Purpose - Passion for Aviation and Travel

There is no such thing as having “one true” purpose.
- The common phrase “finding your purpose” is, in my opinion, misleading. Why?
  - Because there is no one purpose to “find,” as if you were digging for some piece of buried treasure that is hidden away.
  - Rather, the saying should be “making a purpose.” Because truly, there are infinitely large amounts of purposes that could potentially be yours. But you have to make it, you don’t just find it one day.
  - And in fact, you could have many purposes all at once, and they could change drastically at different points in your life.
For context, at this moment in my life, my major purpose is to put my heart and soul into something with so much passion and so much time that, even after I’m gone, that thing and I are indelibly linked forever
- That could be a technology, a relationship, a product, whatever.
- Notice that this is a super vague, but still very clear, direction for my life. A purpose doesn’t have to be super specific, nor does it have to follow any rules. It’s your purpose after all, who cares how it’s worded as long as you understand its meaning.
- The goal of this article is to explain a more straightforward and humanistic approach to finding purpose than simply stumbling upon it.
You have to recognize what it feels like to have a purpose.
- Obviously, this will be very different for each person. But perhaps the simplest, and most cliche way, of putting it is that it’s what gets you out of bed each morning.
- Especially as you grow older and gain more life experiences, I’ve found that it’s easiest to think about the things your brain naturally likes to think about, or the things that you could lose all track of time in.
  - Perhaps while you’re in calculus class or in bed at night, you’re constantly dreaming about your next recipe that you want to cook up. You can’t wait to get back home or wake up the next day and try your new recipe. Clearly, cooking is important and innately interesting to you.
  - For me, my brain loves to think about traveling and aviation. Those are the things that I constantly find myself losing track of time when thinking about these topics, such as researching new destinations or learning about new types of planes, etc.
    - Even though I couldn’t put a percentage on the time that I devote to these topics, I intuitively know that these are what I spend much of my time thinking about. Even if you can’t put what that thing is for you into words, I bet you know intuitively what it is.
- Now imagine for a second that you spent your entire life focused on the thing your brain ALREADY naturally enjoys.
  - Probably, you would find yourself waking up every morning excited and ready to keep working on that thing.
  - It would also take far less effort to be continuously passionate about it, since you already are passionate about it!
- So, since we all have these things that we enjoy above all else, most of us already know what it feels like to have a purpose. Most of us have those things that we wish we could be doing if not for our other obligations, and we’ve already felt the feelings of unending passion when we thought about those things.
  - The hard part is now accepting that as a purpose and devoting your time to it.
Now, let’s talk about how to try out a purpose and a humanistic way to think about whether it’s the right one for you.
- It’s better, in general, to have a purpose than to not have a purpose.
  - I’m sure there are studies out there that prove this…but since I’m lazy, I will just say that anecdotally, life takes on a lot more color, joy, and excitement when you are working toward something.
  - Therefore, you are better served by having an imperfect purpose for the moment—while still being open to accepting a new purpose as your life experience grows—versus having no purpose in search of the perfect one.
    - First of all, I hope it’s clear that there is no such thing as the “perfect” purpose.
    - Second of all, you NEVER lose when you have a purpose. You will always win something (whether happiness, new skills, or many other things) if you choose to devote yourself to anything, EVEN IF that thing is not exactly the right fit for you. The same can not be said if you don’t have a purpose.
- So again, the aim is not to “find a purpose,” because ultimately you may never find exactly what you are looking for. Rather, you have the power already within you to make your ideal purpose.
  - BUT the caveat is that you will likely have to make and commit to less-than-ideal purposes for many years as you learn more about what you like and don’t like.
  - But if you believe what I said above, then you will still win either way! Even with less-than-ideal purposes, you are constantly growing.
  - It’s essentially like you’re taking small steps up the staircase of your life, constantly going upwards under your own power.
    - There is no “escalator” that can take you up without you putting some of your own effort in.
    - But the best part is, you have more than enough capability to walk up those stairs.
  - It is nowhere near impossible to go through this journey, nor is it really that difficult, but it just takes a lot of time.
    - Most people just stare up at the end goal and, since it looks far away, don’t even take the first step. But if you just focus on each step in front of you, you will eventually make it there.
- You have to trust your gut to know when a purpose is not exactly right.
  - Logic and existential topics like purpose often don’t mix very well.
    - Even though a purpose might logically seem “perfect” in every way, if your gut is telling you that it’s wrong, then you’ll have to change something.
      - For example, even if you are very good at basketball (like you’re the captain of the team and everyone knows you and respects you for being good at basketball), if you don’t enjoy it, then ultimately you owe it to yourself to try something else.
  - While trusting your gut might seem very vague and not a great rule to know exactly when and what to change, the good part about using your gut as the guide is that you don’t have to do anything special to start.
    - Your brain is constantly determining the worth of things subconsciously. You don’t have to take any extra time or effort to determine the worth of things logically; your brain is going to do it for free anyway.
    - This means that all you have to do is start listening to yourself more.
      - Trust that if you “feel bad” about a given purpose, then it’s not the right one, even if you can’t put the exact reason why you feel bad into words.
  - Even if you haven’t determined exactly what the problem is that is making you feel this way, at least you know that there even is a problem.
    - That’s the first step to any change!
    - If this happens to you, I highly suggest not trying to pinpoint the reason of exactly what is causing you to not feel great about the purpose you selected.
