If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts recently, you know that I’ve been reading through Joshua Kennon’s blog, and by that I mean starting at his first post and gradually working my way to his current one. Being one of the best blogs out there, it felt like a good time to reflect on an important concept.
Purpose and Time
In our life, we have a ticking countdown clock that subtracts one day at a time towards our life expectancy - shouldn’t we do our best at making each of those days count? The answer is pretty obvious. How can we?
Joshua’s Blogs:
I’ve written about goals and resolutions in the past on my site, and Josh has written about defining a purpose on his. Let’s start with Joshua’s.
Summary:
In a nutshell, Josh recommends defining your purpose and life goals, using them to make decisions on how to use your time. He believes that the process and relationships in your life are most important, in addition to making an impact on the world for you and your family. Also, he insists on living your life as a good person with high moral values.
An example of a main life goal: “Development deep relationships with people I admire, trust, respect, and care for.”
It’s an awesome way to view and make decisions for your life.
Have an event invite that you aren’t sure you want to take time to go to?
**Ask yourself, is this inline with any of my life goals or purpose? ** If the event is i line, then decide the priority of it on other items fighting for your time that day. If it doesn’t fit into them? Say no and feel no regret or bad vibes from it.
Finding your purpose:
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/what-do-you-want-out-of-life/
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/the-secret-to-getting-what-you-want-in-life-is-to-know-where-you-want-to-go/
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/some-things-in-life-shouldnt-have-a-price-tag/
Goals:
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/mapping-out-your-main-life-goals-and-your-lesser-life-goals/
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/mail-bag-does-focusing-on-your-own-happiness-make-you-selfish/
Success:
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/to-be-more-successful-focus-on-high-impact-activities/
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/is-your-life-a-success-the-one-question-that-can-help-you-determine-the-answer/
Measure the right things:
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/make-sure-measure-right-things-life/
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/the-10-second-test-that-can-help-you-know-if-you-will-be-happy-in-10-years/
Days:
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/the-average-person-lives-27375-days-make-each-of-them-count/
- https://www.joshuakennon.com/everything-in-life-has-an-opportunity-cost/
My Blogs:
- Forget Resolutions, Make Goals!!
- Is the Inheritance Cycle Relevant to the 2016 New Year? I really believed in defining long term life goals, then each year creating smaller projects that get you to closer to those long term goals. This leads me to a combo theory of having purpose, main goals, and smaller goals to live the life we’re happy with.
Combined Goal Theory:
Purpose and Main Goals:
I agree with Josh on this one. We should define long term overarching goals we ultimately want to achieve in our lives.
This helps to decide on our time and give meaning to the lives we live each day.
To me, these can be more vague like the example above for relationships (purpose). It doesn’t include a certain number of people to develop relationships or define a certain amount of friends, but still gives direction on where you want to go, or they can be more specific for income or business oriented goals.
Both mean defining solid long term ambitions that will get you to the “I’ve lived the life I want, it was wonderful” at the end of your widget countdown.
Secondary Goals or Annual:
Life changes WAY too much for me to really decide on distinct secondary goals.
Are there a few? Definitely.
I want to write a book one day and learn a new language. Secondary goals can be flexible. They change as you learn more about yourself and more about what makes you happy. By defining your main goals (for example say you want a specific amount of income per month), you can tie secondary goals into them.
Learning a language could earn you a pay raise or you can get royalties from a book you write.
If you know what you want to have eventually, then each year we can find ways to enjoy life, find purpose, and achieve through our secondary goals.
Further, small goals can be unrelated to main goals. It’s your life, we both believe in making decisions that result in living it the best you can.
Setbacks:
Life throws curve balls and sometimes a Luke Cage binge happens too.
I think this is fine - if it wasn’t life would be BORING. I’m in the grind hard, do your best, and relax to enjoy life sometimes camp.
The relaxation leads towards a better grind, only if you choose grinding more often than not. Eric Thomas preaches consistency and giving 120% towards your goals. I mean how many people do you know wake up at 3:00 am every day? Listening to his podcast and the stories from his business team, the guy is incredible!!
He’s had setbacks, he doesn’t let them define his life, contrarily, they are used for motivation to grind even more! You can too!