Go After the Most Important Thing in Your Life
Stepping with purpose will result in a stronger, more lasting impact.
Photo by Bogdan Pasca on Unsplash
There’s a life-challenge that scares many of us. The reason it is so challenging is because it forces us out of living vague lives. It gets specific. But in order to get specific, we have to identify our motivating factors, what pushes us every single day to do what seems most important to us.
In all honesty, it drains us. It pulls layers of false senses of security off our bodies and reveals how lost we really are.
That may seem like a bad thing. But in the end, we see how much it is needed.
The process involves a goal, an endgame. Without figuring out what matters most to you in life, you’ll be unable to enjoy the process of progress.
Facing Your Fears
You’ve probably heard it said that growth requires us to face some of the scariest parts of life. This is true. But rarely do we implement that mentality into the way we live every single day.
The impact of those words quickly fade. And pretty soon, we’re back to acting on the same old bad habits that ruined our progress in the first place. There has to be a moment of realization, one that wakes us up from the slumber of floating through life with no intentionality whatsoever.
The truth is, when that finally happens, it will scare the skin off of you.
It did for me.
I realized that years had gone by without any beneficial steps toward a set destination. All those moments of wasting time on pointless things played over and over again in my head.
There’s nothing you can do about the past, though. You already know that. But there is something you can do about today.
You can move now in an intended direction, with a will to put in the work and move closer to your desired goals. It just takes facing your fear of the future.
Take a few minutes to pinpoint not what catches your attention but what captures the deepest parts of you, pulling you every time you think about it. It will change your life.
There’s No Process Without Goals
With anything you do in life, there’s a process: a collection of actions carried out with a precise purpose in mind. Understanding that will make this next point easier to digest.
You can’t take any steps without first addressing what you want to see in your future.
People will say it is more profitable to enjoy the process than to focus on the end-goal. And that is true. I agree with that 110%.
Yet, we tend to miss the meat of the matter by not underlining, circling, highlighting, and placing an asterisk beside what we want to happen at the end. You don’t have to keep your head in that place for long. But you should certainly be able to see it with your own two eyes.
Take Small Steps
Another misconception is one that results in harmful consequences. Too many people are trying so hard to reach their goals to the point where they take huge leaps to get there. It usually doesn’t turn out good.
While I’m a huge advocate for taking risks and facing your fears, I also value patience and the ability to work through tough times.
If you aren’t careful, you’ll look down on yourself because things aren’t moving fast enough. Or you’ll give up because the process involves more than you assumed.
A lot of people associate failing with failure. They look at themselves as worthless because of past mistakes.
You’re not a failure because you messed up. We’ve all done that and still do.
Yet, failing hurts. It doesn’t feel good to screw up on something that means a lot to you. And I don’t expect anyone to go around bragging about how much they’ve messed things up, especially without any wins along the way.
It’s tempting to throw away your goals simply because you’ve failed at something.
Don’t be that person. Take small steps and chip away at your big picture.
Think about it this way: it took Leonardo da Vinci four years to make the notorious Mona Lisa painting. And it still wasn’t finished. Another three years were dedicated to touching up on finer details.
Did you catch that?
That’s seven years of intentional painting! How many of us are willing to spend that long on one thing?
If it’s crazy to you, maybe it’s because you haven’t figured out what the most important thing in your life is as of this moment. Sure, it probably isn’t painting (or maybe it is), but there’s something you really want to dedicate your time to.
The trick is taking small, healthy, consistent steps to see it through till the end.
Ask Yourself the Tough Question
Often when I sit down to write, I ask myself a very important question: What is the most important thing in my life right now? Most of the time, this question comes across as cliche, some rhetorical question used in high-caliber TED Talk-esque speeches led by powerful speakers.
In reality, though, it’s more real than we think. Over the past few years, my interests have led me down some exciting paths. From being a musician to snapping photos, my creativity has blossomed because I was willing to put them to work. And yet, something was still missing.
Though it was a thrill to do those things, a piece of the puzzle remained unfound.
I was creating what I believed to be good stuff. Was there room for improvement? Definitely; that never ends. But I hadn’t pinpointed the driving factor behind it all.
For me, prayer has always been a game-changer and important piece of my day. I ask God for guidance and direction, then I move.
That sense of incompletion brought me to a phase of deep self-examination.
I couldn’t continue on without digging a little into myself. And the moment I did that, there was more discovered than at any other time in my life.
Nothing I was doing was just for me. That’s how I viewed the start of my journey, which is why I felt so lost in the first place: I’d made it all about me.
It’s also about helping people along the way.
Maybe you have aspirations to travel to different places and do things that will change the world. Maybe you even wake up and go to bed pondering on those goals.
While you should never forget your aspirations (and always be willing to put in the work to see it through), you should identify the most important thing in your life. It’s worth sitting down and answering.
Bringing It All Together
It’s good to face our fears about the future. Time spent decluttering your steps is time well spent, much better than running blindly with no sense of direction.
There’s no point in identifying your reason for creating if you never take any steps. Growth requires action. And it also requires failure.
You’ll never fall if you refuse to climb. In these moments, I’ve seen how that sole question translates into my everyday life. The key element to each new morning then becomes, “What is the most important thing I should be doing today?”
Getting to the heart of the major aims makes every other step more intentional and purpose-driven.
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