I dug up an old DM between Leo and I about life purpose

[Husseinisdoingfine]

So a while ago, my ability to privately message people on this forum was restored. If you've been following the drama, you would know that I've been going through a crisis recently, trying to find my life purpose, and changing majors.

So when my ability to privately message people was restored, here is what I saw. Why this is significant to me only makes sense if you read the threads linked above for context. The following are private messages sent to Leo in 2020, when I hadn't even enrolled in University yet, deciding what I wanted to do with my life.

[Vercingetorix]

What is exactly do you want to get out of this discussion? I can share that I got a degree in Physics also from the pursue of truth and got to more or less the same conclusion as Leo. I switched my to become a Life Coach as well through the help of Leo's Course.

[Lyubov]

I can relate man, you ain’t the only one on this path. I am coming out of a relationship with a woman I’ve chose to be addicted to. I’m in the process of building a business. Let’s accept uncertainty. It’s the fertile ground which allows for possibilities. Let’s accept change, without it we would never grow. Let’s accept redirection, the world is too big to control, wouldn’t it be more peaceful going with the flow?

take this analogy of a sailer; the sailer can not control the ocean or weather, but with wisdom sail to here he desires. Life redirected you on your career, life has redirected me on my relationship. Let’s go into this with an open mind and heart.

its so unbelievably cliche but really open your mind and heart, you will see new possibilities from this redirection and one day look back and laugh at how seriously you took it. You won’t care or regret anything in a bit of time when you’re on your new chapter. Just have gratitude. 

[Lucasxp64]

Quote

@1x0 That's right, there is a trade-off between being a technician versus being a big picture thinker.

Project leads do very little actual coding. So you have to decide what you want out of life: Do you love coding so much that you want to be a master hands-on coder, or do you love other things more, like management, big picture thinking, business strategy, etc? In that case, you must surrender your desire for hands-on coding.

It's sort of the difference between being a bricklayer and an architect. If you love to lay bricks you shouldn't become an architect.

There is no right or wrong answer. It is perfectly acceptable to just enjoy the art and science of coding or bricklaying. It's not always better to be a project lead. You can just be a master coder. Then again, coding can be quite dehumanizing and a waste of life. Do you really want to be sitting behind a computer screen for 12 hours per day? Is there something more fun and valuable that you could be doing? Does the world really need another code monkey? Or could your creative talents be put to better use?

But it's not just about getting more money for your time. You must enjoy the thing you're doing. So if coding is what you genuinely most enjoy, then do that. The trick is, there are probably other things you enjoy more but haven't discovered yet. So then your task would be to discover that.

Personally I don't enjoy management so I avoid positions where I have to manage lots of people. I would rather be working independently, doing my art. But that's me. Some people love to work in groups and manage others. It all depends on your personality type.

 

I was also wrestling with a similar question for years. In my case, it was obvious to me that I didn't want to go into the formal educational system beyond high school, and that I wanted to be an entrepreneur of some kind.

Now, those are just the methods. The practice, was that I'm still struggling what will be my ultimate life purpose position.

I'm trying to FIGHT HARD AGAINST becoming a personal development coach, I've been fighting against that idea for at least 4 years. And I always had this idea that I had to provide with TANGIBLE skills to the market in some way.

Currently (As in, literally this month), what I'm doing to keep myself afloat in terms of having any purpose at all at something difficult is to just programming a language learning app, because I also have a passion for language learning (I'm a self-taught non-native English speaker, I fell in love for the process).

I had an on-off relationship with learning programming for the past 10 years. I never really made anything, just stupid toy programs for the sake of learning the fundamentals.

In other words, I'm teared apart constantly by wanting to go towards big picture abstract conceptual kind of work, and what my ego sees as being harder things.

It's sort of what I call "revenge learning" where I see those unfinished pursuits, and I keep coming back to them.

My major issue is that this on-off and DELIBERATELY leaving myself without a purpose for the (possibly misguided) idea of exploring out, left me with absolutely terrible work ethics, terrible lack of consistency with anything but consumption of large amounts of content (books, audios, etc) and writing about them in my personal notes for the sake of my own understanding. And obviously, I do that inconsistently.

