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.

Expanding Empathy

It’s important in these times more than ever that we expand our empathy. This means that we should aim to understand what other people are going through, not just on an intellectual level but on the level of emotion and feeling.

Let’s consider what empathy is. It is feeling and knowing what someone else is going through on a deep, emotional, personal level.

At its base level, to empathize, you must ask yourself, have I ever gone through a similar experience as such a person? (e.g., next time you witness suffering, ask yourself this question). Or, to go a bit deeper, you may ask if you can understand what this person is feeling and going through.

If you have had a similar experience, you may possess a natural empathy for this person, as you can easily understand what they are going through. When we consider family and close friends, we can empathize somewhat more easily, as we have many shared experiences. We are also much more likely to have either gone through similar pains as them or to have a close connection to their pains just through our close connection with them.

The above forms of empathy are not to be taken for granted, despite that for some people, these sorts of empathy come more naturally. I believe that people should focus first on empathizing with those closest to them to build up their empathy skills. We can always aim to improve our empathic abilities, perhaps by aiming to listen more deeply, to observe body language more closely, or to feel what someone is feeling more deeply.

However, in these times more than ever, we must expand our empathy beyond just our close family and friends to neighbors, strangers, and people who are outside of our affiliations (outside of our religion, race, socioeconomic status, etc.). This is a challenge, but one that will pay great dividends for society.

Particularly, I would like to emphasize that those in power should empathize more with those who have less power. Those of a dominant or predominant class should empathize more with those not in a dominant class. Men should empathize more with women, and people with access to great wealth and resources should empathize more with those who do not have these things. A key reason for this suggestion is to restore balance in society. Those who are powerless are forced to understand powerful people as they run the world. Those who are minorities are forced to understand the predominant groups as they run the world. Women are forced to understand men, as historically, the world has been run by them. We should come to understand the inherent privilege and perhaps injustice in this, and those in the predominant or dominant classes should take a moment from their days regularly to consider life from another angle.

Much of the pain and suffering in this world may arise just from those in minority or less privileged groups feeling that they are not heard, taken seriously, or seriously considered – that they are just invisible and irrelevant, which is one of the worst feelings a person could have. In reality, all sides should empathize with each other more, but it will help restore balance when the highly privileged work to empathize with the less privileged.

We should learn that empathy is a key step for us to take actions that help one another. Those who fail to empathize will see no reason to take such actions, of course. When we do learn to empathize more deeply, we will be prepared to build better societies for ourselves and our families.

On your journey to expanding your empathy, first aim to empathize with yourself (treat yourself with love and kindness, and not just judgment), then your nuclear family, extended family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers like you, strangers unlike you (e.g., with different backgrounds and worldviews), then to animals you are familiar with, then to animals you are unfamiliar with, then to all life, then to all nonlife, then to all.

At the final stages of expanding your empathy, you will see yourself in everyone. You come to understand that there are only so many emotions or combinations of them, and we are all capable of having them. When you see yourself in everyone, you will do your best to help everyone who walks into your life, as if it were your brother or sister or even yourself.

To the practical person who thinks these are nice thoughts, but we cannot help and save everyone, I would say that my focus is on getting us to progress in stages. Progress doesn’t happen overnight but in gradual stages. It is up to us to choose that journey of improvement for ourselves.

Here are some techniques we can use to begin to expand our empathy as communities:

• When you see suffering, take a moment to consider what this person is going through deeply. Imagine what their day may have been like. Then from there, imagine what their whole life may have been like.

• Read or listen to first-hand stories written from the minority or oppressed perspective. This means that the author should be a minority or oppressed, or the author should at least have interviewed such people.

• Read historical accounts that honestly try to understand the perspective of minority and oppressed peoples – this may include looking into Native American history, African American history, Hispanic American history, the history and struggles of women, etc.

• Try to make a meaningful human connection with someone outside your socioeconomic status, with different world views, a different religion, etc. Do not feel the need to convince them or to be convinced of anything. Just open your mind and learn why and how this person is the way he is.

• Watch international movies or movies directed by people from different backgrounds and cultures. This may involve watching movies with subtitles.

• Learn another language – if you try to learn and study a language seriously, you will learn directly what it is like to be the outsider, the one who feels foolish, does not understand, and is sometimes mistreated. Imagine visiting another country and only speaking their language in a broken/basic way. This is a humbling experience.

• Listen to music from other cultures and regions, perhaps some that is in another language. If it is in another language, look up what the lyrics mean.

