have you already found it?

Are you happy to work on it, no matter the obstacle?

Or are you ready to call it quits? Your heart isn’t in this, and perhaps it never was?

I will not urge you to keep going or to quit. Only you can make these choices for yourself.

But if you have found your purpose – then likely this will be worth hanging onto and pursuing in the face of all the obstacles. If you truly do not like your circumstances, there may be other options - you may be able to fulfill your purpose working for someone else or even working for yourself.

Or, if you are facing too many barriers without truly having your heart in what you are doing, then perhaps this is no longer worth it. If you feel drained and deadened, day by day without any true sense of fulfillment, it may be time to move on and seek your purpose elsewhere.

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This is Part 3 of 3 posts on finding purpose. Here are the other two posts:

My Purpose Journey - A Winding Road

STOP Resisting Your Purpose and START Living It

STOP Resisting Your Purpose, and START Living It

A problem many of us have is that we are our own greatest obstacle. We have denied our own purpose rather than pursued it.

Most of us have a good sense of what we are supposed to be doing with our lives, but we don’t know that we know. Years of denying our true self, our true feelings, and our own hearts have gotten us to the point where we don’t know what we were meant to do.

Here are some tips to stop resisting yourself so that you can actually make progress on living out your purpose.

STOP listening to what everyone says you should do, and START doing what you know you are meant to do

Most of us miss out on our purpose because we listen too much to what other people think we should be doing. Your family may want you to earn more money or to have a career with a good reputation, but ultimately you are the one living your life. If you do not like your job or life, no one else will have to deal with it every day except for you.

Something to keep in mind is that many industries are unpredictable. An industry that earns very well today may go bankrupt tomorrow. This can happen whether we are fulfilling our purpose or not, of course. However, if I’m going to go bankrupt, personally, I would rather have it happen while I am pursuing my purpose rather than pursuing a career that I had no interest in.

It’s not a pretty sight to study and work hard only to hate your life and job, just to earn a decent paycheck, and then have your whole industry go bankrupt overnight.

While working on my purpose, I know that I will be fiercely determined to keep doing my work. That’s because it isn’t just work, and it isn’t just a way to earn a paycheck. When you work on your purpose, you will be more likely to be among the best at what you do, and even if parts of your industry go bankrupt, you will find the motivation and the reason to keep going, and perhaps you will even thrive under adversity.

STOP working for a paycheck, and START working for a greater purpose

When your paycheck is the best thing about your life’s path or your job, then perhaps you should reconsider your direction. Of course, it’s nice to make money, but I believe we should be working for a deeper reason. Generally, you should want to improve yourself, people around you, or the world in some way through your work.

In my opinion, it’s more rewarding to earn money as a byproduct of living out your life’s purpose, rather than having the money be the central thing that you are focused on.

When you know your purpose, you can focus fully on doing your best at this, and the money will follow. I believe people have a good sense for when someone is doing something that they truly care about and want to help with versus when someone is motivated primarily to earn income.

I am happy to pay people for their work when they are highly motivated and working on their purpose. Rather, when they view me as dollar signs, I am not always happy to pay them, and I may not return for their service again. For me, it is easy to notice when someone is unhappy at their work versus when someone is deeply motivated by a higher purpose. You will notice this too if you pay attention.

But the tricky part is - Can you notice this in yourself? Are you truthful with yourself when you are unhappy with your life’s direction?

Ask yourself: Is your purpose shining through in your life, or are you dragging your feet every day?

By the way, whether you like your job or not, I think you should aim to do your best. Many people don’t want to be where they are in life – this doesn’t give us the right to treat others poorly or do our work half-heartedly.

STOP giving up on yourself, and START believing in yourself

Many of us can end up in jobs we don’t like, don’t believe in, and possibly where we don’t even get paid well. When you give up or don’t believe in yourself, it’s easy to take lower-level jobs that offer no path to a better future.

Unfortunately, it’s also easy to get stuck there for life.

If you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t see the point of meeting your purpose because you will assume that you would fail. Or perhaps you don’t want to fail in front of other people – you are worried about what they will say or think.