      - Rather, just start experimenting by changing the things you think might be the problem and see which ones have a positive effect.
      - This will be a much faster and more informative way of both improving your purpose AND finding the reason you didn’t like it.
- The way to get started on the journey is just by examining the purposes you already hold.
  - Even if you haven’t done much introspection into this topic, with just a little bit of soul searching, you will probably come upon the things you find most importantly pretty quickly.
    - For the sake of argument, even if you don’t think that those things are your “purposes,” or that you have no purpose, let’s just say that the things you hold vastly more important to anything else (family, friends, work, sports, whatever) are your purposes.
  - Once you have these, the most important part begins: Be honest with yourself about whether you actually enjoy these things or not.
    - The easiest way to determine your enjoyment is by doing the things and noticing how you feel when you do them.
      - If you feel the classic sense of “losing all sense of time,” as I talked about above, then it’s probably something that you really enjoy.
      - Similarly, if you’re doing some other activity but wish you could be doing the activity that you enjoy more, then that’s a clear indication of what’s actually important to you.
    - In contrast, if you find yourself really hating doing something but do it anyway for some external reason, then it’s probably not truly your purpose.
      - There are many examples of this, ranging from doing a career just for the money to playing a sport that your parents forced you to play.
      - Even though you might spend a lot of time doing the activity and may feel as if it’s important to you because of that, if you don’t feel the sense of trying happiness when doing it, then there’s no way it could be your purpose.
  - Once you’ve narrowed it down to the things you most enjoy, then just consider them your initial purposes!
    - Remember that this is just a starting point and that purpose is dynamic. As you spend more time and energy on each of these things, you’ll inevitably change and grow. But you have to start somewhere!
- For the astute, notice that I defined purposes above as specific “activities” rather than more vague “values” and things like that.
  - For example, many people don’t consider their purposes to be things like basketball and woodworking, but more general beliefs like charity and faith.
  - I like thinking about it in two layers:
    - The first layer is the activities which I talked about above. This is much easier to comprehend and work on, since these are actual, tangible things you can constantly choose to live out. If you’ve never thought about your purposes before (or at least not deeply), then I would highly suggest thinking about this layer first.
    - The second layer are values and principles which are higher level and are often expressed in all the activities you choose to do, and indeed the way you express yourself in all aspects of life. Contrary to popular opinion, I would not try to define these in isolation and definitely not before finding activities that you like. Simply put, at the beginning, these values and principles should be built through your experiences.
    - As you begin to learn what those values and principles are, only then should you choose your experiences based on them. It then becomes an infinite feedback loop, where you pick new activities based on your values and then, after you experience the activity, you refine your values to pick even better activities the next time.
      - Take note that when I say “pick activities,” that doesn’t mean you have to do something new every time you discover a new value or refine an old one. That rather means that as you learn more about yourself, it gives you the opportunity to change what you’re doing if you feel that it doesn’t fit with your values anymore. Or maybe it means you should change the way in which you’re doing something to better fit your values.
- As you go through this process of iteration and refinement, make sure to keep an open mind and accept what you’re feeling rather than trying to force yourself into a given set of purposes.
  - Trust your gut and move through life in the way that feels right in the moment. Remember that logic usually doesn’t help with these kinds of things and that trusting your gut is the best way to move forward.
- There will NEVER be a purpose that will be perfectly correct.
  - The goal is to just try your best. If you try your best, than you’ve succeeded!
I’ve found that building a good set of purposes (not “perfect”, but good) makes you feel happy and motivated to start each day and keeps you on a path that nothing can really push you off of. That cliche of “What gets you up in the morning” can be true if you really commit yourself to pursuing the things you said that you believe in.
- Sometimes, others will not be happy about the purposes you selected for yourself and will try to get you to stray from them, especially if they are unique or controversial in the environment you’re currently in.
  - Often, this unhappy voice comes from your own brain, constantly telling you that you should be focused on something else more “prestigious” or “that makes more money” or whatever.
- This is not only likely to happen, but almost guaranteed.
  - Each of us is very unique and when we start searching for who we are, we probably find an answer that’s very different from what others expect of us and what we even expected of ourselves.
  - This will inevitably bring unhappiness and discouragement from even our closest connections.
- I’ve found, though, that once you build a set of purposes that is truly a right fit for you, it is 1000x easier to let this negativity roll off of you.
  - I don’t suggest ignoring it entirely — after all, they could be right in some cases, and it’s important to listen to the people who care about you — but the impact of their words and actions will be almost nothing to you.
  - And in the end, as you stick to you beliefs, three major things will happen:
    - 1. The people in your life who are most important to you and who actually care about you will learn to accept the new you. Though it may take a little time, they will come around to supporting you in the end.
    - 2. The people who continue to remain negative about the new you will gradually fall away from your life as you show them that their opinions don’t matter.
    - 3. You will start to meet people who share the same purposes as you and build a community of like-minded, supportive people all on a similar path.
- So, if you are just starting out on this topic, I would keep a mental check on when you feel this way.
  - Trust me, for the first few months or years, you will choose purposes that aren’t exactly right for you and the discouragement from others will easily get to you.
  - Instead of feeling bad about it, just take that as a sign that you don’t feel comfortable enough with these purposes and it might be time to change.
  - But once you feel as if nobody’s actions or words can touch you (and you will one day), then you’ve struck gold. That time will come soon enough!