The Importance Of Having A Purpose In Life

Every human exists in the world live with their own reason. In order to fulfil their own meanings, people must have a purpose to serve as their guide in life, giving them a reason to live their lives. Said guide may very well be a significant deal like trying their hardest to achieve their dreams, or even trivial things like managing their behaviours. Meanwhile, difficulties related to the purpose of life has become a common issue among people of all ages as they do not know why they are living in this world just to repeat the same things every single day, and the worst issue is that majority of them had never think about their purpose of life. Khoshaba (2012) has stated that the common cause of suicide is due to the fact that they have experienced a basic and comprehensive breakdown of their own value, the very meaning of their existence, causing them to not able to make sense of life to give it a meaning. Therefore, it is important for a person to find their purpose in life. This essay will uncover the problem regarding why people cannot find their purpose in life and the solutions for the problem.

The problem that many people face is that they are going through their lives without fully acknowledging what they should do for the rest of their lives. According to a survey done by Survelum Public Data Bank, approximately 55% of the respondents are not sure or do not even know what their purpose of life is. In fact, they are living someone else’s life. People always follow their friends’ or families’ decisions and perceived it as their ‘success path’. To be clear, what a person loves might not be exactly what someone else feels passionate about. Without a clear purpose, people will always feel lost, empty, and misdirected from their path because of other things. Napoleon Hill once said, “There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it”. People have to choose only one direction and move towards it, thus constantly improving themselves without getting distracted by other insignificant things. Therefore, it is crucial to find the right purpose in order to live a fulfilling and meaningful life.

The first resolution is by carrying out and implement “Future Funeral Game”. First, imagine that 10 years later you are very successful, but unfortunately you died. During your funeral, 10 people whom you loved, cared or respected the most attended. Next, each of them are given a chance to describe you, in which their descriptions should start with “He could. . . ”, ”He is a. . . ”,” He always. . . ”, and jot down all their descriptions. After that, identify your value based on their descriptions of you. Values are what one sees as an importance in the way they work and live their lives. For example, if someone described you as a rich man, your value is wealth. From their descriptions, list down 5-10 different values to find out what are the things that really matters to you. Lastly, quantify your values to make your aim clearer. For instance, if your value falls into the influence category, state how many people you want to influence this month or how many books you want to write this year in order to influence people. By doing this, your purpose of life will eventually surface. Purpose of life is closely related to the existance of values, thus, the “Future Funeral Game” can be used to find out the purpose of life.

The next solution is by applying “trigger moments” throughout the day. Brendon Burchard (2015) proposed the “trigger moments” which acts as a reminder for a person to take action immediately. To be clear, successful people plan their day in such a way that they would end the day in a successful manner. High performers construct better habits, strategies, and routines to get them back into the game when they get off track in order to keep them going. This is done by constantly stimulating oneself to keep working on so that no time is wasted in futility. Hence, applying “trigger moments” may inspire someone by giving positive motivations to keep track of someone’s progress. People can imitate this way by setting up alarms on their alarm clock, watch and smartphone. Apart from stimulating oneself to keep working, “trigger moments” can also be used to remind someone to take rest. People can walk further as rests help the brain to think more effectively, and subsequently increases one’s productivity. Even if our brain is in a state of rest – when we are not directly focused on a task, it is still very well active, carrying out its “default network” to plug problems away, examine and dish out possible solutions, as well as looking for new information.

Viktor E. Frankl stated that “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose”. Without a purpose, people may lose their vision all along with the journey of life. Therefore, Future funeral game and trigger moments are some of the few outstanding ways to assist people to find their purpose of life.