I'm struggling to find my purpose. Maybe sharing will help.

[benny]

From a big-picture standpoint, my life is going really well. I have an awesome girlfriend, great friends, A1 self-care, meditation, as well as a job I have a lot of fun doing.

 

Thing is, I don't know my purpose. I've taken Leo's LPC, and it has helped me gain lots of clarity.

 

At first I wanted to do something like Leo's actualized.org. Personal development helped me turn my life around, and a lot of that was because of Leo's content. I'm still putting together a little project where I speak in front of the camera and talk about a personal dev topic. We'll see where that leads.

 

I know that I'm a strong writer. Words have always come naturally to me. I'm also writing an essay on the same personal dev topic that I'm planning on shooting a video for, just to see which medium I prefer working in, and which one gets better reception from the people I send them out to.

 

My concern with the videos is that I'd essentially just be copying Leo. My concern with the writing is that people don't want to read lengthy blog posts. And how could I even get paid well to write a personal development blog anyway?

 

Then I thought about going back to school and getting my masters so I can become a therapist. I had a traumatic childhood - severe emotional abuse from my NPD father. The attractive aspect of this path is that I have a very well-defined niche that I could derive a lot of meaning from: helping men who grew up with emotionally abusive fathers work through their trauma. That resonates deeply.

 

I just don't know. I feel like I've a hit a bit of a snag and I'm feeling discouraged. It felt good to write this though, and to send it out to you guys.

[Yarco]

You want to help people, that much seems for sure.

I do think that for most people, wanting to do something like Actualized.org might be the lazy way out. When somebody is taking a course on Actualized.org, of course it's at the forefront of your mind during all of the exercises. I had the same problem, and had to consciously just cross it off my list and make my #2 choice my #1 instead. Maybe it's genuinely the LP for some people, but for most others I think it's a trap.

Especially when you use a phrase like "little project", to me that would be like a warning light that it's not an authentic life purpose. If the little project goes well, is it something you could see yourself doing for the rest of your life? After one personal dev topic video or essay, can you do it 500 more times?

I'm too biased against academia to give a valid opinion on option #3.

[Philipp]

I can relate to feeling ambiguous about self help being one's purpose. 

Your Life purpose is help others find their Life purpose, just feels like being part of a pyramid sheme. 

But if you really passionate about doing some coaching, shooting some self help videos etc. it very well could be.

I believe there is place for improvement as well in self help. Leo wanted to do the deepest possible self help, but that left a lot of people confused, who felt connected to him, since he helped them, but were too young or too inexperienced to integrated and make us of any of his advanced videos.

I say this, because I think self help youtubers have to start to be much more responsible with understanding what their content actually does and start telling at the start of every video for whom this content is (and this includes age) and whom it is not. So this kind of responsible self help would be kind of cool, but you would have to really connect to your audience and understand how your videos are affecting them (and not only those who write comments and admire you).

[benny]

18 hours ago, Yarco said:

You want to help people, that much seems for sure.

I do think that for most people, wanting to do something like Actualized.org might be the lazy way out. When somebody is taking a course on Actualized.org, of course it's at the forefront of your mind during all of the exercises. I had the same problem, and had to consciously just cross it off my list and make my #2 choice my #1 instead. Maybe it's genuinely the LP for some people, but for most others I think it's a trap.

Especially when you use a phrase like "little project", to me that would be like a warning light that it's not an authentic life purpose. If the little project goes well, is it something you could see yourself doing for the rest of your life? After one personal dev topic video or essay, can you do it 500 more times?

I'm too biased against academia to give a valid opinion on option #3.

I definitely want to to help people.

 

I became a certified coach and I have coached roughly 100 hours with a variety of people. I get some gratification from the work, though I don't know if I'd say it "lights a fire" inside me.

 

I like the idea of becoming a therapist and using EMDR to help men work through their traumatic childhoods, but there's a difference between liking the idea of something and actually enjoying it.

 

Again, I love to write. I'd say it's my signature strength.

 

The thing for me is that over the course of six years, I used self help and therapy and unwire a multitude of toxic habits, break a number of addictions, overcome serious OCD, become socially confident, develop a rock-solid friends group, get an awesome girlfriend, clean up my diet, establish a regular exercise routine, create a strong work ethic, and much more. This has easily been the most profound journey of my life (and the most rewarding) and I want to help others achieve these kinds of results as well. That's the impact I want to have. The question is: how?

Edited February 2, 2022 by benny

[Vincent S]

39 minutes ago, benny said:

The question is: how?

By the sounds of it, you have had a tremendous transformation. And this journey have made your life vibrant and filled with joy and desire to give back to the world, what you have received, by taking this path.   
 

The process is not yet finished, as you are still finding out how. And with time it will come to you. Its just that: When you are in the midst of change and/or transformation: Things can feel very weird, incomplete, and leave you with hanging  with further questions. 
 

I am almost in the same boat as you. And my coaching teacher once said: You a larvae ? in your cocoon, and you are still growing and changing. It will take time. You will just have to trust the process. If you want to transform in to a butterfly ?.

Doubt is natural. But trust is what changes us. But sometimes, it takes time.

You know: If all the larvae ? in the world would doubt their process to transform and change: We wouldn’t have any butterflies in the world. 
 