I still see being "a coach" as something lowly, because I'd literally be charging people money to do something that doesn't feel mentally challenging enough to me, although the discipline to actually deliver on quality coaching is beyond what I have right now, but I know I'd be able to build it if I was able to fully align myself with that goal, it would streamline by an of magnitude my mind and instrumental goals. I still would have to do proper online business (get leads, make sales, do copywriting, create content) regardless, and I'm fine with that idea. It's kind of a shadow that I'm trying to come in terms with.

I actually wanted to also get super deep in applied computer science/machine learning mathematics for the sake of building great innovative unique products, but that's so beyond my pay grade of my work ethics, and my personality leaning over and over again towards abstract big picture thinking as opposed to linear precise symbolic manipulation, I don't consider that right now, also, from a business perspective, I CANNOT be a great engineer at the same time I'm a GREAT MARKETER. Let alone be a great self-taught mathematician using my own skills for innovative work that is aligned with market needs.

The only approach I'm taking right now is to develop work ethics regardless, and use whatever I'm doing right (language learning app, and only god knows the marketing aspect, it will become just a toy project lying around on GitHub) now as a temporary goal, so I'm not left with nothing, as I explore and think.

I'm simply going deeper at whatever I feel like exploring.

Edited October 13 by Lucasxp64

[Lucasxp64]

Bro. I hope you are doing better now 😇

What is the main take-away from what I said about myself? 

It is, that, for you, you also got caught up with some sorts of fights you picked up (i.e.: Need to get specific degree, monetize a specific way, get a degree in this institution, during this timeframe imposed by them), but in your case, you have the formal education system stealing from you the ability to change organically, it gave you an artificial deadline of when you must finish pursuing this path.

I felt like that before when I got mentally caught up about some long distance relationship, and she imposed some weird deadlines on me. It fucked up with my mental health and self-steam badly. I did things in a rushed kind of way, only envisioning the deadline. Took risks in the crypto market. Didn't learn anything that would go beyond that 1-year time horizon.

But when it comes to general mental health, I'm doing okay, my most pressing issue is to literally just have enough money to move out of my parent's home and have some social life at the same time I have time to keep pursuing whatever I want to pursue next.

When it comes to actually making the most money possible, unless you have horrible self-organization skills, it's entrepreneurship. Although, the kind of risk it carries is that somebody just won't figure out how to put the pieces together (Leads/Traffic, Sales/Copywriting, Product/Service), and it's less "risky" to just plug into an existing company.

The problem is that going the formal route of working for a company or being in the formal education system, is that, at least the way I see it, is that it will give you less creative freedom, and the less freedom of how you can spend your time, it just solidifies you further into their system with their own arbitrary rules that are meant for the good of their institution/business.

I mean, just think how it did lead you to consider suicide their arbitrary rule of not repeating more than 3 times.

That's very dehumanizing, being under the control of those systems, although, if we play it right, we will get presumably a certain path ahead to financial success. But fundamentally, that certainty mostly comes because someone is able to simply develop discipline to develop valuable skills, and the employers scoop them up, and re-deliver on those skills back to the market where they already hold a position.

I guess, we have to come to acceptance of the level of discipline and kind of cognitive footprint/personality we have right now and scale accordingly, and not lose momentum, otherwise, like it happened to you, it can lead us, towards terrible mental states (to say the least).

Don't let it drag you down, keep looking for the next goal-post. You will figure out the monetization. You can figure out even another profession altogether that will pay EVEN better and FASTER, but is less mentally taxing/requires less precise symbolic manipulation.

Remember that keeping a Purpose is mostly about keeping being like Sisyphus, pushing that rock up the mountain. It's there to keep his character in order. It's not so much about the rock, but... Sisyphus... just LOVES pushing it up there. Look at him go.

The monetization part: You just didn't do enough research. In actuality, the potential of making money through the default path is capped, and the career development is slow as hell. The maximum possible overall is not through there. It just matters that you guarantee some income enough to keep researching and trying alternatives, at the same time it gives you a dating life.

Edited October 13 by Lucasxp64