January 1, 2023
How looking back will shape your future
We have all been told to find our purpose. After all, we are all here for a reason and we seem to spend a lifetime searching for why we are here. We are also genetically unique. There has never been anyone like you nor, will there ever be. We all have certain genetic predispositions that are different from one another nearly 8 billion strong. This incredible uniqueness is exactly how we are going to find your purpose this year.
While finding your life’s purpose seems like a difficult task, and to many of us, may seem impossible, I have found that the best way to find it is to look inward rather than outward. Look back rather than looking forward. We spend so much of our time looking out into the world for what’s available and see where we fit and become purposeful. But I argue that is a fool’s errand. If you’re looking at what everyone else is doing, you are only getting what everyone else is getting.
You must look at the innate forces that have driven you since you were aware of your own existence. There is a reason that you have had an innate interest in food, children, teaching, medicine, machines, or whatever. Your specific DNA code continues to lead you back to these things because you were born with it. If you have an overwhelming interest in painting art, it’s going to be hard to start a trucking company and stay focused to be the best company owner. This is not what your genetic code was created for.
For me, I have wandered for many years looking for what I was bred to do. I have finally found what it was but it took years of failing at what I was not meant to do to finally discover it. Maybe my journey will be an example of how you too can access your own purpose.
I was not meant to go to school. I hated school and I failed miserably at it. I flunked nearly every class I had in college and eventually dropped out. Actually I was academically suspended. I was so bad at school the university didn’t want me there anymore. Yet, that doesn’t mean I am not educated. In fact, I have more knowledge than a lot of people I know.
In high school I never did well in group projects. For one, I always wanted to be the leader of groups so I could just do it myself and dole out bits of responsibility to others in the group. I was not a team player. I played basketball and football and I was pretty good but I excelled at track and downhill skiing, both the kinds of sports that I could compete in independently.
When I was a child I was the only child of divorced parents. I did very well in the environment of living with my mom 9 months out of the year and summers with my dad. I could adjust and adapt myself to fit the home of either parents as early as age 8. My childhood was great even in unstable environments because I was used to being a loner. I could also make friends with people a lot older than me in both households. This allowed me to learn about life very fast due to their wisdom.
Looking back at my youth, I could see that my genetics were designed to be independent and significant. I have the desire to be singularly influential and make a difference in
other people’s lives. I’ve been doing this since I was very young. Does this sound like someone that was meant to work in the conventional or traditional work and life environments? This is why I couldn’t graduate college, this is why I hated every job I ever had. This is why my self-drive directs me to creating companies and writing books.
The point is this, if you want to find your purpose start on this day, now, Monday January 2, 2023. Look back at your youthful life and contrast what your instincts have always been telling you to do. Then look at what you are doing now. Does it align with what your primal drive has been telling you your whole life? If not, plan and strategize for a change this year. Take this year and push harder than you have ever done before. Maximize your health, your next career, your money, your family, and your sex life to the optimum every single fucking day! No days off! No vacations, no extras. No nothing except finding out who you really are. Can you do that for just one year? If you said no, let me give you time to reconsider.
Sure you can, anyone can. I showed you how I found mine and as you can see it wasn’t as specific as Marie Curie seeing test tubes in her father’s lab as a child then later in life earning a PhD and discovering radium to become a Nobel Laureate for her work. You are probably a lot like me and your purpose is vague. The life we live is rich with opportunity and shiny things. It’s hard to find where you might fit the best. However, start by really thinking back to what drove you as a child or a teenager. Look back and inward and start with that.
Worried your purpose won’t pay the bills. Rest easy, there is a way to make a living at virtually anything these days. You just have to be the best at what you do. People who are the masters at just one thing get paid a fortune to do their work. It may take time and you will have to put in more effort than anyone else. But if you’re only going to do what everyone else is doing, you’ll only get what everyone else is getting.
Start today. I start over every year at this time and focus on what I already know about myself just to reinvest in my purpose as a writer. I’ve been doing a lot longer than most but I had to start somewhere too.
Take my word for it, there is no one else like you so no one else can do what you were born to do as good as you will do it. You are the best in the world out of 8 billion people at who you are and what you can achieve. Your unique skills and viewpoints are marketable and people will pay you to listen, learn, or experience what you can produce.
