We always worry about how we define life and in search of the answers, we fall apart. Very few who have started the journey will find their purpose in life at the end. Most of us left behind to travel further distances to find answers.
There are 2 types of people who are eager to find the purpose of their lives. One, the people who have defined their mission statement for life and second, are the ones who lost their purpose of life — these people are always hoping to find second chances in life.
When I started my journey to hunt the treasure of knowledge, I was the second type of person who had zero mission and even I didn’t know who I was. I started to become the lost cause where I had to leave my very basic trait to pursue my wild thought entrepreneurship. I left everything and everyone behind for 3 years and went in search of answers to make money.
I was hoping that things might turn out well for me someday and I will be the one who rules everything. One thing is certain in life, you are always meant to serve a higher purpose, not a selfish money centered life.
As loosing is the best lesson that life can teach us, the same thing happened to me. When I was sprinting into my views and disrespectful thought on the track of life, my tires got busted and the engine got ceased. I stopped at the assist point to end the race of my life.
After ending my race against my destiny, I realized what life is all about and how important for everyone to stop racing and start taking things slower in life. It is easy to race on the track of life but if we go fast by looking at the nice smooth track, you can never be able to know what is happening around you. You may pass the lap 1000 times but unless you stop and enjoy the moment, you will never be able to live your life to the fullest.
Let me share with you what I have discovered in my life.
Principles of life (4 traits to develop)
All the below traits are discovered sequentially and I also tried shuffling them but randomness didn’t work out for me.
1. Consistency:
The first principle to build a purposeful life. Without getting to know the meaning of persistence, it is difficult to go on with life. There is a small difference in being persistent and in being consistent. Persistency is pursuing something you like to complete and wish to see its end goal as your mission. Consistency is built with something even more advanced than persisting something. There is no limit to set an end goal for it. Sometimes, consistency even doesn’t have an end goal. It just goes on and on until you are alive. It is principle-centered.
For example, if you are on to something or someone, you cannot give up till an end goal is achieved. A son continuously requests his parents to get him a video game until they buy him one. This is persistence. Consistency is putting efforts every day to learn how to play a game and getting to the top of the leaderboard in that game.
In our life, consistency helps us to reach the goals that we set and also helps us to go on even after achieving our goal to keep it in check and never to lose our track. If you have decided to read 10 books in the next 90 days, being consistent every day in reading books will take you to the end of the goal. Once you read all the 10 books, the consistent mind of yours demands you not to break the sequence by helping you convert this goal as a habit.
To achieve your goal, you need a plan. An important point in your plan should contain a goal to build better habits. To build better habits, you require consistency — Being consistent helps you to build better habits and better habits will help you to reach your goal with discipline.
Once we achieve consistency, life will open doors to the next level to explore focus without distraction. That is focussing toward the goal.
2. Focus:
The principle of focus is direct and every individual has their statement and way of focussing on the required goal. It is not likely to have a laser focus without zero distractions. Focussing on something requires determination and dedication.
- Determination: If you are determined to do something, you require consistency to achieve that goal. You cannot reach your endpoint by working super hard today and not working tomorrow. Working hard means putting certain amounts of effort every day without fail and get ahead with the collective improvement you gained by those consistent efforts. Find your goal/endpoint to reach even it is small doesn’t matter. All you have to do is to complete it. Determination to complete what you have started is the dedication.
- Dedication: 2nd step of focus is the dedication to reach the endpoint. How we get there is not the talking point here. What we do to get there is important and how better we perform in that aspect of life. Dedication with focus helps you get there without any distractions.
Determination and Dedication are the parts of focus that open a doorway to achieve it less disturbingly. As long as we have 2Ds (Determination & Dedication), focussing toward goal or endpoint will become nearly a straight line.
Focus toward a goal is the first step we take after being consistent with our life and build habits to improve ourselves. I can say, sharpening the saw. We all can understand the importance of not stopping or being consistent with the things that we do. Let’s understand how patience is the key to focus better in life to reach our goal.
3. Patience:
Now is the time to unlock the power of patience. The power comes from the pause we take when we make decisions. The 5-second gap between response and stimulus takes you to a different level in your life. We all need quick fixes in life such as quick solutions to the problems, quick satisfaction to the work, quick results for the effort you put in, quick money making methods and much more quick responses in the things we do. It is embedded in our DNA. In this type of culture that is fast-growing, being patient comes with many perks. Taking a moment before reacting to anything that includes while eating something or before starting your engine every day.
To understand how patience works in our life, I spent straight 15 days without reacting to any frustrating situation. I kept reminding myself about being patient without reacting to it. As Dr. Covey explained in his masterpiece “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People”, being proactive has a great effect on our self-improvement life. Pausing before reacting or understanding ourselves before seeking to be understood by others builds patience in us. We all are bound to destiny and there is no way we can react without thinking of the present situation or understanding ourselves.
When we learn to be calm, patience takes its place in our journey. It is the projection of our values and the principle we develop in our life while we move to different stages of life.