When you are feeling stuck and ready to give up on yourself, consider what you have to lose by trying to fulfill your true purpose? Nothing at all. Why not give it a shot?

Ultimately, we must believe in ourselves so that we can fulfill our true purpose. The next best thing is to find someone who believes in you. In time, their belief in you will help you to believe in your own abilities.

Note that a belief in yourself doesn’t mean that you think you are the best. It doesn’t even mean that you are necessarily prepared to meet your purpose. It just means that you know you can learn what you need to, and build the experience you need, to go on the path toward meeting your purpose.

STOP talking about what you will do, and START doing it

Many people get stuck in talking about what they want to do, what their purpose or their dream is, and they never actually do it. I think it’s best that when you know your purpose or your dream, you shouldn’t even talk about it at all. The more you talk, the more you will feel like you are making some progress because you discuss your ideas. However, nothing is actually getting done.

Personally, I spend very little time discussing my ideas. I prefer to use that energy on outlining, organizing, planning, and implementing those ideas.

Someone can argue that in discussing ideas, it helps you figure out which ones are good. That may be true, but it’s hard to judge an idea if it hasn’t been implemented on some level. Consider going for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), where you create something small to see what people think of it. Instead, if you want to write a novel, write a short story and get some feedback on it. There is no need to discuss your novel idea with everyone – in the worst case, you may get negative feedback and become discouraged.

Some people may be able to talk a lot about their ideas and execute them, but in my experience, those who talk more execute less and sometimes do not execute at all.

STOP getting stuck in the same old patterns, and START creating the life you want and need to happen

If you struggle to find your purpose, it may be because you have allowed yourself to get stuck in a job you do not care for or in a life situation that you do not care for. When we find ourselves in such a place, of course, we can feel drained, bored, or overwhelmed.

Someone who works at a full-time job that they do not care about will probably not feel energized to meet their purpose.

However, when you are stuck in a place you do not want to be, your options are limited. It doesn’t seem realistic to quit your stable job and then hope to land your dream job, not without any planning, anyway.

The main option I have seen work is to stay at your stable job and then pursue your purpose or your dream on the side. For example, how much progress could you make on your purpose by working evenings and weekends? Of course, this can seem overwhelming, but you have to ask yourself – is your purpose worth it?

Even if all you can do is work on your purpose (or develop your skills so that you can work on your purpose) for half an hour per day, it is worth doing. Small, steady progress is still something.

Ask yourself: Do you want to wake up in twenty years at the same job you can’t stand, and not having made any progress on your purpose just because you made up excuses?

STOP worrying about your resume, and START learning what you need to make progress

When I started on the path toward my purpose, I used to worry a lot about my resume. I used to think – if working for myself doesn’t work out, then I will have a gap of unemployment and a lack of skill development in my timeline. I was completely wrong. Through working on my purpose, I had become self-employed. I had become my own boss, and I was doing the tasks that I had decided were best for my business.

The reality is it took time before I felt like I was making real progress. But as the years passed, I realized that I was gaining skills and improving my abilities day by day. Eventually, I realized that I was learning more self-employed than I would have working for a company. This is because my standards were high, and I was working on a variety of projects that required a variety of skill sets. When I didn’t know how to do something, I took the time to learn it and improve at it.

I laugh now at any concerns about the resume. I don’t even have a resume, but I have developed many skills along the way to living my purpose, as I regularly learn new skills and advance my abilities on my purpose journey.

When you live your purpose, you will learn any skills you need to get the job done because you will be doing what truly matters to you. Whether you work for yourself or someone else, you will be driven by a higher need to make your purpose a reality, and you will be more motivated to learn and develop your abilities this way.

STOP listening too much to reason, and START listening to your heart

Ultimately, I think we all have a feeling for what we are truly supposed to be doing. When you dread every day because you can’t stand your life’s path, it should be quite evident that you have denied your life’s purpose and that this is not the best path for you.

As much as reason is a powerful tool for finding solutions, we can also get stuck in reason. I have often seen people reason their way into bad life choices and causing problems in their lives. When considering your life’s purpose, don’t crowd out your heart’s desires with too much reason.

When you listen to your heart, you will be guided along a much better path.