When you successfully expand your empathy, you will become interested in engaging in more community acts of kindness.

The Path to a True and Fruitful Life

An Introduction

Today I will present my basic philosophy, which is my way of life, and this is the path I think more of us should consider. I believe these are the key parts to living one’s best life:

Truth, Balance, Love, Knowledge, and Transference.

Truth

One of the greatest human problems is that we conflict with ourselves. Our personal desires may guide us one way. Yet, society may guide us in another, religion in another, science in another, our teachers in another, our parents in another, our siblings in another, our friends in another. Some of these directions that we are guided in may overlap, but many of them will conflict.

Many disorders of the mind may arise from an incongruence within ourselves. We become split in our persona, psyche, direction, and even our truth when we focus on all the truths of people important in our lives, many of which conflict with each other.

As a basic example, one’s teachers may say to obey authority, trust what you are taught by your teachers, and don’t ask too many questions. One’s religion may say that the only authority to trust is the Bible itself. At the same time, one’s parents may reveal that our teachers and authorities are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and the teachings of religion are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. These same parents may guide you toward finding a stable, high-paying career, even if this conflicts with your own personal truth.

In my life, my personal truth has been to follow my curiosity. I have been extremely curious about the mind, consciousness, thought, optimal performance (e.g., genius, creativity, flow, self-actualization), and improving societies. This has led me to study psychology, philosophy, sociology, and history to varying degrees.

I was fortunate never to have anyone in my life tell me that I was on the wrong path. No one ever took me aside and said that there is no stable career on this path, or that I am no one special to consider such things. I was always free to pursue my truth, and this is because I have been given a privileged path, which is not available to all. But by having been allowed this path of truth in my life, I see that there is no other way. Any other path than truth would logically have to be falseness. We all walk the path of falseness to varying degrees, and so our goal must be to reduce and eliminate it as much as we can and always be truthful with ourselves. Being truthful and congruent with ourselves is the ultimate truth that we can strive for.

Pursuing one’s truth is one’s source of life, energy, a connection to a greater good, the truest expression of ourselves, and the ability to be harmonious and coherent with our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions, where we align into one unified being with ourselves.

Of course, finding our personal truths means exploring all the truths in our surroundings from our parents, siblings, friends, society, religion, science, etc. We can use all of these as options to select from. And our truth can be an organic, growing, evolving concept, changing along with our changing mind or changing environment. But some part of that truth should be stable and steady, highlighting universal concepts of goodness and rightness and oneness with ourselves.

Balance

A focus on balance is to see that when we focus on just one aspect of our lives, all others tend to become neglected or ignored. For example, someone born to be a fighter may train all his life and become one of the strongest, quickest, and best fighters by 20 years of age. However, in this time, if he knows nothing else, he will never know what to fight for. He may not have taken the time to develop his emotions, curiosity, intuition, reasoning, creative, and passive nature. He may have always focused on fighting and training to fight, thus becoming the best at this, but perhaps the worst at everything else.

We do not all need to be perfectly in balance, and to put equal weight on work/family, or strength/wisdom, or learning in every discipline to equal degrees, or productivity/recreation, or activity/reflection, or healthy and safe activities/fun and risky activities, money making / money-saving. There is no perfect level of balance that works for all.

Balance can be thought about at the individual and societal levels to make matters a bit more complex. An individual who is not very well balanced may help to balance out the rest of society. For example, consider an immensely creative individual who always talks about new ideas and inventions and makes up stories. He is always going into new directions and so rarely completes anything. However, his imbalances may help to balance out the rest of society. Perhaps most people are too conventional, stuck in old ways of thinking. When they meet this hyper-creative individual, this helps them discover new solutions in their daily lives or work goals. An occasional unbalanced individual can actually help to balance out society.

Another way to make a case for some people being unbalanced, is that for some people, they may find balance in the imbalance. To clarify, a workaholic may use the immense hours at work to feel a sense of inner balance. Spending so much time at work may have a calming effect on the individual and help him feel that he is achieving a higher purpose of helping others (providing balance to society somehow). There is even a chance that working extensively can help someone work through psychological traumas or avoid having to dwell on negative thoughts. The point here is that we all have ways of finding inner balance, even if sometimes it is done through imbalance itself.