We are still in the process of transformation. Although we have grown and changed a lot. But its still a bit left. 
You could say that we are in a stage where we are neither the larvae ? nor the butterfly ?. We are something in between.
 

Im sure you will find your true passion someday soon ?

[benny]

@Vincent S That's a beautiful sentiment. Thank you!

 

The thing is, I have a deep conviction that I will figure this out. I believe in myself.

 

Even when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, and I had all these issues, I still had a deep conviction that I would live a successful life. Six years later, with steadfast dedication to the work, I have, to a very large degree, done just that.

[Vincent S]

Beautiful ✨?

[Mahyar]

On 02/02/2022 at 11:55 AM, benny said:

From a big-picture standpoint, my life is going really well. I have an awesome girlfriend, great friends, A1 self-care, meditation, as well as a job I have a lot of fun doing.

 

Thing is, I don't know my purpose. I've taken Leo's LPC, and it has helped me gain lots of clarity.

 

At first I wanted to do something like Leo's actualized.org. Personal development helped me turn my life around, and a lot of that was because of Leo's content. I'm still putting together a little project where I speak in front of the camera and talk about a personal dev topic. We'll see where that leads.

 

I know that I'm a strong writer. Words have always come naturally to me. I'm also writing an essay on the same personal dev topic that I'm planning on shooting a video for, just to see which medium I prefer working in, and which one gets better reception from the people I send them out to.

 

My concern with the videos is that I'd essentially just be copying Leo. My concern with the writing is that people don't want to read lengthy blog posts. And how could I even get paid well to write a personal development blog anyway?

 

Then I thought about going back to school and getting my masters so I can become a therapist. I had a traumatic childhood - severe emotional abuse from my NPD father. The attractive aspect of this path is that I have a very well-defined niche that I could derive a lot of meaning from: helping men who grew up with emotionally abusive fathers work through their trauma. That resonates deeply.

 

I just don't know. I feel like I've a hit a bit of a snag and I'm feeling discouraged. It felt good to write this though, and to send it out to you guys.

We are on a very similar path. I took the life purpose course last year, I learnt so much about myself but at that time, I was in a shitty relationship, I was shooting steroids and doing bodybuilding and eating 4000Calories a day, Smoking weed every day. However, right after taking the life purpose course I also took some psychedelics (Mushrooms and LSD) and they revealed to me that how low is my consciousness. Now after one year of self-work, I am doing the life purpose course again. 

The bottom line is: So many of us including myself, are too unconscious to find our purpose! The best way is to work on raising our consciousness to a reasonable level, not necessarily enlightenment or god consciousness. Fix your lifestyle, remove most of negative habits, if it's drugs, or alcohol or addictive sex, or whatever that is unhealthy and low consciousness. During this time, don't rush, just contemplate on the nature of those major elements in life purpose, e.g. Values, Strengths, ZoG, DoM and all those items that are in me sheet. But test your ideas loosely, but be open to the idea that you will need to take the life purpose again in the future and it can be very different from what you found the first time.

Bonus: One insight that I had recently was that, generally once we become more conscious, we realize that any good life purpose is to raise the consciousness of yourself and others. But since many of us new to the field of consciousness, the first thing we see is Leo and we think that is the only way to raise consciousness where in reality there are infinite ways to raise consciousness. You need to know deeply what is a high consciousness and what is a low consciousness. These are not mere speculations, but real metrics. Once you have a sense of what a high consciousness is, then think about how you can find ways to bring more of your top values to the world and raise the consciousness by manifesting them into the world. 

Reading the books in the reading list is extremely important + some of the books in the book list to expand your worldview + expand the area of your experience in life. For some people it's an easy thing to find, for some of it's not and is rather a slowly converging process to find the life purpose. 

[Matt23]

On 2/1/2022 at 4:55 PM, benny said:

It felt good to write this though, and to send it out to you guys.

I'd say keep doing what feels good.  

From your initial words and just my sense of things, I love hearing and seeing you be a life-coach or therapist for men who had abusive fathers.  Maybe even writing about it as a way to help as well.  writing books about it.  

One bigger shift in how I'm seeing life purpose is, rather than trying to concretize a solid long-term plan and ideal work you want to do, literally just do the next thing you feel like doing and are most inspired to do right now in the present moment.  Then the "path" will create itself without too much forethought on your part.  I'm not saying contemplating and strategizing is bad, but I suggest that with this new way of doing it, you'll be more open to possibilities you didn't consider before that may lead to things far beyond anything you've thought of.  Sort of like letting life take you and lead you away rather than trying to create a clear and precise long-term vision that's too forced.

Again, I'm sure there's benefits and drawbacks with each strategy.  But, also I think it helps to know that you can always be changing how you do things, and also, if something isn't working for you, why keep doing it the same way?  Try something new.  Surpisese can happen in unlikely palces.  

[Human Mint]

So you love writing, and you want to help people actualize themselves. But you don't know how to combine these two things and make a living out of it right? The 'how' is getting in your way. But you'll figure that out. Focus massively on writing, a variety of topics, specially those you like. For a couple of years gain skills, fall more in love with the process of writing. You'll naturally gain the clarity on the 'how to help people with writing' question, and you'll find out lots of other people's stories that will inspire you.

On 1/2/2022 at 9:55 PM, benny said:

Personal development helped me turn my life around

You've get this far, now keep going!!

[Nahm]

@benny

Make a dreamboard.