When you deny your heart, you will always wish you were doing something else in the back of your mind. With this, how successful can you truly be? You may feel like a fraud, living a life that you knew was not truly meant for you. You may always be left wondering – Why didn’t I take a chance on what I truly wanted to do?

It’s easy for everyone around you to tell you that you won’t make it, that you aren’t talented or skilled enough, but how can you know unless you do it?

Many people will tell you, “But what if it doesn’t work out?” This is well-meaning, but if you have failure on your mind when you’re beginning on a new path, this is already a bad way to start.

Keep in mind that I am a highly practical person, and I am still telling you to listen to your heart. Listen to your head too. If you need the income to stay afloat, then keep your stable job, or find the best-paying job you can find. But don’t get stuck in that for your whole life. Work on what your heart wants you to do so that eventually, you can dedicate most of your time to your life’s true purpose.

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This is Part 2 of 3 posts on finding purpose. Here are the other two posts:

My Purpose Journey - A Winding Road

Dealing with Barriers on the Path to Living Your Purpose

My Purpose Journey – A Winding Road

It was always a struggle to figure out what to do with my life when I was younger. The decision seemed so big and overwhelming, and there was so much pressure to get it right.

One wrong turn and I felt my life would be ruined – overly dramatic perhaps, but it’s how I often felt.

Starting in high school, I wasn’t sure what direction to go in. I thought my science classes were interesting, and I was doing well in them, so I figured I would end up majoring in science by the time I got to college.

When it came time to choose my major, I began second-guessing everything. I considered many different majors, but one of the ones I was considering more closely was anthropology. Others such as biology, psychology, philosophy, and sociology had also crossed my mind.

My brother was already in college, and I told him I wasn’t sure what to major in. He pointed out that since biology was one of my interests, I should major in that. He said that it’s easier to switch out of science than it is switching into it. If I changed my mind later, it would not be a problem for me this way.

The feedback made sense, and so reluctantly (as I knew this would be quite the challenge), I majored in biology at Purdue University. The workload ended up being the most extreme I had ever encountered. I felt like I never stopped studying. Many students struggled to pass biology, and a large portion were actually dropping out or failing out of the chemistry class. I was so worried about failing that I studied all the time, and I managed to get nearly all As by the end of the semester. Yet, I had realized that this was not the field for me. I was not very interested in my science classes – and lab work was agony for me. If I didn’t enjoy working in labs, then what was the point of majoring in biology?

By the end of my first semester, I decided that I should change my major, but to what? I recalled that in high school, my favorite class had been psychology. I had always found the mind fascinating, and so I ended up choosing to major in psychology.

From there, I enjoyed my classes much more. This felt right to me. I felt like I was in the right field.

I had imagined that I would become a clinical psychologist, and so in my second year, I took the opportunity to intern with a therapist. Ultimately, this was much tougher than I had imagined. The therapist I interned with worked with adolescents and their parents. Sometimes, the issues they faced were quite heavy, and I found it difficult to forget their problems. Working with them, I was forced to realize that not all problems are fixable. Sometimes deaths in the family were involved heavy drug use, physical and sexual abuse, and so on. I couldn’t imagine myself listening to these types of problems all day – this didn’t seem right for me.

By the time I was in my 3rd year of college, I wasn’t sure what I would actually do with my life. (To transition smoothly from college to graduate school, I needed to be applying at this time.) Since I did not decide, I ended up delaying graduate school – taking a year off after I graduated from college. I knew that I wanted to go to graduate school, but I wasn’t sure what the focus should be.

I had considered studying criminology. I truly enjoyed the criminal behavior and criminal justice courses I took in college, and I discussed my options with one professor. He told me if I wanted a solid career outside of law enforcement, I should get my Ph.D. I was put off by this, as I didn’t want to spend that much time in school.

Ultimately, I decided that I should continue in psychology and figure out the most practical path to a career. Could I get a master’s and have a good job in psychology without going into the clinical/therapeutic field? It turned out that industrial-organizational psychology seemed to offer that path. (Basically, the field is about using psychology to help companies and organizations meet their goals.) It appeared to be the only master’s degree in psychology that would lead to a good job. Otherwise, I would need the Ph.D.

