Let’s say you’re feeling unmotivated, unsure of yourself, aimless, can’t find your passion, directionless, not clear on what your purpose in life is. You’re in good company — most people are in the same boat. Now, there about a million things online telling you how to find your passion in life, and that’s a good thing. It’s a search worth undergoing. I’m not going to give you a fool-proof method, or a 5-step method, nor share my passion manifesto with you today. I’m going to give you a one-step method. However, that one step is a doozy. The One Step to Finding Your Purpose It’s simply this: learn to get outside your personal bubble. Your personal bubble is the small world you live in (we all have one), where you are the center of the universe. You are concerned with your wellbeing, with not wanting to look bad, with succeeding in life, with your personal pleasure (good food, good music, good sex, etc.). This is the bubble we all live in most of the time, and people who say they don’t are trying to prove something. When someone tells you you look fat, this only hurts because you’re in your personal bubble. You take that statement (a colleague who says you look fat) and believe that it’s about you, and feel the pain or embarrassment of how the statement affects you. It matters a lot, because in your bubble, what matters most is how everything affects you personally. I’m the same way, and so is everyone else. Some other problems caused by this personal bubble: * In our bubble, we’re concerned with our pleasure and comfort, and try not to be uncomfortable. This is why we don’t exercise, why we don’t only eat healthy food. * This fear of being uncomfortable is also why we get anxious at the thought of meeting strangers. It hampers our social lives, our love lives. * Because we don’t want to look bad, we are afraid of failing. So we don’t tackle tough things. * We procrastinate because of this fear of failing, this fear of discomfort. * When someone does or says something, we relate that event with how it affect us, and this can cause anger or pain or irritation. * We expect people to try to give us what we want, and when they don’t, we get frustrated or angry. Actually, pretty much all our problems are caused by this bubble. Including the difficulty in finding our life purpose. But more on that in a minute — I ask for your patience here, because this is important. What Happens When We Get Out of the Bubble If we can learn to get outside this personal bubble, and see things from a less self-centered approach, we can see some amazing things: * When someone says or does something, it’s not really about us — it’s about pain or fear or confusion they’re feeling, or a desire they have. Not us. * When we have an urge for temporary pleasure (TV, social media, junk food, porn), we can see that this urge is a simple passing physical sensation, and not the center of the universe. * We can start to see that our personal desires are actually pretty trivial, and that there’s more to life than trying to meet our pleasures and shy from our discomfort. There’s more than our little fears. Including: the pain and suffering of other people, and compassion for them. Compassion for all living beings. Wanting to make the world better. * We can tie our daily actions, like learning about how our minds and bodies and habits work, or getting healthy, or creating something, not only to our personal satisfaction and success (trivial things) but to how they help others, how they make the lives of others better, how they might lessen the suffering of others. We become less self-centered, and begin to have a wider view. Everything changes,