You might have had a ton of dreams as a child. “I want to be a scientist when I grow up!” or “I want to be a rock star when I grow up!”
But as you get older and your dreams start to seem a little less like long-term goals and more like imaginary fairy tales, you might stop believing in yourself.
Until eventually, you aren’t really sure what your purpose in life is at all.
Here’s the thing: you’re not alone.
In fact, you’re probably in the majority, as millions of people feel the same way. Unmotivated and aimless, with no real direction or source of passion in your life.
But just because you feel this way now doesn’t mean you have to feel this way forever.
Here is the soul searching you have to do to get your motivation back on its feet today.
Warning: it won’t be easy.
The Underlying Step to Discovering Your Life’s Purpose
Four words: Escape your personal bubble.
What does that mean?
It means to shake up your life and rock the boat.
Your personal bubble is the tiny corner of the universe from where you view the rest of the world: your own set of beliefs, routines, personal truths, and sources of pleasure.
This corner makes you feel amazing because you’ve spent all your life making it perfect.
You know all of your pleasure points and all of your pain points, and you’ve designed your bubble to only let in your pleasure.
But this bubble can suffocate you.
It limits your growth and traps you, making it difficult to cope with the life that exists beyond your bubble.
If someone insults you or points out a shameful truth about you— maybe that you have a bad addiction or a lazy work ethic—your gut reaction is to retreat to your bubble until you forget what was said.
We do this because it is so much easier to hide from the truth rather than to grow from it.
It takes less time, effort, and energy to ignore the world outside the bubble than it does to hide from it.
Your bubble is so influential to who you are and how you live your life that it can cause several problems, including:
- We can’t stand being uncomfortable, even if it is good for us. We don’t work out and we don’t watch our weight, because the slightest “bad” feeling is too much to deal with
- We fear meeting new people because we do not know how they will respond to us, turning us into social recluses
- We never try to do anything because we are too afraid of failing
- We put off important tasks and procrastinate until the last minute, to minimize the anxiety rather than deal with it
- We don’t know how to deal with rejection and are emotionally stunted as a result
So many of life’s major issues are caused by living in your own bubble. So what can we do to change this?
Getting Out Of Your Bubble
This might be one of the hardest things you will ever have to do.
Don’t expect it to be easy—keep at it even if you fail, fail, and fail again, because it will make you grow as a person. The 4 steps involved in escaping your bubble are:
1) Self-awareness:
When you feel negative emotions, ask yourself—is this caused by your own bubble? Is my negativity a rational response, or one driven by fear and discomfort?
2) Expand:
When you become aware that you are responding from within your bubble, it’s now time to fix that reaction.
Instead of drawing back in, it’s time to expand. Expand your heart as well as your mind. Put yourselves in others’ shoes. See the situation objectively, without the filter of your bubble.
3) Be Genuine:
Learn to love those around you. Wish the best for them, and try to help them work for their happiness, the same way you want to work for yours.
The battle for happiness isn’t a struggle with those around you; it’s a struggle with yourself.
4) Act:
There’s more to it than just “thoughts and prayers.”
You have to act — find out how you can help those around you. Even if this help is as simple as just being there; sometimes, that’s more than enough.
Repeat these things daily, and slowly but surely you will leave your bubble behind. One day you will wake up and remember who you were when you were stuck in your bubble, and you won’t remember that person at all.