I ended up taking the only course on industrial-organizational psychology offered at Purdue, and I became friends with the professor. He urged me: “With your grades and GRE scores (similar to the SATs but for graduate school), you should apply to Ph.D. programs because you could get full funding (meaning I would get paid to go to school). If you change your mind later, you can always leave with a master’s degree.”

I took his advice and applied to some Ph.D. programs and a couple of master’s programs. I was accepted to most of the schools I applied to, and ultimately I went to the Ph.D. program at the University of Oklahoma – they had offered me a stipend and fellowship.

While I was there, I figured that I might as well get the Ph.D. I was fully funded to get 5 years of graduate school education, so why wouldn’t I take advantage of it?

Yet, things didn’t go as planned.

After a few weeks in the program, I wanted to drop out – as ridiculous as this may sound.

I started recording how much time I was working, and it was over 100 hours per week oftentimes. I was already slim, and I was losing weight. I lost my appetite, I didn’t know anyone in the state (as I’m from Indiana) except for the colleagues I had just met, and I had begun to fall into a depression.

(Falling into a depression is basically its own story, so I will skip that, for now, to keep things moving along.)

Eventually, I found my way out of the depression, but I felt like my spirit was dampened. I had been in the program for three years, and I was progressing just fine, but my heart was not in this. I had thoughts such as: Perhaps getting into this field because it would result in a job was not the best path. My interests were more in the cognitive area – so maybe I should have just gotten a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology. Actually, I never really wanted to pursue a Ph.D., so maybe I should have just gone to a terminal master’s program instead of a Ph.D. program.

After three years and with a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology, I decided it was time to quit. I wasn’t sure what I should have done instead of the path I took in life, but this path was no longer working out.

To this day, I don’t actually regret any of my choices – as I think they all made sense at the time. It made sense to major in biology for my first semester at Purdue, even though I wasn’t convinced about it. And it made sense to go into a Ph.D. program in industrial-organizational psychology, even though I had my doubts about being in school that long and whether I was pursuing this to have a stable job or because I truly wanted to do this. Then, it made sense to leave the program.

After leaving graduate school, I moved back to Indiana, and I was going to look for jobs in human resources. This seemed like the main path toward a career using my degree. However, the more I looked at job descriptions, the less interested I became, and eventually, I gave up on looking for positions.

My father made a point that was quite reasonable at that point. He said: “So you’re going to give up before you get started?” I thought it was a valid point, but I felt that this was truly not my path. I had spent some time pursuing paths that didn’t feel right for me, and I didn’t want to continue doing this anymore.

I needed to find my own path, and live out my purpose in my own way.

I considered a variety of life paths then. For example, I could become an X-Ray technician, a PC repair technician, a software tester, a video game designer (I actually spent time learning some programming), a crime scene investigator, or writing freelance articles online. Even if some of these required extra schooling or training, I preferred this to getting a job in human resources. Yet, in the back of my mind, I knew that I was seeking some form of comfortable job that I could do. None of this is what my heart was truly in. And the last thing I wanted to do was invest time and money into learning a new field that my heart was not truly in.

The problem was I didn’t know what path was right for me. I didn’t know what job I was meant to do. Basically, I was lost.

Instead of pursuing a comfortable job, I ended up writing fiction for a couple of years. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was a lot of fun, but I don’t think this was my true purpose.

After a couple of years, I realized that writing fiction was not truly what I wanted to do full time. It didn’t feel like a real living. It just seemed like a way to pass the time. Also, I lacked direction – often, I wasn’t sure what to write, or I wasn’t convinced as to whether I had chosen the right project to work on. After working on writing all day, I was burning out every day, and I wasn’t even close to earning a living. This wasn’t fun anymore, and it wasn’t leading me toward figuring out where I wanted to be.

I realized that I did enjoy writing very much, but perhaps I was writing the wrong things. Could I write about something else?

Then I began writing books in the mind improvement topic. In writing to help other people, I felt that I was finally meeting my purpose. Eventually, I wrote books that considered broader personal growth themes. And now, with this blog, I consider self-development as well as philosophical ideas and societal growth.

