Are you often gripped by fear, doubt or anxiety? Are you wondering why you can’t find true peace?
You are probably still living with yourself as your main purpose. When your purpose is yourself you seek pleasure, relief, love, happiness, fulfillment, possessions, respect and recognition. Your life revolves around attaining these external things and you only feel validated when these things come your way. When these things do come your way you get good emotions of varying intensity, further strengthening your need and search for them. It is an addiction.
When you don’t get these things you feel deep disappointment. You feel that you are lacking in some profound way. You feel unworthy or just misunderstood.
When your purpose is you – when your purpose is accumulating experiences, feelings or possessions for yourself – all situations have the potential for robbing you of these things. If you do the wrong thing in a situation, you can lose possessions. You can be blocked from receiving love. You can be blocked from pleasure, fulfillment or happiness.
All situations that have the potential for gain or loss stimulate stress hormones. The little selfish boy or girl inside you might go into fight, flight or freeze mode. An example is when you meet some highly attractive person. It is a potential situation for increasing your chances of receiving love and pleasure. You want this person to validate and manifest your desires. If you make a fool of yourself, on the other hand, the word might spread. The ramifications might be detrimental to you reaching your purpose of getting all these things.
Or maybe you have to do a presentation. What are they thinking about you? If you say something wrong, how will this reflect on you? What will happen if your voice cracks up and your upper lip starts twitching? Will they think poorly of you?
You want to write a book or do some other project, but what if it makes you look like a fool? What if you’re not a good writer and no one will ever buy it. How does it reflect on you?
Because your purpose in these situations is you, you are gripped by fear and anxiety. Feelings of fear, anxiety and doubt give rise to anger, resentment and guilt. All these painful feelings are tough to bear.
Why should you have to feel like this?
Why not just give up?
You can easily deaden these feelings. You’re surrounded by methods of instant gratification, like Netflix marathons, watching cats on YouTube, sugary food or scrolling your Facebook feed.
Why not just give up and surrender?
You get some good feelings when you get this passive entertainment every time you’re reminded how fantastic humans can be; when the hero in the movie saves the day; when you experience love, happiness and fulfillment through the protagonist. But you’re also reminded of how painfully lacking you are. You feel guilt when you’ve binged on Netflix for 12 hours. Your focus is still you, despite using modern technology to deaden your feelings.
The shift happens when your purpose turns outside.
When your purpose is outside of yourself, situations stop being potential losses for you as a person. Fear and anxiety are biological responses to situations that potentially destroy your chances of getting what you want. But, if your purpose is not to gain something for yourself, you have nothing to lose. There is less fear, anxiety and guilt. Anger and hate does not arise.
Meeting a highly attractive person is no longer scary, when your purpose is outside yourself. If your purpose is to give love and not receive, you are focused on that person and not yourself. You are receptive to what the other person is feeling and their needs. You’re no longer wallowing in your own desires, fears and self-pity. You can tune into that other persons frequency and love them in a way that they are attuned to, by fulfilling their needs – not yours. When people feel loved – they want to return it. When they feel like just an object of desire, they recoil.
A presentation loses its fearful hold on you when your focus is no longer on how it reflects on you, but on the needs of your audience. If you have a genuine desire for your presentation to help all those people listening to you, you’re receptive to their needs. You’re no longer focused on feeling safe yourself – feeding your fear – but on the needs of your audience. You want them to feel safe. You want them to really understand what you’re saying.
Writing a book is no longer about how it will help you fulfill your desires. It is not about how it reflects on you. Now, you want to help people by writing this book. Writing is now about what emotions you can stir up in others – what insights they can gain. It is about their experience – not your results. There is no longer any thought about what if. “What if no one buys my book” is replaced with “at least I tried” and “I will keep trying”.
An outside purpose can be both small and large. It can be firmly within your grasp or something you need to reach for. The common denominator is that you do it for others. It might be to eradicate world hunger, bring education to the world, helping people reach their potential, helping people with mental issues, feeding the poor in your neighborhood, better the lives of livestock or helping your baby grow into a fantastic human being.
Having a purpose where you live for others will unleash your potential as a human being. It is no longer a zero sum game, where your feelings are either good or not and that’s it. Now, you can see the changes in others. You can see their smiles and take delight in their progress. Even when the results are not what you hope for, you can still take solace in that you are always taking steps for them.
*Check out our course “Master Your Inner Peace – Remain Positive and Unaffected”*
You’re only one person, but you’re a part of a whole. A purpose for yourself makes you feel disconnected from the rest of creation. A purpose for other reintegrates you into the whole. There is no longer an outside enemy that can rob you of your pleasures – you live for and through the outside. There is only the doing and the doing is for everything.
Living with yourself as your only purpose is a case of mistaken identify. You are not only your body and individual mind. We are all part of the same consciousness. This means that the next generation is you. Our bodies and minds will wither away, giving room for the coming generations. Your dreams, wishes and desires live on through them – and they are you.
G
P.S. Like us on Facebook to get daily inspirational boosts and updates.
The featured image is made by Julian Majin.
