We are meant to have a purpose outside the pursuit of our pleasure and personal goals.
This is not just an idea. It’s biological. Your unique purpose is something wired into you genetically on many levels.
Your brain is designed to fire up, go to work when you are attempting to do something hard or different. Dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter, plays a big part in regulating motivation. It literally gets produced to keep you going toward good outcomes and steering away from bad outcomes. Memory is a function of the brain designed primarily to keep you from repeating bad choices or moving toward more good choices.
God so wants to help you get where he’s planned for you to go that he built your body to provide clues and even interventions. Of course, if you break the system, it won’t operate properly.
People who don’t seek a purpose become pitiful.
You know many of them. They are like baby ducks or any animal without a mother, they imprint on others. They will cling to them, try to be like them, and seek their care and energy. This can be seen in obsessive social media following. Instead of living and pursuing their own purpose, they scroll and tap on those that look to be enjoying life.
Get good at something, anything.
What are you good at? You may have no idea. But just for fun, quickly list 30 things that you might be good at, if you practiced. They might be things you want to be good at. Now, pick your top 5. Next, pick one thing that you are willing to put some effort toward getting good at. Move toward that one thing in whatever way possible. Take just 5 minutes right now.
This idea is well articulated by Dr. Jordan Peterson. He offers a simple work-book approach to figuring out what you might want to do with your life. It’s called Future Authoring. Check it out.
That people just party their way through their 20s and then after 30 show up to a wonderful life is a lie.
If someone you saw at the party ends up with a great life, it means they were doing a lot more than partying along the way. Think of your life as a pyramid. Pursuing purpose(s) must be at the top, like 75 percent of your time and energy. Twenty percent should be about taking care of yourself physically, mentally, spiritually. That leaves 5 percent for the party. You won’t regret keeping your pleasure seeking in balance with the rest of your life. You might begin to find peace and even pleasure in the other 95 percent.
You often can’t see the real person you’re giving yourself away to because you are focused on the idea of that person.
Maybe the object of your affection or obsession is cool, accomplished. Maybe you think being with him will make some of that greatness rub off on you. Life does not work that way, thank God. It’s true that you act like those you hang around with but you still are responsible for your actions and outcomes. You must be filled with your own purpose. The overflow is what you have to give and what will attract others to you. If you are pursuing God, the Holy Spirit will have your life. Then you will be a mighty force in the world.
Get up and go for the purpose of allowing the master sculptor to work on the masterpiece that is you.
Get going. Practice something you want to get good at. Take a risk that might have real reward. Hunt down your purpose not the next party or some pleasure. You are still mostly just like the stone a sculptor brings into the studio. The shape is in there. Either you let him shape you into something beautiful or the enemy will keep carving away, leaving nothing but a marred version of the intended best you.
The enemy works to destroy and diminish the quality of the stone. God sees the potential, the end in his eye since before you were born. He knows where to sand and where to cut to bring out the real beauty because that’s his plan. He wants your best. The world will make you another casualty, another lost soul on the heap.
You must be selfish and fearless in a sense.
Time is one of your greatest assets. Use your time to build from the raw materials God has provided. Be vicious with protecting it. Refuse to be a lemming for marketers or the enemy or anything but your purpose. God will protect and guide you, if you dedicate yourself to living like this for his glory not yours.
Are you begrudgingly acknowledging a dislike for the emptiness you feel?
There’s a vapid nature to the life spent chasing pleasure. Read Ecclesiastes 2 and 3.
The next step that leads to real freedom is seeing that you aren’t giving up anything worth while by rearranging the pyramid of your life. You are taking your life back from the enemy who comes only to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Real pleasure, real relationships will come when you get the percentages right. Stop trying to dress up like a cool person and be one. Stop being a phony anything. Throw away all the masks. Focus on your purpose, and the real you will come out to play.