The long winding road had been worth it. My mind, thoughts, and impact were expanding.

At this point, my main purpose is to help people – and the main vehicle for me in doing this has been through writing. I also strive toward my own personal growth – that way, I can use my lessons learned to help more people. My desire to improve myself and improve others both synergize with each other.

The reason for this post is that I want my readers to understand that the journey toward finding your purpose isn’t always straight, nor obvious, nor easy. Meeting your purpose can be a winding road, and that’s okay.

I find it’s actually best not to hang on too hard to needing to define your purpose in one way. When you don’t hang on to one way so much, you can adapt, change, and grow. If your purpose is too narrow, you may miss greater opportunities.

Sometimes new opportunities arise in my life, and I ask myself if I will help more people by pursuing this or if ultimately it will slow me down. Thinking this way helps to guide me along the best path.

As time goes on, I plan to continue to grow and evolve, but I suspect I will always be focused on helping people, especially my readers. I have figured out my main purpose, but what may change is exactly how I live out that purpose.

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This is Part 1 of 3 posts on finding purpose. Here are the other two posts:

STOP Resisting Your Purpose and START Living It

Dealing with Barriers on the Path to Living Your Purpose

Dealing with Resistance

How do you deal with it when you feel a heavy resistance in you, not wanting to move forward with your current life path?

You may find that you live for the weekends or are often bored or miserable in your daily tasks. Perhaps you want a short break, a vacation, or to forget about your life altogether.

When we meet this resistance, where we have been assigned task after task that we are not prepared for or have no interest in, what can we do?

The first thing we will probably do is try to push through it. Your instinct is to keep going even when you don’t want to, right? You may think that sometimes you can fight your way through the resistance, perhaps even ignoring that it exists.

But usually, we will push through, and then we’re met with more and more resistance. You may even come to feel like a heavy, powerful force is holding you back. This becomes a force that is outside of your control – and you can only react to it.

You cannot tell the resistance to go away. The more you want it to go away, the stronger it gets.

When the resistance is strong enough, we cannot focus properly, and we will make mistake after mistake in our work. Our tasks will all be done without motivation, and the results will show. After a certain point, some of us may begin to feel guilty, as if we are failing to accomplish something. The resistance is at fault, yet we feel guilty for not moving forward as we are supposed to.

Perhaps your boss or colleagues are becoming aware that something is wrong - you are not working as efficiently as you used to. They may confront you about this, but in the end, they probably don’t want to hear about your “resistance” or personal problems. They want you to get the work done.

This is the time to go home and reflect.

Is the type of task you are facing simply boring and unfulfilling? Are you being led in a way that does not work for you? We have to identify what the problem is – why are we facing this powerful resistance?

Is there a lack of meaning in what you do? Does it feel like you are just filling time with things to do rather than having a deep purpose in your actions? Did you enjoy these tasks at one point – but now you don’t?

After you have reflected, consider all of your options. Often, our first reaction is to plow through. Then when that doesn’t work, we become frustrated with ourselves and begin to feel like failures. Then upon reflection, we may feel that there is a real problem, but perhaps we do not know how to fix it.

What if you can’t fix the problem giving you this resistance because it’s out of your control?

Maybe the boss decides your tasks, and he won’t be interested in hearing about your troubles. He wants the work done, and he doesn’t care about anything else.

Rather than pushing forward or giving up, perhaps there are ways to pivot. Maybe you can find a way to do your work in a different way that is more interesting or meaningful.

Perhaps you are stuck in resistance because you have decided that you must do your work in one specific way, which is not working for you. Maybe there is another way for you to meet your objectives, where you can even have fun or challenge yourself in a way that motivates you.

Of course, if you try these options and the resistance rises again, sometimes the resistance is telling us that we are on the wrong path.

After a certain point, you may be faced with a key choice – continue on your path, and continue to face the resistance day after day, perhaps even year after year, or seek another way.

Some people fear change or the opinions of others, and so they may choose the path of resisting themselves year after year. You will see the wear and tear on their faces as the seasons pass.