We must use our personal truth to help figure out what level of balance we need in our lives. Just as there are many conflicting truths, we may decide that work is important and family life is important. Or we may decide that pursuing a well-paying career is important, but also pursuing something we find personally fulfilling is important. In your efforts to find balance, you have many different options available to you. You may decide to pursue a single path that helps to balance everything, such as starting a family business that has the potential to provide a great deal of income while working modest levels and helping to deepen connections with your relatives. Alternatively, you may decide to focus exclusively on work from Monday to Friday and exclusively on the family on the weekends. There is no one right path, but we will be happier and more fulfilled when we consider balance in our lives.

Love

Love is an energy that unites. Hate is energy that repels. In that sense, love is gravitational – it will pull others into your orbit.

When we hate others, we do not hate them. Rather, we hate the aspects of ourselves that are like them. If you hate insincerity in others, it’s because you hate it in yourself. The same for greed, superficiality, bragging, being overly self-conscious, an inability to make decisions, etc.

We see ourselves in everything around us and everyone around us. Our selves are tied to the entire universe because we only process the universe through our own minds and mental patterns (or, to put it another way, through ourselves). Think of this – all the universe fits inside your mind, and so all of your universe is affected by the way you think and your expectations. You cannot fully see anyone else because you are always using parts of yourself to interpret them. When I see my Mom, I am not necessarily seeing her for what she is now. Rather, I see what I expect my Mom to be, given all my prior experiences with her. A large part of my Mom in my mind is actually me perceiving aspects of myself and our prior interactions in a way that represents her. My mother is a representation of my mother in my mind – My mother, to me, is not my actual mother, but just a representation. This is the nature of perception.

Any emotion I have toward my Mom, is actually an emotion I am experiencing toward myself – my mother is represented by myself. I cannot separate myself from the representation of her. And this is the case with every individual I come in contact with.

So in a way, all love and all hate, and all emotions we feel for others, we are feeling for aspects of ourselves.

We must learn to love ourselves. This is true love that transcends whether we did the right thing or not, whether we succeeded or not, whether we helped or not, whether we failed or not, whether we tried hard enough or not, whether we loved properly or not, whether people liked us or not, and so forth. We need to transcend all of this and learn to love ourselves along with all the goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, perfection and imperfections that go along with it.

Our emotions, in many ways, operate as reflections. If I carry anxiety, depression, and hatred with me everywhere I go, in my body, my mind, and my facial expressions, then the people around me will operate as a sort of reflective mirror, and they will tend to feel those types of thoughts back toward me. They may or may not consciously understand what they are experiencing, but either way, the effects will be there.

Thus, a person who could extinguish all extraneous emotions and feel pure love would have a tremendous impact on their surroundings. Every person they came in contact with would likely be forever changed. A genuine experience with true love would be life-transforming. Just the same, we don’t properly consider it, but carrying around hate, anxiety, depression, etc., may have similar transformative effects on those around us, for the worst.

The challenge of love will be to learn to love ourselves. This will be an immense quest on its own for most of us. We have learned to talk offensively, bitterly, and ruthlessly to ourselves, but we must unlearn those patterns and focus on more constructive, loving ways of seeing ourselves. From there, we must relearn how to love the people we are closest to in our lives. We must come from a place of true acceptance, understanding, unconditional love, warmth, gratitude, and such to learn to love those closest to us in our lives truly.

Then, we must learn to love our friends, colleagues, acquaintances, city, state, country, world, and then not just humans but also animals, plants, and even insects. We must even learn to love what we consider nonlife, for that nonlife supports all life. Nonlife is the Sun – it may not be sentient, but it helps provide the source energy for all life on the planet. Nonlife is water – again, something that helps to nourish virtually all life on the planet, and life originated in the seas, in water. Nonlife is wood – used for building homes and furniture, but it comes from trees. The point is that even nonlife supports all life, and thus nonlife deserves our respect and love.

I will remind you that I do recognize it as a great feat if you can love yourself. To truly love yourself fully regardless of what or who you are will help carry your love to the next level and onto the universe itself.

Knowledge (Along with Understanding & Wisdom)

Knowledge is quite a powerful force to behold. Many of us think that only the experts need to know their particular fields, but I have made it a habit to question the experts, and I think most people would be surprised at how little our experts sometimes know or understand. Often, with just a few questions, I can find limitations in the knowledge of an expert. We credit the experts for all they know, but we forget how little we all seem to know. Of course, we all need experts, but perhaps some parts of life are so important that we need to become experts in multiple areas too.

You may be surprised to find that in a short time, you can rival the knowledge of some experts.

