Finding Purpose and Direction

Time to exit the mid-life doldrums

For the last two decades I had felt energized, excited and driven by doing my daily activities but as I reached mid life - these good feelings expired. Since I had experienced them and could feel the empty hole as they disappeard - I now want to re-orient and re-establish somthing(s) that do energize me and excite me.

Not only that - as I grew older and started to gain more opinions on things, I started feeling angry, frustrated and discontent in some aspects of my daily routine. The manifested for me as anger, quietness and isolation from people. (Just to be clear I am an introvert and love nothing more than making sourdough, reading by myself and being in the mountains by myself)

I’ve been thinking long and hard for years about this and how to make sense of it. Those extremes were increasing with time. The happinesses were dwindling and the angers were increasing.

Two Things

It boils down to two things.

What You Do

and

How You Do Them.

What You Do is what you do in your day and the other is how you go about your day.

Thinking deeply about it (for years) - my angers came from the second - how you go about your day. And my loss of being energized came from the first - what you do in your day.

Let me overlay these two things with my situation.

What you do in your day - Well for me this is building software. As time went on I got bored of it. I had learned everything. It wasn’t fun anymore. The world needs less and less of it due to market saturation of people, globalization and now AI. The pay for this profession is dropping yearly. What I do in my day is not moving the needle on energizing me.

How you go about your day - For me This for the most part was working for someone else on their terms on-site. As I gained more life experience and started to learn myself more, I realize freedom is now MASSIVE on my values. After Covid the company I was helping mandated back-to-office even though I had a laptop and was working from home for years. Not being around the kids to help them here and there. Having to drive 1-1.5 hours a day needlessly. This made me absolutely livid. Angry.

So two things for me to reset, re-orient, re-adjust.

What You Do In Your Day

For most - this is your Job.

But here at YourLastLife - we design our lives. We are intentful. We project our vision into the Universe and manifest it. Our roadmap.

I really think that the Ikigai diagram is excellent - up there with “Weak Men Create Hard Times”.

When I started out in Software it actually fell into the middle bucket - the bullseye.

Ikigai

It fell under all 4!

What You Love, What You Are Good At, What You Can Be Paid For, What The World Needs.

All four! Wow - what a feeling to be in that middle zone!

Getting paid lots, feeling like you were helping the world doing your hobby!

Checking the circles now - I fit under a single circle - What You are Good at. Not even a Venn diagram overlap - not where 2 circles meet.

We are clearly off course. A course correction is absolutely required. The target, the bullseye - Ikigai.

How You Do Your Day

Most if not all written documentation on this subject focusses on a subset of Ikigai and completely neglects the How You Do Your Day aspect.

For me to ignore those things that are making my blood boil is to have a huge flaw in your plan.

What good is having a positive of Ikigai negated by being widly angry trying to do it.

This would be futile.

Everyone is different, but as I learn myself, I must be cognizant of my character which values ABSOLUTELY - Freedom.

The second half to my blueprint for life and action is to accept and embrace that What I Do must fit with How I Do It. Hand-in-glove.

Resources

Time and Money.

Two interchangable resources. At birth you have all the time in the world (relative to money). At death you have all the money in the world (relative to time).

The two are the same, interchangable, equivalent.

(By the way money is really an abstract form of stored energy)

Having a maxxed Ikigai - you’re on the bullseye and Ikigaing all the way. You’re happy doing your thing, you’re doing amazing because you love what you do, you’re earning lots of money doing it!

You’ve earned all that money being excellent 24/7, everyone loves you for doing it and everyone needs it.

Now,

Exchanage some of that money for your conditions. Your terms. Your blueprint for How You Do Your Day.

Reduced pay for increased Freedom? COUNT ME IN.

Two Aspects to Satisfy

Visualize yourself doing What You Love, What You Are Good At, What The World Needs, That You Get Paid for AND On Your Terms.

This is the way.

Challenging? Sure! But its doable. I’m doing it now!

• The first challenge is knowing there is a problem or gap from listening to your feelings

• The second challenge is finding your new North Star - The bullseye - Ikigai’s center

• The third challenge is finding what conditions YOU NEED for you to execute your day

• The fourth challenge is taking action

• The final challenge is making it happen

I’ve spent 2 or more years trying to get this in place. I’m slowly getting there but a lot of the time was figuring out this framework, who I am as a person and what makes me tick.

I really hope this helps anyone in that same lost situation.

Trust your gut, follow your instincts, don’t apologize.

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