Understand that the resistance isn’t truly coming from outside of us, your boss, or your work obligations. In the end, it is coming from within you. A force inside of you is telling you, “This isn’t working.” This is just a signal that it is time to change something in your life. You may need a new job, relationship, a new place to live, or you may need to leave the situation that led up to all this resistance within you.

As a caveat to walking away from the resistance, consider this. Before you give up on something, ask yourself if you are looking for the easy road or if there is something truly wrong with the scenario. We should not give up too easily in life, but some things are indeed worth giving up on. Some resistances empower us and help us grow and improve, and others hold us back, keeping us from becoming our best selves.

If you find yourself resisting something that is ultimately good for you, be prepared to let down your guard and take in the experience. However, when you resist something that is robbing your time, energy, and life, then it is time to consider another route.

Humble Yourself to Fulfill Your Universal Purpose

Sometimes I wake up during the night, and my mind is thinking about a variety of things going on in my life. I don’t always feel in control of it – the thoughts go on and on, from one concern to the next.

What is the commonality of all the thoughts I have? They all relate to me in some way.

Even if I am thinking of someone else, it is still about my perception of who they are, and usually, the people I think about directly influence my life somehow. My family members are like extensions of me (or I am an extension of them), so it doesn’t quite feel like a selfless act if I think of them.

No matter what or who I think about, I usually monitor if this person or thing brings me happiness, helps me succeed or provides me peace or valuable knowledge. My mind naturally seems to think: What is in it for me? Maybe this is not always a conscious thought, but I suspect most of us have it and make many of our decisions based on this.

By the nature of having a mind, and thoughts, and a single perspective all of the time, our thoughts tend to revolve around ourselves. Our thoughts make us the center of the universe. Everything that happens either affects us, which means it matters or does not affect us, and so it doesn’t seem to matter so much. It either makes our lives better, or it makes it worse.

So the mind is attracted to things that help the mind and the body it inhabits. This makes sense.

Most people I know are very focused on their journey to improving their own lives. However, it’s important that on this journey, we do not forget about everyone else. Some people are stuck: they don’t have the resources or a support system, or they lack self-confidence, or they may just be overwhelmed by the problems of their own lives. We should not forget about them.

I think it’s important that we sometimes humble ourselves. We need reminders that the universe is not here just for us alone. Whether something helps me or not is important to me personally, but that doesn’t mean it is of the highest universal importance.

On a universal scale, what do I matter? What do you matter?

We do matter, of course, but if every action in your life is built toward improving yourself and making yourself happier, richer, having fun experiences, and living conveniently, then are you living out your universal purpose?

It seems that we have a personal purpose, and then the universe has its own separate purpose. The personal purpose deals with making things better for ourselves as individuals. The universal purpose deals with making things better for the universe.

These are interdependent forces.

Often, the better you make things for yourself, the better the universe becomes too. But not always. And the better the universe becomes, usually the better you become as an individual. But not always.

We must look for ways to grow as individuals that also promote the growth of those around us (or of the universe).

When I was much younger, I was not so concerned with the growth of everyone around me. I wanted to grow, and that was my only true focus. But I started to observe that sometimes when people go down this path of doing what helps just themselves and disregarding everyone else, we end up with horrible outcomes.

If we are only self-focused, we can justify doing horrible things to other people as long as it helps us personally. And that is not the type of world I want to live in. I don’t need to elaborate with examples. Just read the news or scroll down your social media feeds. Many of the massive negative impacts in the world happen because someone or groups of people were so self-focused that they did not care how many people were hurt along the way.

It was not meant to be that way.

Nature intended for us to plant an apple tree, and then the apples would nourish many stomachs. Then other people would plant more apple trees, and the pattern would repeat. Somehow today, it seems more common to plant an apple tree, chop down all the rest, and sell the apples for a greater profit.

Let’s take a moment to self-reflect a bit. Are we truly helping to make things better for all or just for ourselves?

If we find that all our actions only help ourselves, we should consider more deeply what we can do to make things better on a grander scale, for more people, more beings.

When we find that we are very self-focused, what can we do?

We can humble ourselves.

