Choosing A Life Purpose From A Passion Perspective

[Mjolnir]

Hello,

 

I have been reading through a lot of the topics here in this forum section. I admire the fact that a lot of you seem to have found your life purpose or are actively looking for it. And hopefully you all can shine some light on some of my questions.

Let me give you a little rundown of my "situation". (21yo male). Back in November I decided to drop out of school where I attended a study for Software Engineer (I had previously finished a lower-degree version of the study for 4 years and finished it). It came down to a number of different factors playing in, but it left me work and school-less ever since. I choose to do this to focus on stuff that I wanted to focus on. Since about 2 months I would say I started getting more interested in personal development related topics, as it would potentially help me better my life. In this process I got more and more interested in Life Purpose, as this is something that I am trying to find. Since I dropped out I have constantly been thinking about topic(s) that spark my interest and I could potentially pursue.

Before the questions, I want to mention that I started meditation about 15 minus per day since 20th of march. Hopefully this would kind of throw away the cloudy-ness of my thinking. But hopefully it will become less over time.

So I've got a few questions this time on life purpose related stuff:

1. As I am currently work and study-less I am constantly thinking about a career/hobby I could pursue. But one of the things that is holding me back is the constant 'money-look' towards everything. I am far from 'money-hungry' but I am looking for ways to sustain a life. I keep pushing things off the list, because I feel like I can't make a comfortable life out of it in the near future.
2. The only thing I actually feel a continued love for is music. But more in a passive way (listening). I sometimes play guitar, but I feel like the possibility to do something with it in life is so far away. There is such an extreme amount of different things to be learned which don't interest me, adding up the countless hours of practice and developing skill etc. And also I feel like the most drive I get is from impressing people. Which I think, isn't the right way to go about this.
   How do you find a Life Purpose from a perspective of personal fullfillment instead of social/family or whatever else perspective.
3. I think I've seen numerous things listed about how one would potentially find his/her life purpose. Such as values, strengths and other things. But how figure out your strengths and values if you don't even know how to actually identify those. I feel like my vision is very cloudy regarding these subjects and my personal involvement (is this coming from self-esteem issues, and is the cloudy-ness because of the overactive-monkey mind?)

It seems like I have the extremely long posts every time I actually post something. But I hope it is clear. I will probably add some more questions as I try to get the picture ^^.

(Also I think I have worked out some stuff since this post, as i started meditating and focussing more on specific topics rather than the overall picture. I try however, to learn as I go :))

Thanks for reading and potentially responding,

Cheers

 

[nbolt]

1. If you want to reach your peak potential, you will need a modicum of success in your life, and spending some time to focus on your career for your career's sake isn't a bad move, just be smart about it. I'm a software engineer ckollege dropout as well, it's a good industry to be in. If you're curious or want tips on professional software engineering, feel free to ping me on our community chat:

2. Same here mate. If music is what you love then start doing some creative exploration within the field. I actually want to get into electronic music production as well. Traditionally I've shunned the more "artsy" creative work, telling myself I don't have the talent for it and to instead focus on more "technical" fields like programming, but fuck that, talent is a complete myth and I can learn whatever I want. Instead of worrying about things as a means to an end, just enjoy the process for what it is; live life as a moment-to-moment experience.

3. Leo's life purpose course would be useful here. Hop on the chat above and I can share some tips from it . Here's what I came up with: 

 

[Mjolnir]

Thanks for the reaction @Neill Bolton . I will definitly visit the chat channel soon!

The reason I stopped the study for Software Engineer was because I felt no interest in it at all. I had finished a 4 year long study of which I had 2 years of internship(unpaid). Because the internship was 40h per week(+15-25h per week side-job for money), I think I got a decent grasp of the career. And Ive got to say, I felt pretty miserable during the internship time. (I had some medical stuff, which turned out to be more psychological, and eventually got to self-development), I couldn't focus for 8h per day, had to constantly re-think things I tried to figure out because I kept forgetting etc.... Also I completely had 0 interest in getting better in it. It just didn't feel like something I wanted to do.
Also the medical stuff got me to the point where I decided to go for school, as I had more freedom compared to working. Hoping it would go away, but it just kind of drained my mental energy on school.

I decided to go for a gap-year, focus on sports and healthy food, as I got like 10-15kg in about 1-1,5 year. Meanwhile trying to be productive by making YouTube videos, relaxing, reading/learning things I was interested in and trying to figure out my next step.
 

[Mjolnir]

Oh and the Life Purpose course is currently not really an option. I try to sustain using my (savings) money, until the psychological part is clearing up so I can start to work again.
I presume the price of the course is worth its money, but I can't really afford it at this point.