Yeah,
I mean,
You know,
I think you're spot on.
I think somewhere along the way we just got a little lost thinking our purpose is about being someone or getting something.
Most people don't really have an idea about what their purpose in life is.
Even if I asked you right now,
Or anyone that's listening,
What is your purpose in life?
What is your purpose?
Seems such a simple question,
Right?
It's difficult to answer because we never really spend any time discovering who we are.
Now when was the last time you took an hour or two just getting to know you without any of the frills?
Now we know that building any sort of relationship with anyone takes time.
You can't just expect to know everyone instantly,
Right?
No one these days just gives up all their secrets on the first date.
Most people are holding back who they are as we're so scared of being judged.
We begin to play a character at the start,
You know,
That character is who we believe that person wants to see because that's the character we played so many times with so many other people,
All the way back to being a kid.
You know,
We never really played our character.
We played the character that other people wanted us to play.
Although I would question my kids,
They definitely seem to be playing their own roles.
But,
I mean,
In general,
This is the reason that so many relationships break down from the psychotherapeutic background.
I find that a lot of the people just get tired of playing the role that they never really wanted.
It's exhausting not being ourselves.
We start getting down because not only do we have to put the mask on at work,
But now around someone that we are supposedly in love with.
You know,
We have a different mask for them too.
So when we,
Just going back on that point again,
You know,
In particular,
People who think that they're spiritual and they have partners that aren't.
You know,
I see that so often,
So many men and women,
You know,
One of the two just don't understand why they're getting into meditation,
Why they're getting into yoga,
Why they're looking into trying to manifest some sort of spiritual existence,
You know.
And so when we come to get to know ourselves,
We realize we've just got so many masks,
So many roles,
So many characters,
We can forget actually who we are.
For example,
I used rugby as a way of getting through my depression for years.
You know,
I had an awesome group of lads.
There was a wonderful emotional release on a rugby pitch.
You know,
The image of being a rugby player really helped me distract myself from the hurt that I was feeling.
So I became the perfect rugby player,
Drinking,
Swearing,
Chauvinistic.
Now don't get me wrong,
I've met some of the most wonderful people I know playing rugby.
But I realized later on that all I was doing was distracting myself from who I was,
Who this thing inside the Dan Island puppet was.
This being was,
Well,
I guess,
Lost,
Completely lost.
I didn't have a clue who I was.
I had no purpose.
I didn't have a clue who I wanted to be.
No real purpose at all.
Apart from being a bit of an asshole corporate banker that enjoyed beating up blokes at the weekend and pissing off his girlfriends due to his own insecurity.
But I had no direction,
No idea.
I was lost.
So when I ask people about when they do their time alone or they do their alone time,
A lot of people just say that they do their alone time by walking the dog or going for a jog or going to the gym.
Now although a lot of people do these things,
They don't really do it to get to know themselves better,
But to escape from the reality that they've created for themselves.
They use the dog or the gym as an excuse.
Getting to know you better is about doing nothing other than exploring you.
Inquiry.
That's the way I was taught.
When do we explore our own mind,
Explore our emotions?
When do we really sit and find time to explore the truth in our own thinking,
In our own thoughts?
We never ask ourselves,
Is this what I really want or am I just trying to make others happy?
We never find out what we really want in life and hey,
Look,
It's okay to take the easy road.
It's a lot simpler.
We've created a culture out of distraction.
We've become the busy race.
I'm sure you've heard that many a time.
We're no longer the human race.
It's almost like we're in a race.
We've made busy our new norm.
When we aren't busy,
We're just feeling guilty about not being busy,
That we're letting someone down or some strange feeling that we get.
What we don't realize is that someone is ourselves.
We spend so much time being busy,
We don't end up knowing what we want in life.
I say we here as I was there.
I was busy distracting myself from hurt,
Feeling depressed from the characters I thought others wanted me to be.
When we don't know what we want in life,
We struggle to focus and we become unhappy and unfulfilled,
Living a life trying to find something else to just distract ourselves.
I guess you're wanting to know how we can improve it,
Right?
How we can begin to get to know ourselves better.
Start asking.
A great place to do this is during meditation.
The conversations we have have been so superficial and I place a 100% bet right now,
If you started to ask yourself questions,
We would end up following the same sort of path.
Because questions like,
How do I heal?
What do I truly want in life?
Who am I really?
Am I happy in this character that I'm playing?
These are tough questions,
Really tough questions.
We start with the superficial.
The only thing I would say in these superficial questions of ourselves is this idea of being honest.
There's no point lying to yourself anymore.
You want to start to live a life of purpose,
Then honesty has to be at the forefront.
And what I used to do when I wasn't,
I guess when I realized I wasn't being totally honest to myself,
I just gently pull myself up and say,
That's a lie.
Now expect your mind to want you to not do this as well.
When you do it,
It's going to say to you,
Nah,
Let's get out of here.
Stop wasting your time.
It'll tell you that you got a million other things that are 10 times more important than you,
Which is the biggest lie in the world.
And when you get up and listen to that voice that tells you that all this is a waste of time,
You will feel momentarily better if you listen to it.
Although your purpose,
Your meaning remains completely unanswered.
So spend some time meditating,
Find a good teacher,
Listen deeply,
And then start listening to you in the same way.
Get to know you better and start small.
Don't expect to know the meaning of life in a week,
But bring meaning to it.
You're doing something for yourself that could create positive ripples in a life that doesn't just affect you in a positive way,
But all those that are around you as well.
Now,
As Martin Luther King says,
Do small things in a great way.
Bye.
