Chapter 5: what do you really want?

The purpose of life

What is the purpose of life? That was the question I stumbled upon a year now and since then I was thinking about it constantly. How not to waste your life? How to live it properly? As I was looking for answers one thing started to pop-up more and more: regret. Live in a way so that when you die you won't have regrets because you did some things and didn't do others, like working a few more hours instead of spending some time with your family, or staying at a job you hate and that makes you feel tired all the time instead of choosing another job, maybe being paid less, but having a lot of time to spend with your family or on your hobbies.

Simon Sinek says in his book "Leaders eat last" that it worse to stay at a job you don't like than not even having a job. It makes you much less happy and, believe it or not, the stress is bigger.

So how to be happy? First of all, what does it mean to be happy? Every one of us is different and different things will make us happy. However, there a couple of things that make most of us happy. Most of us will be happier with a job that pays less, but having lots of spare time instead. Most of us will be happier if we made a small amount of money from a job we enjoy than making a lot of money from a job we hate.

Here is my ideal of a happy person: someone who eats just to calm down his hunger and not because the food is delicious and he wants more of it. He doesn't care about the taste. He eats because it's a things everyone must do in order to survive. Someone that has a passion that drives him each and every day. He likes to work on it so much he sometimes forgets to eat or stays too late at night because he wants to work on it so much. Most of the time he goes to bed because he's tired and can't operate at maximum capacity and not because he wants to take a break. If you were to forbid him from doing that thing he'll be devastated and most probably get depressed.

I don't take days off from running because I am tired or because I want to take a break from running. I take days off to avoid getting injured so that I don't have to take months off. Find something that would be as important for you as running is for me.

Experiment. Don't jump to conclusions too quick and give a chance to the things you think you hate doing as well. In the end, you will find your thing, and when that will happen, you will be truly happy. Just take care of yourself because it's hard to enjoy things if you are unhealthy, physically or mentally.

In the end it comes down to not having regrets when you die, because that is for sure, the biggest pain you can have: the regret of not having a life of your own and not making the most of it because of being afraid of being judged or not being disciplined enough to make a change.

I can guarantee you that having a job you hate, working with people you dislike won't make you happy no matter the amount of money you make. I can guarantee you that you'll be happy if you can make money from your passion no matter how little you make.

Your life is up to you. What kind of life would make you happy? Sure, a beach party is fun once in a while but it becomes boring really quick. And being bored is what we dislike the most whether we realize it or not. Being bored is the ultimate form of unhappiness. If you have a job you hate you can try to find another one or learn to not care about it too much and make the most out of your free time. But if you have a lot of money, nothing to worry about, and nothing to do you'll start to question yourself: what was all of this effort for? Is this really what I wanted? I don't have to worry about anything, so why am I so unhappy?

I don't say that you shouldn't want money. I am not saying that it is bad to not have to worry about anything financial-related. All I'm saying is that having money shouldn't be your goal, but a side effect of you working on your goal. If you make money by doing something you like, you'll be happy. If you work just for the sake of earning more money you won't. It's as simple as that.

Engaging in the creative process

Before talking about creativity let's make sure we know what we are referring to as creativity. Creativity is the ability to find solution that the majority of can't find, and at the same time, to find a solution that has a use. There are not that many people that are creative, that is, people that find solutions to problems that few people, if any, find. If you are a creative person you must understand that finding the solution is getting you about 5% through the way to success. If you are creative, coming up with a new product or service is the easiest part. The hard part is actually selling them. The hardest thing is getting your first customer. The second hardest thing is getting your second customer. The more customers you have, the easier it gets to get new ones.

You don't need to be creative to be successful. McDonalds is not the first company, nor the only one that sells burgers. Selling burgers is not a revolutionary idea. They don't even need to have the best burgers. All they need is knowing how to sell, and they know how to do it pretty well.

Did you ever had a great idea, but didn't write it down and forgot it after a while? Where did that idea come from? Often we have great ideas when we least expect it, like in the shower, as it happened to me, when I decided to write this book. There is a saying that "million dollars ideas come at 3 AM". That doesn't mean that you have to stay until 3 AM so that you come up with an idea. It is all about the random nature of these ideas. These ideas are a product of our minds wandering. Our brains are problem-solving machines. Give the brain a problem and it will try to solve it, so, after a while, an idea is born. But it's not that straight-forward. First of all, we must believe that there is a solution to this problem. If you give your brain a problem that you believe is unsolvable, it won't even bother to solve it. Second, there is consistency. Our brain solve the problems that are the most important for us, that is, problems related to what we are thinking about at the moment. That's the logic of the brain: if you are thinking about something, than it must be something important, otherwise, why would you think about it. If you think about your new hobby only once a week and think about something else, for example, the new phone that came out, every day, then it's common sense that your brain won't give you any solutions to improve at your hobby. If you are so obsessed about something that you can't even fall asleep then your brain will produce plenty of ideas. Not all of them will be good. Most probably there would be hardly any good ideas, but the important part is that now you have ideas, and from time to time you even have good ideas.

John C. Maxwell talks about a period of incubation. First you think about something for a while. It can be a couple of days or a couple of months. After that you stop thinking about it for a while to let it go through the process of incubation. That way you are letting the idea develop in your head subconsciously. Then you come back to the idea with a fresh view and see the things that you missed first time. An explanation for this is that we often develop an idea by going on a path, by following a line of thoughts. When we come back after a while, we have a bird's-eye view of the idea and stop mistakes and misunderstandings easier. Some of the greatest minds in the history of mankind liked taking really long walks. That way they let their minds wander freely and come up with new ideas.