What Should I Do With My Life?

Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org and in this quick self-help segment I am going to talk about what I should do with my life. And by “I”, I mean, of course, YOU. What should you do with your life?

Now this is a very deep topic, also a very important topic as I’m sure you’re aware of if you’re searching for this and you found this video. So here we’re just going to scratch the surface but we’re still going to go over some good ideas of what you should do with your life.

So chances are that right now if you’re stumbling around in life and you’re feeling a little bit aimless, maybe you’re feeling like you don’t have motivation, maybe you feel like there’s something more out there that you could be doing with your life but you’re not. Well, I’m glad that you found this video because I founded Actualized.org to really help people, and to help myself, figure out what it is I want to do with my life. Because this was a challenge for me.

I spent many years, I spent about five years, going through trying to figure out what it was. In many ways, I’m still having my doubts and I’m still having issues. There are many challenges along the way of this process. The first thing I want to tell you is that it is a process.

So regardless of where you are right now in your path, whether you’re just beginning and you feel like you’re lost and you’re already behind, or maybe you’ve already worked on your purpose in life and you feel like you already know what you should be doing but you’re still struggling and you feel like maybe there’s another purpose and there’s a way that you could grow it and expand it out, then this video is for you. And Actualized.org is really for you because this is something that I love to research.

Purpose Is Not Given

So what should you be doing with your life? Generally speaking, and here’s the general foundation of it all, is you want to have a purpose to your life.

Purpose is not something that is God-given or is even man made. Purpose is very personal, it is whatever it means to you. So what is it that’s valuable to you? What is something that would actually be worthwhile for you to put your sweat and your tears and your blood into?

Now this is an interesting question because if you’re unmotivated you’re probably going to think about this and say, “Well, I just can’t think of anything. There’s just nothing I feel like is very important in life. Things feel meaningless. What is the meaning of it all? There’s no real meaning, so what am I supposed to be doing? Why would I be doing choice A instead of choice B if all roads lead to the same destination point in the end?”

You might have some of these doubts. Basically what you need to do is to think more. You need to tap into your imagination. What I want to challenge you to do, is to spend some time doing a visualization exercise. Just try to come up with a vision for yourself.

Think about it like this: if right now you’re sitting on the couch and you’re not really motivated to work hard or really go out there and push yourself, break out of your comfort zone, do something adventurous, do something crazy, if you’re not willing to do something like that, ask yourself what would it take you to get yourself off of your ass?

What would it take to get you totally committed to some endeavor in your life? What would that have to be? What would it take to get you excited again, like you have been in the past?

I know that there are times in your past when you were excited. Maybe you aren’t consistent, maybe you haven’t felt that in a long time, but there were times in your history, in your life, that you were excited. Think about what would it take to get you excited like that.

What Is Holding You Back?

I actually think that the reason most people are not engaged and are not on board with this kind of vision that I am talking about, and have not gone through and done this exercise, is because of one key point. Can you guess what it is? It’s fear. It’s the fear of not knowing how things will come about.

If I told you right now to come up with an ambitious vision, come up with a vision for your life, if you come up with a dream of your life, what would your dream life look like?

Where would you live? Who would be in your life? Who would be part of your social circle? What kind of things would you be creating?

How much money would you have? What kind of health, what kind of body would you have? What kind of things would you own? What kind of beliefs would you have?

If I challenge you to come up with this dream, and I said just let it all loose, forget about all the fears, forget about all the limitations that you think are there and just write it down and lay it out, I can probably get you to do this exercise. But, as you’re going to be doing it, and if you’re like me, and I’ve done this exercise many times, and I always come across this challenge, which is why I’m talking about it, is it’s like there’s a brick wall there.

It’s like there’s an invisible limitation on that exercise. What that is, is your mind telling you, “Well, this is all well and good but this is just on paper. This is just a dream. I want it in my real life. But I just know this is not possible for me. This thing that I wrote down on paper, sure it’s a nice exercise, but that’s all it is. I just don’t believe that it’s possible for me. There’s just no way I can have five million dollars in my bank account. There’s no way that I can have the amazing relationship or marriage that I want. There’s no way that I can have the kind of business that I want. There’s no way that I can be traveling the world. There’s no way I can be at the top of my career. There’s just no way. There’s no way given the things that I’ve experienced.”