We need to stop giving power to everyone else and take some of it for ourselves. Your average person should not be on an endless quest for power, but we should at least be looking to empower ourselves in our daily lives. If you lack awareness of why anything in this life is operating the way it does, then how can you possibly have any power or ability to influence even your own life?

To change your life for the better, or the life of those around you for the better, or to constructively solve problems, or to creatively look for new solutions, you must empower yourself through knowledge – which may then lead to understanding and wisdom.

We have no excuse. Knowledge is freely available in many cases. There are free online courses offered even from leading colleges and institutions. There are free YouTube tutorials to learn practically anything. There are libraries of free books and now libraries of digital books available to us all. There are websites or podcasts to access even more information from leading experts around the world.

The knowledge in schools and educational programs is worthy. Still, it is limited because it was prepackaged for the masses, predigested, and pre-thought out by the teacher, and this is good because it helps to make sure that it takes you toward an end goal of having a balanced, certified education. Yet, it is bad because it provides everyone with the same thinking processes, same conclusions, and same journey, rather than allowing you to pursue your own unique path of learning.

In my personal journey, I got my B.A. in psychology and then my M.S. in industrial-organizational psychology. I was on the path toward a Ph.D., but I decided to abandon that path since I wanted more control over my learning. I wanted to learn in a more broad and interdisciplinary fashion, rather than be locked into a particular school of thought or be locked into needing to study a particular field in a certain way and examine particular problems others found important to examine. I needed my own path, to find my own truth, in my own way.

In this day in age, you can choose your own knowledge path. It may involve books and podcasts, school or university, or it may involve personal tutors, or certification programs, or self-learning (with free online resources), or finding a variety of mentors to guide you along your way, or a combination of these, or none of these.

The important thing is to seek out knowledge. Many in this world are motivated to get you to see things their way. People will try to convince you that this religion is better, or this product, or this philosophy, or this service, and so on. They will try to convince you, and the less you know, the more easily fooled you will be. If you do not pursue your own knowledge and way of learning, being, seeing, and doing, then you may forever be led by the currents of our times rather than the currents of your soul and your personal truth.

As a part of seeking out knowledge, I recommend incorporating experimentation into your life. Test what works for you, what does not work for you, and what needs improving. Also, measure how you are performing on the metrics most important to you. If you want more love in your life, are you performing loving actions every day? If not, you may want to measure this to make sure you are on track.

Transference

The idea of transference is to see that the above pursuits and qualities may be good. Still, they are somewhat useless if an individual pursues them in conflict with society or at the expense of society. Rather, we must find a way to unify ourselves with society at large.

Through transference, we will aim to act as a conduit and transfer the four forces of truth, balance, love, and knowledge onto others. We will act as a stream of higher consciousness, passing these forces along to everyone around us to magnify them and help humanity reach a higher plane of being.

For example, I have sometimes met people who had higher levels of knowledge than me, especially when I was younger. And I sometimes noticed that they did not really want to share what they knew with me. They might make a statement about how fixing a particular problem was actually quite easy. Still, when asked about how to do it, they would be vague, suggesting theories or that a person might learn them from trial and error. I realized that some people enjoy having knowledge that they can hold over others. They can boast about knowing things or having resolved problems, and when someone else has difficulties, they can sit back and enjoy watching them struggle when they already know the solution. As you might imagine, this is the opposite approach I suggest we all take. I understand that some people have limited time and do not wish to spend their time explaining something. Still, even then, I think they should suggest reading a particular book or taking a particular class, or something rather than just a vague remark that leads nowhere.

Let’s go deeper into what I mean by transference.

Transference in regard to truth will mean seeking your own truth while avoiding counteracting someone else’s truth. It will also mean helping others on their path toward truth. Sometimes, this help can be indirect or counterintuitive. If a wise person notes that his friend spends money on things he doesn’t need, and then often runs out of money before his next paycheck, the wise person may refuse to help this person with any money issues, so that he is forced to learn his lessons on his own.

Transference in regard to balance will mean seeking your own balance while avoiding counteracting someone else’s balance or avoiding causing imbalances in other people’s or living being’s lives. If it helps balance yourself to listen to loud music, this may disturb your spouse or roommate, causing them imbalances in their life. So we should learn healthier forms of balance that balance ourselves and those around us.

Transference in regard to love is fulfilled on its own. When you love fully, that energy is transferred or passes to the person you love, making it much more likely for them to pass it on to others.

