Dear friend,

An empowering thought: realize that in life, you have the power to dictate your own purpose in life!

What do you desire to do with your life?

A lot of us ask ourselves,

What is the purpose of life?

To me, that is the wrong question. To me, a better question is:

What do I desire to be the purpose of my life?

You got the power!

The reason I like this:

We have the power in our own hands to dictate our own purpose and direction in life. This immediately gives us more empowerment, because we feel like we are in control of our own lives, and that we are steering our lives in the direction we are!
You can live whatever life you decide: To be honest, you can live whatever life you desire. If you desire to become an artist, philosopher, writer, yet you don’t want to work a 9-5 job, you don’t need to! Just move to Saigon, and just work very few hours as an English teacher, and earn enough to live– and to just do your art! Or you can even live in the states (or wherever you live), and elect NOT to work more than you need to in order to “survive”/pay for your basic expenses. We have the power NOT to live an expensive/fancy lifestyle which is superfluous.

Spend time to meditate on the question

Once again friend, let’s go back to the question:

What is your self-directed purpose in life?

Do you know the answer to this question?

It is a tough question to answer. Honestly, I think most of our psychic energy is wasted trying to be ‘successful’ in the eyes of others//what society expects from us.

For myself, my self-directed purpose in life is to empower others//humanity as a whole. I spend all of my time, energy, and efforts to study philosophy, study art, and discover more “truths” about life– things which have helped me, and I hope to share this knowledge/information/ideas with others who might also benefit.

My rationale

The reason why I appointed this as my own self-directed purpose:

When I am helping others, I feel more purpose to my life.
I follow my own curiosities in life, and avoid boredom (I think boredom is actually one of the worst human-mind states, probably even worse than physical suffering).
I am excited and optimistic: I still feel like there is so many new things for me to discover and understand, and this is fun. To me, having fun is the best way to most effectively learn! I believe true learning is from a combination of challenge, difficulty, effort, and overcoming that difficulty.

You got the answer inside yourself (already!)

Spend some time to reflect and ask yourself, about what YOU desire to do with your time, money, effort, attention, resources, and power in life, and what you DON’T want to do in your life.

You have the power!
ERIC

Philosophy

Find more meaning and purpose in your life:

What is Your Self-Directed Purpose in Life?

What do you desire to do with your life?

You got the power!

Spend time to meditate on the question

My rationale

You got the answer inside yourself (already!)

Philosophy

Personal Philosophy »

Stoicism »

Zen Philosophy »

Life Lessons »

ERIC KIM WORKSHOPS

ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER