I am very happy to share this guest article “4 Benefits of Living a Purposeful Life” with you. It was written by Moiz from Lesocialpost.com. Find out more about the author at the bottom of the article. Thank you Moiz for this powerful and upflifting article!
Imagine two armies fighting in the battle ground: One is fighting for a cause or an idea they believe in strongly. The second one is fighting just for money or as part of their jobs.
Which one do you think will fight with greater intensity and zeal?
Of course the first one. The soldiers in that case tie their individual fate to that of the cause and the idea. They are willing to die for it. Even those who are less enthusiastic would be carried away in the group spirit. The soldiers will be more unified, disciplined and creative. Overall, the cause and idea multiplies their force and gives them an edge over the other army. The stronger the connection to the cause, the higher the spirit of the soldiers which will ultimately result in greater force.
Same is the case in the battle of real life.
Those who have a high sense of purpose multiply their forces. Their life is governed by a central idea and purpose which guides them in all their actions. They are less prone to being distracted and have high chances of bouncing back from failures and adversities, due to the emotional attachment with their purpose. In a world where most people are meandering, they become sources of motivation and people want to imbibe their spirit.
After this brief introduction to the overall significance of having a purpose in life, let us list 4 most important benefits of living a purposeful life.
1. You don’t get bored
If you are living a purposeless life, it’s most probable you are in a line of work that does not correspond to your actual interests. What is the result? The result is that after some years you’ll increasingly feel bored and dissatisfied. Consequently, you’ll turn to various distractions to feel alive and forget about the pain and boredom. It might lead you self-destructive tendencies like drugs, violence etc.
Such moments of distraction may help you forget about your pain but whenever you are alone, you’ll experience the “chronic boredom that is motivating most of your actions”. Ultimately, the only thing that drives your actions in these cases is a desire to forget about the reality.
Contrarily, if you have a purpose, you are extremely less likely to feel bored. A purpose is something we are emotionally attached to, a desire that comes from deep within.
This emotional attachment and desire is like an engine that constantly drives us to work towards pursuing our purpose.
This helps us embrace all kinds of negative emotions, boredom and tedium with open arms because we know these are just hurdles we have to cross to get to the top of the mountain. We do not crave for distractions because we no longer feel bored as we are pleasantly absorbed in our work. We develop the ability to focus deeply and with such focus comes momentum. We retain what we absorb because we are engaged emotionally.
2. You don’t feel insecure
If someone is living an aimless life, he/she is highly vulnerable to feeling insecure. Why? It’s because aimlessness always results in lower accomplishments. By that, I mean if you keep your head straight and focus on one thing for a long time, even with limited natural talent you can acquire a mastery of the skill. This ultimately results in some form of achievement in your field which gives you immense satisfaction.
However if you are aimless, you inevitably wander here and there most probably changing jobs and fields very often. This way you can no longer truly master a filed. We become increasingly aware of the discrepancy between our dreams and reality. Without any solid accomplishments, we might become envious of others who have them. Ultimately our ego becomes brittle and places us in a trap. We become too fragile to take criticism. As you know learning requires admitting that we don’t know some things, but if we are insecure it’s almost impossible for us to do so. Thus our learning process stops.
On the other hand, if we are living a purposeful life with a clear sense of our goal, we become immune to any insecurities. We have an overall sense that we are moving slowly, with baby steps towards realizing our potential, which is a source of immense satisfaction. As we move, at every step we are achieving something, however small, which is great for our self-esteem. Here are some examples:
- We are getting things done
- The only person we are comparing ourselves with is the person we see in the mirror
- We focus more on the work itself and its quality than what other people might think
- We distinguish between sincere and toxic criticism
Moreover, a sincere attachment to our purpose and a desire to improve creates an inner resilience which enables us to take criticism constructively and bounce back from any failures and downfalls. Plus, our sense of self-worth comes from within and not from others.
We know who we are and this heightened sense of self-awareness becomes our anchor in life.
3. You can manage anxiety better
As you know, life inevitably involves obstacles and difficulties. But if you don’t have a purpose in life, you will inevitably develop an attitude of avoiding pain and difficulty in life. As the only way to get rid of pain is getting used to it by increasing your threshold of pain, and realizing the fact that pain in fact comes to teach you stuff and broaden your horizon. Without a purpose in front of us we are unable to learn these things.
Consequently, whenever we are under pressure of completing a project or meeting a deadline, we become anxious. On the other hand if we have a purpose, we can turn anxiety and stress into productive emotions. You must know that in trying to reach our goals e.g. writing a book, establishing a business, you have to manage a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty, making daily decisions on what to do.
As this is something we want to do, we learn in the process to control our levels of anxiety as it becomes a daily practice. If we think too much about how far we go we might feel overwhelmed, instead we focus on smaller goals along the way while also retaining a degree of urgency. We develop an ability to regulate or anxiety enough to keep us going but not so much as to paralyze us.
When living a purposeful life, we also become more tolerant of stress. In fact, we humans are built to handle stress. Our minds become more active under pressure with a pumping adrenaline. In moments of depression, we have something to cling to, our purpose. We know we are heading towards a goal and if we stop, we won’t get there. We have a responsibility.
We are contributing to something much larger than ourselves. Such affirmations can get you out of the worst bouts of depression.
4. You don’t get distracted as easily
And last but not the least, the biggest benefit of living a purposeful life is that you don’t get distracted.
Or you can say, it’s very hard to distract you.
Think of it this way. A fast train is marching towards its destination with full speed. Beautiful lush green plains, magnetic rivers and stream, and other marvellous scenery, come along the way but are unable to sway the train or its passengers from their goal. It’s so focused on its goal that it seems impossible to distract it from that.
The same thing is the case with a person who has a goal and purpose in his mind.
He charges ahead like a train and petty distractions on the way cannot stop and lure him. Even if something tries to block his way he ignores it and keeps moving.
About the author:
Moiz is writer and owner of a blog (lesocialpost.com). He has always been passionate about history and psychology. His utmost effort is to distil timeless principles about self-development from ancient and modern streams of knowledge. He is passionate about contributing to society by bringing peace and harmony to his readers. Success with satisfaction is is his primary goal for his readers. Learn more about him by heading over to his blog.
No Comments