I can't believe I wrote the first post of this blog a couple months after lockdown. It is absolutely amazing how much can change in two years. The shining optimism and sense of freedom inverted. In the time between then and now, I settled back to my old habits and even evolved into a crippled ball of anxiety. It's been two years and I really don't have much to show for it. I got swept up by life. There is a silver lining despite what the pandemic and my own metal health has wrought. I think I actually know what I want in life.
Finding meaning from values
My first attempt at figuring out what to do with my life I simply asked the age old question, "What's the meaning of life". The word "meaning" is ever so slippery. Small glimpses of the answer always slip through my fingers and I'm left holding nothing far too often. Greater minds than I have tried to tackle this question and as chronic underachiever this approach was doomed to fail. There's also another annoying band of characters, values. People always say to live life according to your values, but if I'm being truthful the characters behind my values are a bunch of lazy drunks and degenerates. If I take an honest look at my life, I valued distractions, escapism, excuses, and comfort. My attempts at outsmarting that lazy version of myself have failed spectacularly. Building a life on these shaky abstract foundations seems ill-advised and perhaps a more solid footing built piece by piece may be a better strategy.
What worked for me
While I was wrestling with those age old questions of meaning and values I also tried organizing my daily life. This task was infinitely more approachable. At the time I found a fantastic planner, the Passion Planner. I bought the planner since it split up the day into thirty minute blocks (I love optimization and thought I needed this granularity for planning). To my surprise, this specific planner wasn't simply a tool for planning, but served as a framework for living. It had things like goal setting exercises and retrospectives. These would help inform daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly plans.
The goal setting exercise was the key in figuring out what I want to do with my life. You can find the page here, https://passionplanner.com/products/passion-roadmap. The exercise has you take 5 minutes to write down various goals you would like to achieve in various time ranges. They listed 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, and lifetime. The important part is not to constrain yourself and to let your imagination run wild. This boxing of goals really helped free my mind from that nagging part of my brain that doesn't want me to dream too big.
I ended up doing this exercise every six months for five years. What I noticed was that the lifetime goals were consistent for the last 4 years or so! What I wanted to do was staring right at me all this time.
Going full circle
I think the lifetime goals are a true reflection of your personal values and therefore what you want. They are the things that are important to you. If actions are a true measure a persons character, then those goals can help a person not only understand what they want, but also who they want to be. Keep in mind that these things aren't set in stone and they can change. That's ok! As we grow, we change and it's only natural that what we want changes too.
What's next?
Funnily enough, the smaller steps towards the bigger goals are often things I avoid with every inch of my being. The shorter timeframe goals stayed consistent because I simply wasn't completing them. I've finally accepted that my mental issues have been holding me back. Depression and social anxiety has been something I've dealt with my whole life and it took the anticipation of parenthood to finally get help. The next post in this series will be taking a closer look at my struggles with mental health.
I also want to note a common pitfall with my approach. Not all goals are created equal. I believe there are bad and good goals and it's hard to figure out the difference. Due to this I think it's paramount to figure out what meaning or fulfillment is for yourself. I can't claim to know what those things mean for people in general. Instead, I've been collecting examples of what not to do. Stay tuned for that post as well!
My goals
As for my own goals, I rewrote my About page and incorporated my highest priority goals on the sidebar. The two other lifetime goals that aren't explicitly listed are aligning my work with my lifetime goals and cultivating rich relationships. To that end, I believe starting my own business is the best path to achieve all of those goals. So if your interested in my journey to achieve balance while eventually starting my own business make sure to subscribe!