The Goal Of Life (Embracing The Journey Of Self-Improvement)

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

I don't know if this ever has happened to you recently,

But I think it happens to a lot of people throughout their lives.

They wake up,

They're doing something,

They stop and they ponder,

What is the purpose of all this?

Why am I here?

I remember once meeting a man and having a conversation with him.

We started talking about the purpose of life.

He said he never thought about it.

He could not think of one time in his entire life where he asked,

What was the meaning of life about?

I thought,

Wow.

Or as distinctly opposite as humanly possible,

Because I ask that question a lot.

I can't actually remember a time in my life where I didn't ponder that.

Throughout my life,

I've wondered,

What is our purpose of life?

It's been at the forefront of my thoughts throughout my life,

And yet this man never once thought about it,

At least that he could remember.

So obviously,

We have different approaches to,

What is our purpose of life?

Throughout the ages,

Philosophers,

Theologians,

And everyday people have pondered its meaning,

Offering a diverse and often conflicting answers.

Is it to find happiness,

Achieve success,

Leave a lasting legacy?

What is our purpose?

If you're interested,

At the end of this podcast,

I will discuss what I think the answer to this question is.

I may be completely wrong,

But often I've learned over the course of doing these podcasts that people want to know my opinion on things.

So if you stick around to the end,

I will share what I think the purpose of life is from my perspective.

Well,

The good news is we have had some really wise people throughout the ages sharing what they think the purpose of life is.

And more recently,

Science has looked at what makes a good life.

Maybe it isn't the purpose of life,

But they've learned about people that do well in life have certain traits.

So let's talk about these two approaches to finding our purpose of life.

Most of the people around the world have a religious propensity.

They believe that certain things are true and they have their faith.

And I definitely believe within our faith tradition,

We can find meaning and purpose of life.

But where it gets convoluted is that we're not taking the best of it.

We're taking more what feeds our ego instead of saying what's really deeply good.

So let me just for a moment,

Pick on my own Western tradition around the world.

Christianity has done a lot of good things,

But it's done a lot of things that aren't so good.

Like we have the Ku Klux Klan here in the United States that came out of Christianity,

But it's based upon prejudice.

There was a Spanish Inquisition that really did a lot of harm to people because it had a propensity that really wasn't based on the true tenets of faith.

It was based upon their wanting power and control.

So a lot of times our faith can definitely,

Definitely lead us on the path of finding purpose.

But we have to be careful because sometimes we look for things that feed our ideas.

For example,

If you ever heard of David Caress or Jim Jones,

These were both religious leaders who led people down a very dark path where he ended up dying and killing people based upon religion.

So I think when it comes to finding purpose and meaning in life through our faith,

We have to find the best in our faith.

So for example,

Again within Christianity,

If you haven't heard of this man called Saint Francis of Assisi,

He's a good man.

He did some amazing things and worthy of imitation.

So we can find purpose in our faith,

But we have to do it wisely.

We have to say,

Am I making my life better and the people around me better by the choices I'm making with my faith?

And that's why I think purpose,

Finding it in our faith,

Can be very helpful.

But let's say we're not as religiously bent and we want to find purpose elsewhere.

Then we may turn to philosophy and say,

Okay,

What do the philosophers say?

And again,

We may embrace an existential approach.

We may find a lot of wisdom in Stoicism.

There's some really amazing philosophers out there that have a lot to teach us and we can learn about them.

But again,

We have to be wise.

We have to ask ourselves,

Is this improving who I am as a person?

And is it also,

I believe it's important,

Improving the lives of people around me through my belief tenet?

Now,

If we don't even want to go down that path,

Then we may choose more the scientific path.

And you may say,

What do you mean by that,

Dr.

Puff?

Well,

As psychologists,

We've really studied the healthiest people on our planet.

We often use the word self-actualization or peak experience or positive psychology.

You may have heard of those concepts.

And this is science looking at,

Okay,

What type of people have really good lives?

And we can study them and you can learn about them,

Explore and look at how do their lives look?

What habits do they have in place that I may want to emulate and then grow in that regard?

But the overarching theme,

Whether you're Buddhist,

Whether you're Hindu,

Whether you're atheist,

Whether you're agnostic,

Whether you're a positive psychologist,

Is saying,

How can I improve myself as a person?

I think this is a really good tenet for finding purpose in life.

Now,

The end result may look very different.

A Tibetan Buddhist monk living in a monastery,

Life may look very differently than that of a life of a Sufi mystic or of a Hindu sage.

We go down very different paths and our path may be being a wife or a husband or a student,

Whatever path we're on right now.

How do we find purpose in what we're doing?

And I think a lot of it has to do with doing what we do well,

Whatever we're doing,

Really finding the best of the best that we're capable of doing through other people's examples,

Through our studies,

Through our research,

And making finding purpose important.

I think when we put this aside,

Say,

Oh,

I just want to have fun.

I don't care what the purpose of life is.

I think that's a path of suffering because when we don't really reflect on our behavior,

We can make choices that lead us down a dark path.

For example,

I think a lot of very hard-working,

Smart students ending up getting to the university,

And when they get there,

Instead of focusing on their studies,

Preparing themselves for the future,

And perhaps even participating in good activities at school that may make the whole campus and our world a better place,

Go there to party and have fun.