One of the things you might be saying is, “Well, Leo, you have experienced different things than I have. And the things that I have experienced are not allowing me to get there. It’s just not possible for me.”

Maybe you live in some country where that’s just not possible. Maybe it’s because of the way that you were raised. Maybe it’s because of some psychological trauma that you’ve had in the past that makes you think this is not possible for you.

Maybe you have some limitations on what you think you are capable of doing. Maybe you think you’re not smart enough. Maybe you think that you’re not rich enough. Maybe you think that you’re not well connected enough and don’t know the right people.

Maybe you’re so bogged down by all the obligations you already have that you just say to yourself, “How am I ever going to get this accomplished? I’ve got all these other things I’m doing”, and that is the barrier.

It’s very hard to compete with all these reasons because some of these reasons seem very legitimate. They seem very valid. It might be the case that you’re living in a country where you have limited opportunity right now. It might be the case that you’re overwhelmed with bills and credit card debt and it’s hard for you just to pay your rent let alone worry about how you’re going to advance yourself in other areas.

Or maybe you’re so sick and you have problems with your health that that’s preventing you from going out there and working hard and accomplishing your dreams. You’re just thinking, “Well, if I’ve got one of these challenges then all of these things I’m writing on paper are just not going to happen.”

Here’s the thing: you have to think bigger than that.

You have to have some sort of faith, some belief that it’s possible. Because what you’re doing when you’re doing this, is limiting yourself. You’re too immersed in the past that you’ve been through and the current, present situation that you’re in to see the potential.

Busting Through Limitations

It’s just a fact: huge potential is within you.

Just like it’s a fact that where you are today is not some place that you could have envisioned even five years ago, maybe ten years ago. Maybe if you’re ambitious, maybe even a year ago you couldn’t have envisioned the sweet position that you’re in right now. But of course you are looking ahead and you’re looking for something better. So that just tends to be how the mind works.

Our psychology doesn’t really allow us to see those dreams. And that’s how a lot of people get stuck. That’s why a lot of people are unmotivated and don’t really have a life purpose, because first of all they don’t even bother to look into this matter in the first place. So it just passes by them. Even if they do look into it and they do this initial exercise, what happens is they limit themselves.

They hold themselves back on this exercise. So, they have a dream but they don’t even vocalize it. They don’t verbalize, they don’t even articulate it. Because it just feels to you, I can vividly remember this, it just feels like there is no way in hell that this could happen. So why am I even doing it? I shouldn’t even speak it.

It’s like you have a dream which you are willing to share with people. This is like your lay-up dream. And then you have that one really, really big dream, a really big vision you have for yourself, that is so big, that is so scary, it’s so big, it’s so mind boggling, that you’re not even willing to admit it to yourself. You’re not even willing to write it down on paper, it’s that outrageous, it’s that far out there. It seems impossible. So you don’t even want to think about it. It’s scary how the mind thinks that way.

What you’ve got to do, if you’re feeling unmotivated, if you’re feeling like you don’t know what the purpose of life is and what you should be doing with your life, is to sit down and just have faith and bust through that. You’ve got to bust through it.

Bust through that limitation. Bust through that invisible glass wall that’s there. Bust through it and just have some trust that if you try this exercise you’ll get some value out of it. You’re going to see something. And it’s not going to happen all in one sitting. It’s not going to happen in one day or one week.

What you’ve got to do is start somewhere though. If you’re feeling like you’re not motivated and that you’re life has no purpose, this is the best place to start.

So sit down. Turn everything off. Disconnect yourself from everything, phones, computers, internet, everything. Then ask yourself this question: What is the most compelling vision for my future self that I could see?

If it helps you, put it far into the future. Say maybe this is something you’re going to be in five years from now, ten years from now. Just so your mind can understand that there’s some room to figure this out. You don’t need to know it all today.