Transference in regard to knowledge means seeking your own knowledge path while helping others build their knowledge. The ideal knowledge seeker will mentor at least one person and have a mentor of his own, helping and being helped. You are always learning and teaching. Not just learning. Not just teaching.

The general idea of transference is that whatever your philosophy maybe, if your reasons are strong enough for your convictions, you should aim to transfer this way of thought and being onto others, but this transference need not be through preaching. It can be through real actions that you commit to on a daily basis. Just as a child learns from the parents' actions, the world will learn from your actions more than it will from your words.

Final Thoughts

Something important to note is that all of these principles or forces will operate in different people’s lives in different ways. For one person, truth may involve delving fully into a scientific way of thinking and being. For another person, their truth may be to delve fully into a religious way of thinking and being. For another person, they may incorporate a mixture of scientific and religious truths into their lives. Truth is not a single path, but it allows countless possible paths to open up before us. Our lives will become much simpler when we pursue truth rather than open up the paths of falseness.

Truth expands into all the other principles. When you pursue your truth, you can figure out the best way to love for yourself, the best way to balance your life, and the best way to pursue knowledge. It is even possible that for some people, their truth will point them away from balance and instead point them fully toward love or fully toward knowledge.

Everyone’s journey or path will be unique, and this philosophy is meant to help bring out the best in all individuals and society at large.

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If you are interested in learning about specific Thoughts to help you walk the path toward a True and Fruitful Life, I recommend reading:

Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life

Beyond What We Thought We Were

After we reach a certain point in our development, one of our greatest tasks is to question how we can become something beyond or greater than our current selves. By this, I don’t mean the incremental next step, but I mean the next breakthrough of our lives. We shouldn’t wait for that breakthrough to come to us, but rather, we must make it happen.

The task then is to look at all of our personal histories: how our parents raised us, the habits we’ve formed, the perceptions we’ve built, the factions that we’ve had thrust upon us such as our race or geographic location, and the factions we’ve purposely chosen, such as our political affiliation or possibly our religion.

We must take all of these things that make us who we are and set them aside.

Yes, we must set aside all of which has made us what we are at the present day. Why? If you continue along the path of all that made you what you are, then there is only one possible path to move forward on, and that path is what you have been conditioned to perceive, think, and act on through all of your upbringing and past. If you pursue that path, then there is no choice to be made. You are like a robot adhering to its preprogrammed nature. You can already hear the voices of your parents, peers, friends, colleagues, naysayers, and so on, and all those voices dictate what you will do next, because these are all the people who have always been in your life, and you can no longer imagine them not being in your life. They are you, and you are them, fused into one organism.

This can be good if you consciously choose to go in that direction. But I want to encourage you to consider all options, not just the convenient next steps that have already been laid out in front of you.

Just because a carpet is rolled out in front of you doesn’t mean you need to walk on it.

So again, to rise above and become something beyond yourself means to set aside everything.

Let everything go.

Entertain this idea for just a moment:

Perhaps everything you were ever instructed upon, led to believe, led to think was important, led to think would make a difference, led to think that was building upon your education and making you better or leading you toward societal views of success, well perhaps this was all just misguided, or wrong, or even a distraction along the path you were truly meant for.

Just entertain that idea for a moment now, and then set it aside. It’s okay. It’s a scary thought. It’s so absurd, in fact, that the thought itself must be wrong, somehow. But don’t shy away from the thought. Perhaps it isn’t wrong. Perhaps there is some rightness in it, and that is what you are afraid of.

Hold this thought in your head that perhaps everything you ever thought, perceived, were taught, and were guided toward, was all wrong.

When you are ready to let go of everything you ever knew and thought and were and are, then you are ready to die, be reborn, become something new, and rise as if the Phoenix from its own ashes, incapable of being decimated.

This is the way to move beyond yourself and work toward becoming something greater.

The point here is not to make you think that everything you know is wrong. The point is to make you realize that there is wrongness and rightness in everything. You should think and reflect on the wrong parts of what you have been taught in your life.

How can you identify those things? How can you accept them? How can you stop making the same kinds of mistakes over and over? You must release yourself from at least some parts of your life, history, and what you were taught to move beyond yourself.

This is not just about you and your personal life. As humans, to move beyond where we are now and reach higher states, we cannot pursue the trajectory that led us here. We cannot pursue the same thing all of humanity has pursued for all time, which has gotten us into these dire straits. We must release ourselves from our prior trajectories to pave new, more fruitful, better paths for all.