And I'm not trying to necessarily attack that,

But is that our purpose of life at that stage of our life,

To party and have fun,

Or should we always be putting aside time and effort towards self-improvement,

Towards growth,

And looking at,

Are the choices I'm making today leading me down a path to improve my life,

Or to just party and have fun?

I think we have to be careful about that path.

Not that there's anything wrong with having fun sometimes,

But it's more about finding balance and saying,

Even with all the choices I'm making,

I want to see an overarching sense of purpose and goal of life.

And when I do that,

I'll find that my life goes better.

Because I think when we make it important to periodically ponder,

What is my purpose today?

What is my purpose in life?

We'll find that instead of numbing ourselves through our activities,

Like alcohol,

Or drugs,

Or sex,

Or all these things we do to numb ourselves to our life,

We'll embrace our lives and say,

Oh,

Yes,

I can improve in this area.

I can get better.

And I want to do that.

I want to find meaning and purpose,

Not only today,

But for the rest of my life.

I think where this gets complicated is because of control.

What I mean by that is,

There's so many things externally that we aren't in control over.

There's just so many different things that we have very little,

If any,

Influence on.

So we kind of give up and say,

What does it matter?

Is there any purpose of what I need to do?

I'm just going to live my life,

Have fun,

And that's enough.

But when we realize that the difference between what's external and what's internal,

A lot of things externally,

We can't control.

But many things internally,

We can.

We can control our response to things.

We can control the choices we make in response to things coming our way.

We can control our self-improvement.

We can't control other people growing around us and improving,

But we can improve ourselves.

We have control over that.

And we realize there's always things we have some control over.

Some of us have more than others,

More privileges,

More opportunities.

But overall,

We ultimately have the main source of control being ourselves.

That's what we can control.

We can't control other people.

And when we realize that,

We say,

Okay,

Where do my habits come from?

Then we realize that a lot of our habits come from our previous experiences.

And if we want to change ourselves,

We have to begin to do things differently.

So life is about understanding who we are,

What we're in control of,

And what we're not in control of.

But when we look for purpose,

I think it's important to look to people,

To look to philosophies,

Religions,

Psychologies that really help us make our lives better.

So that we say,

You know,

I am finding meaning in my life.

There have been so many wise people throughout history and who currently live that can teach us things,

That can help us grow,

That can be our mentors in life and help us improve who we are.

There's just in our world never been so many opportunities to learn from the wisest of the wise and say,

Okay,

How do I find purpose in my life?

Whether it's through my religion,

Whether it's through my philosophy,

Whatever it be,

But making our purpose important,

Making our goal of finding purpose essential part of who we are,

I do believe is important.

So I did promise at the beginning of this podcast to share what I believe to be our purpose as human beings,

Or at least mine,

Maybe not everybody's,

But it's mine.

And I think if we all did it,

It wouldn't be too bad either,

But I'll just share it as my purpose of life.

This is what I do each and every day that creates meaning and purpose in my life.

And it's three things.

The first one is I do really try to be the best version of who I am.

I try to grow.

I try to evolve.

I try to just keep getting better as a human being in every aspect of my life.

I mean,

I know as I get older,

I can't be as physically fit,

But I can still be healthy and work on that part spiritually.

I can work on being spiritually healthy and wise.

I can work on being mentally astute and aware.

There's just so many ways that I can improve myself as a person.

And I make that as one of my main goals of life,

To improve who I am each and every day and to keep seeing improvements until the day I die.

And that's a wonderful thing about self-growth.

We can do that to the day we die.

We never have to stop and we can keep getting better,

But it has to be our priority and it's mine.

And again,

I don't always do it perfectly,

But it is my priority.

That's number one.

Number two is be kind.

I work really hard at being kind.

I think this is one of my main purposes of life is to be kind towards everyone around me,

No matter what they do to me.

I think it's super important for me to always be kind.

I may set boundaries.

I know I have to do that sometimes,

But even then I'll do my best to do it kindly.

Again,

I don't succeed at this always,

But it is one of my top priorities and I work very hard at making sure that I'm kind.

And the third thing is,

Is play,

Is enjoying the journey of life.

I think that's one of our goals or it's my goal to each and every day say,

That was a good day.

I had fun.

I'm not talking about drunk play.

I'm talking about childlike play,

Where we see things,

We explore,

We laugh,

We cry.

We do things that just bring a smile on our hearts.

Play is an essential part of my life.

And yes,

I do things that are serious,

Like creating this podcast,

But I also play.

I think play is a very important part of life.

And that's why when I play well,

I find the happiness in my life is there.

And I realize no matter what's happening,

No matter how dark things can be externally,

I can always play.

There's just always something I can be with that's beautiful.

So I don't know what yours is,

What you find the purpose of life to be,

But I bet everyone would really like to hear,

Wherever you're listening to this podcast,

You can leave comments,

Share with us what you find is your purpose in life.

And if we do that,

We can help each other grow and learn and transform our lives into a better,

Healthier,

Good life.

So thank you for listening.

As you know,

One of my deepest beliefs is that we can all have a good life.

It does take work.

It does take effort,

But it's worth it.

Don't give up.

Don't throw in the towel.

Keep moving forward.

And I believe we'll all find,

If we work at it,

That life can truly be a beautiful adventure.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.