Purpose Hunting

[GrandizerII]

Don't try too hard to find your purpose. It's not something that you have to discover. Just go with the flow and continue to enjoy your life, pursue what interests you and spend as much time with the people you love.

Any search for purpose or meaning or identity is misguided. You are you, and that's all you need to accept.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^This.

Boru

[FrustratedFool]

Sadly, that approach isn't enough for me. If it was, I wouldn't look for something else.

[zwanzig]

They're for suckers, mostly, it seems to me.  Like every self-help book and lecture in my experience.  I guess I went through so many for the same reason I buy lottery tickets: irrational hope borne of desperation and manipulated by grifters.  Reminds me of religion.

I can feel that. After I did the motivational interviewing and life mapping stuff, realizing after several hours poured into it over several days that it was not FOR me, I felt like I wasted my time. But...in the way that I also feel like colouring in a colouring book or reading in the bath feels like a waste of time to me. I have a hard time relaxing, letting go, and I desire to feel productive all the time. ...but that sometimes ends up with my body zapping me of energy or making me sick so I am literally forced to rest. So, in actuality, despite being an artist(and very cynical about it on top of that), I sometimes engage in the occasional colouring book with markers r pencils, filling in someone else's lines.

Objectively, yes, I did just waste time. I can't show it off to anyone and be proud of filling in lines I didn't draw with colour. And I wasted materials on this thing that nobody will see and I'm not proud of. However, for 20-30 minutes, I listened to music and let myself fucking BREATHE and unwind, while engaged in an activity adjacent to my gifts and work. So, in that way, it wasn't truly a waste of time. My uptight butthole getting unclenched for a bit and my heart probably thank me.

So, occasionally, I'll get bit by a wild hare and need to reinvent my life or try something new to keep the existential dread at bay and I'll pick up a philosophy or method from a help help guru for a couple months. And yes, I almost always end up realizing that the methods either don't work or are not geared towards me. But it often comes as a kind of "reboot" of my system where I walk away settling on my own takeaways from whatever I was immersed in. I think I sometimes need to have my pity party, then beg for someone to give me some pointers, and then cut them off with, "No. That was dumb. You're wrong. But I know what I need to do and I feel better now."

[Angrboda]

I found that once I stopped being depressed, I worried less about such things.

[FrustratedFool]

And how did you stop being depressed?

Edit: it makes good sense, though. After all, if I was a healthy and popular billionaire effortlessly gliding from one pleasant adventure to the next, what need would I have for a sense of meaningfulness? Maybe meaningfulness is consolation; an opiate for the poor and sick to help ensure pain and boredom.

[Angrboda]

I don't know. It just happened.

[FrustratedFool]

I don't know. It just happened.

Fair enough. Can't argue with luck.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The whole notion of self help is bizarre. If you’re using methods devised by some else to sort yourself out, that’s not ‘self’ help - that’s just…help.

Boru

[zwanzig]

The whole notion of self help is bizarre. If you’re using methods devised by some else to sort yourself out, that’s not ‘self’ help - that’s just…help.

Boru

Pffft! Right. In the same way if you get a book or watch a video for a DIY project, then it cancels out you "doing it yourself" because now you're "doing it with instruction".

Self help refers to "I probably should be going to therapy but I think I'll stay home and try to fix it by myself.... With instructions."