For instance, you cannot build a million-dollar business within a day or you cannot go and marry your crush within 24 hours. Building a business or getting your girlfriend to marry you at an instant is the most unlikely scenario. You gotta be patient and win her trust and in business, you need to understand how it works in the real world. You need a plan, knowledge about money and many other things. So, understanding and trusting something or someone takes time and for that, you have to be patient.
Consistency helps to develop good habits if we are consistent in working on them furthermore, patience helps us to reach our goal and plan every step ahead of us. Focus is a joint between consistency and patience. It connects all 3 principles to associate with the most effective principle decision-making.
4. Decision-Making:
The most effective and rapid results-oriented principle. You know when to put brakes to your car when you find a dog running on the road. There are no good or bad decisions. The only thing you need to worry about the decision you take concerning time. Worst decisions at the right time might become good ones in the future but a good decision at a bad time, cannot get you back what you have lost at the time when you have given choice to make the decision.
Here good and bad decisions are related to you and only you. There is no short cut, no mercy to gain what you have lost due to a lack of courage in making decisions. In your journey of achieving your goal, you might make bad decisions that pull you back a bit or slow you down in reaching your destination. Nobody is perfect and not all decisions have to be right all the time. There will be the right time where you can make up for anything bad you did in your past. You just need to have the courage to identify the right time to act.
In making a better decision, courage plays an important role. You cannot hesitate to make decisions either they are bad or good when the right time comes. I always tell my friends that the right decisions at the right time is the key to a happy life or to reach goals.
If you feel the time is right and your inability to act in that time or take decisions will pull you far more away from your goal. Do something at the time whether a bad decision of a good one. If the decision is bad, you learn from it and it becomes a good experience for you in the future. If it is a good decision, your life will automatically help you move forward in your journey. Either way, you don’t stop moving toward your goal.
- No decision scenario: This is not acceptable. When you don’t take action, there will be no consequences. Where there are no consequences, there is no progress. In this way, your journey stops at wherever you are.
- Pseudo decision scenario: This is more unacceptable than the above scenario. At least no decision stops you in making progress but this will pull you back from the progress and asks you to go another path from your original goal-oriented path. It changes your life completely. When you come across the situation to act or make a decision, do something if you stay in a dilemma and start thing that you can handle both good and bad decisions at the same time will completely take you out of the picture in your journey.
Don’t hesitate when the opportunity is passed onto you to act on something (decision-making), be courageous and be visionary. Good decisions take you toward your goals whereas bad ones teach you or show you the path to it. But never commit to act on both, it will just take you out of the whole game and the bigger picture.
Special Principle
After all independence we have in our journey, it is the time to go through the powerful principle that we all need to follow on to lead the social life i.e. balance.
Learning to balance the mentioned principles is what we need to do. Interdependency is the key to unlock the life that contains the door that is waiting to be open. You can travel to your goal all alone but when you look back at your journey, what you remember matters.
Balance:
Balancing between you and the people around you like family, colleagues, friends, spouse, strangers takes a big heart and an open mind. Letting people in your life is a good thing. It is difficult to trust anyone but trusting is not the issue here as long as you are on the streak of unconditional toward you. Better balance comes when you start giving yourself respect — An immense respect.
Change and Adoption are tools to balance life. Life change, you adapt to it — This cycle goes on forever. The person who fails to adapt to the changes fails to balance. When you have a poor balance in life, nothing/nobody will be left with you at the end of your journey.
Looking back at it seems like you’ve failed even you are a winner. Hence, listen to your heart and try to communicate with people as much as you can. Life is a journey that goes on forever but when you travel in it with the people who care for you gives a meaning to it. Try not to make it a solo trip. It is not meant to be like that.
The true balance comes in life when you learn to listen to others and understand them. Seek to understand than to be understood.
Seek to understand….. to be understood — Stephen R Covey
You — Profession — Family — Friends — Strangers — Goal travelled towards — Goal — Life exists.
Final Mission Statement:
It seemed clear for me after experiencing me following all the above principles in my life. I learned to be consistent in my efforts, stayed focussed about what I want to do in life and what to eliminate, waiting for my chances to explain myself that how things need to go in life; patiently explained my subconscious to look for a solution to go further and then it pointed out to my poor decision-making skills. I improved in making better decisions by consistently focussing on my goal patiently. At last, balancing all 4 of those principles unlocked the doors to the purpose of my life to go on.
I just found out the whole mission statement of my life that
Building myself to be strong and to help build others their strength to stand up and fight for themselves by holding principles of being Consistent, Focussed, Patient and Decisive maintained with Balance.
Conclusion:
When I seem to go off track, I just started to write differently. I don’t want to write simply anything hence decided to work on myself by experiencing real things before writing something. All I tried with this article is to find myself a mission for life and this is like a reminder for my life that I am going to be what I visualize to become. Having a mission statement in everyone’s life is as important as eating bread every day.
Journey of thousand miles starts with a single step
— Lao Tzu
Happy reading, keep setting mission statements in your life and please let me know yours in the response. I’d love to read them. If you have a suggestion, you can find me: theharithsa@gmail.com
Always yours, Vishruth Harithsa