This is not something that’s going to get accomplished in a month. It’s not something that’s going to get accomplished in a year. This is a big, long term vision.

What Do You Want To Create?

Ask yourself, what is going to be so compelling, what is something so important that you could be doing, something you could be creating, some sort of impact you could be having on the world that would get you moving, get you motivated?

It’s really as simple as that. Then start writing it down. You should be writing a lot. Write as much as you can. If it’s material things you want, start there. If it’s things you want to feel in your body, go with that. If it’s people you want to be interacting with, maybe it’s celebrities, or people in your industry that you look up to, put that down. Just craft a vision of your life.

Since we’re talking about life purpose here, of course you can work on those personal goals, like getting into shape, and maybe the kind of relationship you want to have, but I really challenge you to take a look at the kind of impact you want to have in your life.

What is it you want to be creating and doing? What is the contribution you want to be having? That is what is ultimately going to get at the crux of that problem of what should I be doing with my life? It’s going to be that.

Because there’s enough room in your life to have your life purpose and your career in place, and we’re really talking about career here. It’s all the little things too, like your health, your hobbies that you like, the friends you like to hang out with and the relationships. But what I want to have you focus on is that one purpose that everything is going towards.

That is the contribution that you’re having, what you’re creating. What kind of thing could you add to the world that would make it better in your eyes? Not in somebody else’s eyes. I don’t mean going out and doing some charity work. I don’t mean something cliche like that.

What could you produce? Seeing yourself as a creator, seeing yourself as an artist, what could you create that would actually improve the world for the better and you think this would be an awesome thing to create? So this might be creating a movie, a certain type of movie that you want to create.

Or maybe you want to write a novel. Or maybe you want to go out there and build a business that’s a green, eco-friendly business. Or maybe you notice there’s some problem that people are having, for example, with their education. You want to go and you want to educate people in a better way.

Maybe there’s some business or industry that you are involved in now that you see things are not operating optimally and you could just go in there and optimize that. And if you did, that would have a profound effect on the industry. But whatever it is, make sure it’s big.

Because here’s the thing: we’re always holding ourselves back and telling ourselves that we can’t think that big. We always say, “Well, that’s not realistic. I can come up with something big, and it would be inspiring, but it would never be practical so I would just give up and I would just be disappointed and I would fail. So what’s the point in doing that?”

Well, you’re selling yourself too short is the bottom line and you don’t even realize it.

Follow Your Motivation

It’s hard, it’s very mentally tricky. It’s a tricky mental game that you’re playing with yourself. Because you literally cannot see your own potential and you cannot see five or ten years into the future. What you’ve got to do is have faith in yourself that if you create a big vision, that stuff will start clicking.

When you get motivated, that motivation that’s going to happen, that’s the important thing. Start there. Start figuring out what the vision is that’s going to motivate you. Then let the other stuff fall into place. Let the process, let the how to of it, solve itself. That will solve itself in the work that you do.

So I’m not saying you’re going to dream this thing and then not do any work for it. No, it’s going to take massive action. But to do that, you need to have the motivation. The problem right now with you is you don’t have any motivation and that’s because you don’t have anything big in your life.

Once you have something big, than that’s something you can work with. That’s something you can mold, something you can shape. Even if you can’t accomplish all of it, maybe you can accomplish some of it. Or maybe that will give you an idea of how to spin that off into something else more practical that you can accomplish.

So trust that there are going to be avenues that are going to be created for you. But you have to take the blocks out. You have to get the energy flowing. You have to get something moving. You’ve got to get some kind of action going.

So, as I wrap up here, don’t let this exercise sit in your mind. Go right now, unplug yourself, and create some kind of big vision for yourself. Create something big. And that is how you’re going to figure out what you should be doing with your life.

Wrap Up

Alright, this is Leo, I’m going to sign off. Please share this, ‘like’ it, leave your comments down below. And of course, visit Actualized.org where you can sign up for my free newsletter with weekly video updates like this about how to really kick your life into gear, get on purpose, stay on purpose, and deal with the psychology of becoming very successful and purpose driven in your life.