We can learn to give more attention to the world at large, to the universe at large. We can learn to see ourselves as just a small part of this grand whole. I heard once that love is just giving our full attention to something. If your attention is always on yourself, then you love yourself. But can we spread some of that love and attention to the whole universe? I believe it is possible.

And if you love the universe, you love yourself anyway. You are part of the universe.

How exactly can we humble ourselves?

I suggest that you learn a new language and eventually travel to a country that speaks the language. Learning a language is a great skill to develop, of course, but at this moment, I’m not concerned with how to pad the resume. The purpose here is to humble ourselves. Trying to learn and speak a foreign language is very challenging, and it is very humbling. And we should seek to be humbled more often.

Spanish is my second language. And I would guess that I speak it better than 80% or more of people who speak it as a second language. As I grew up around Spanish speakers, I took Spanish classes for years, and I even lived in Mexico for a few years.

Yet, I still feel humbled and not so sharp when I am around nothing but native Spanish speakers. In Spanish, my thoughts and words come out much more slowly. I have to think to make sure I get the grammar and pronunciation right and to get the meaning across that I wished to. Sometimes people speak too quickly, and I struggle to keep up.

Even though my Spanish is good, going to a Spanish-speaking country is always humbling for me.

As another example, I lived in France for two years, and my French is very basic. Having an actual conversation is very difficult for me. Often, I will know a word, but people speak too fast, and I may not understand what they mean. Or it takes me too much time to understand what a collection of words actually mean as a whole phrase, even if I know the meanings of the individual words.

When I was living in Paris, I went to a government office to make a payment. I had just moved there, so I could not understand what the cashier was telling me. She kept repeating, “Règlement! Règlement!” She was getting agitated, even though I had already told her that I did not speak French. Her body language indicated that she could not believe how dumb I was not to understand her. Later, I realized that she was asking me how I wanted to pay.

These experiences are humbling to struggle to communicate with the people around you. It teaches you that perhaps you are not as important as you thought. And for many of us, this could be a good thing.

When learning a language, you will be like a child again. You will struggle to think through basic ideas. People may even treat you like a child, slowing down when they talk, perhaps even pointing at things to bring your attention to them. They may act as if you are not smart enough to understand certain ideas. They may avoid you.

My experience in every country I’ve traveled to has overall been positive. I don’t view these struggles as a negative thing. Being humbled is a very positive experience in the end. I wish more of us had the opportunity to be humbled.

When you travel, other things to keep in mind are that your culture, customs, and social habits will be the strange ones. In Paris, for example, you are expected to greet almost everyone – so shop clerks, colleagues, and so on. Usually, this is done with “Bonjour.” If you don’t do this, it is viewed as rude. And hugging is not common – usually, for friends or close relationships, they do two kisses on the cheeks.

This is humbling, too, to find that your way of life is not necessarily normal or common everywhere you go.

By the way, if you want to bypass the need to learn a language to humble yourself, there are other routes. If you have the opportunity to attend an event or meet up with people in a different field from yours, do it. If they are advanced enough in their fields and you have little enough knowledge of it, you will feel as if they are speaking a foreign language. You will feel very far behind, but this is good. This is humbling.

Otherwise, help someone at a level below you, even if there is nothing in it for you. Spend a bit of time reflecting on other people’s lives. What struggles are they going through? Don’t assume that you know the one right way to do everything. Give the people around you a chance to show you their way of doing things. When you catch yourself doing something to make yourself feel better or look better, ask if you can do something to help someone else instead. Don’t take all the credit for yourself when you have a big win – give thanks or praise to those who helped you get there.

To humble ourselves is to provide ourselves with a simple reminder:

We are not the center of the universe.

There is much more going on out there that is bigger than us, and that is certainly bigger than our self-focused thoughts, and that is bigger than our wishes for success, happiness, and so on. Our personal purpose is important, of course, but the universe also has its own purpose in store for us.

Meet your personal purpose. Work toward it every day. Fulfill your mind, heart, and soul. But do not forget your universal purpose along the way.

The universe wants you to be better, not just for yourself, but so that you can help the rest of the universe along the way too.

As part of your life’s journey, you should see yourself as one part of the universe that is there to help other parts of the universe (e.g., the people and life around you) to fulfill its universal journey.