Finding your purpose and building your ideal life

Finance & Fury Podcast

Welcome to Finance and Fury. In the last episode we talked about finding meaning in life, even in the worst of possible situation. That topic leads in nicely with purpose, which we will be covering in this episode.

1. As Finding a purpose gives life additional meaning – and having fulfilment in life through having meaning helps to fuel a purpose – which further fulfils meaning – quite a symbiotic relationship – But to build on this purpose and work towards this, goals are also important -

But Finances are important – which can also be seen in the concept of resources – as cash/money is a medium of exchange to purchase resources, or other investments – either way, having infinite resources or money without purpose or meaning is worthless –

1. What is the point of having millions of dollars if you have no reason to wake up every day?
2. Most of us don’t find ourselves in this position – but if we have no financial means, or resources, then fulfilling our purposes can be harder – finding meaning can still be achieved if you have no money or place to live, but unfortunately, the way that society is structured does require some means of resources to cover the outflows for living – even if you buy some land outright, you still need to pay rates
3. So, what financial goals are you working towards to have enough to achieve your end goal – as well as maintaining purpose and having meaning in life?
   1. This is not just about being able to accumulate investment or make money, but be happy along the way and feel like you are fulfilling your purpose and find meaning is waking up every day –
      1. The journey to financial independence is a long road for most people, so having something to work towards and enjoying the journey allows you to actually wait it out – rather than work for 2 years and then start to hate your working life – life is about the journey, not the destination
   2. How do you go about this? Find your purpose – and find some career where you can generate an income to direct toward financial resources to build towards financial independence – how do you achieve this? Get some goals in place

First step, if you don’t already know what it is – is to figure out what your purpose is – this is the path that will give you guidance

1. It is important to find your purpose as if you don’t know what you want, it is impossible to get it.
2. ‘what is the meaning of life?’ – I actually see this as a rather silly question – as there is no one overall meaning to life, if this is considered to be our collective existence, except to exist and eventually die
   1. But there is a meaning to your life – at the individual level and family level – we each have desires and goals, which go towards forming our own individual meaning towards our existence – Therefore, you just need to find your purpose and live up to your potential in achieving this – this actually goes back to last week’s episode – because state and politicians do try to give the perception that there is a collective purpose for a whole society that will fill everyone with meaning -
3. you need to decide what you want and what is important. You have to Be clear why you are here!
4. To do this – you have to look at what you want – not what others want
   1. When we are younger and getting out of school, we are often looking for meaning and some direction in life – we have very strong influences from either our school, parents or friends in what direction we take
   2. At lot of this has to do with programming in life – where we simply follow in the path of what is easily laid out in front of us – so this slowly changes our real purposes to conform to the new social norms or what is set out in front of us. This leads to taking actions in life which will get the approval of others rather than ourselves
   3. We are told from childhood the word ‘no’ and ‘don’t do that’. While this was said to help protect us, it has led to crushing dreams.
   4. While conformity has been important in evolution (by not sticking out and getting ousted by the tribe), it has lead into conforming to a normal level of life or living someone else’s dreams.
   5. This is why you need a reason to get out of bed in the morning which is your purpose. If you have this purpose, something to work for, you will be successful and happier along the way.
5. So – how do you find out what your purpose is? – if you don’t know, to figure this out requires a bit of brain storming.
   1. It requires the creation of a list – where you need to write some lists of things that are important in your life. At financeandfury – there is a workbook which can help – but this has 3 columns:
      1. I care about, What I am great at, I love doing – try to write 20 things for each: total of 60
      2. The more the merrier – doesn’t have to be something big, more = more brainstorming
   2. beside each one put a plus or minus against it – if you really enjoy or are great at = put a plus against it.
      1. something that you just put in there to make up the numbers, put a minus sign against it.
   3. From those from each list – select the top 2 with plus signs against them – put them in the below this
      1. This will leave you with 6 things in total.
   4. You might find that the things you are great at are the things that you love doing, because you care about them!
      1. common to see this sort of overlap as generally, if you enjoy doing something, you are normally pretty good at it!
   5. This is how you find your purpose in life. It will take some playing around with to get right. Be honest with yourself.
      1. example: care: Making a difference in lives, great at: personal finance, I enjoy doing: Teaching
      2. Different iterations of this – but form a purpose statement – once sentence - where you use your skills at what you are great at, to do the thing that you care about, in a way that you enjoy doing

• Making a difference in peoples lives through teaching and advising people about their personal finances.

1. It really is that simple and needs to be refined over time, but what is really important is action. Taking action towards your purpose will be the difference between following your purpose versus following someone else’s.

Once you have your purpose statement, you need to know what you want out of it: getting the vision right and start achieving it! Time to build a vision of your ideal life - Having a purpose is the reason to get out of bed each day.

1. Having a vision, allows you to complete a picture of your ideal life.
2. A vision is an ideal picture of how you want your life to look. It is what you want the future to hold for you. But you have to make it happen! – Negotiating with your current self for your future benefit
3. Your vision should show you where you want to head and provide some motivation and focus to help achieve this. Life happens, there will always be setbacks but the best way of overcoming setbacks is keeping your long-term vision in mind and working towards this.
4. So how do you build your vision? - first step is to make three lists,
   1. What I want: This list is for the material things you wish to have in your life. From houses, cars, even owning a business.
   2. What I want to be: This list is for the type of person you want to be, from happy and positive to being a leader in your field.
   3. What I want to achieve before I die: This list is practically a bucket list where you can think about the things that you want to achieve in life.
5. Under each heading, you need to list 20 things for each one so once you are done you should have 60 in total.
   1. hard to come up with 20 things for each, so listing small things or expanding on larger ‘wants’ can help. So instead of just saying ‘I want to be successful’, list out individual items which mean success to you.
6. Once you have a list of 60 things - sort through your lists and placing each in to seven areas of your life.
7. This covers off 7 areas in total. For each one you need to have a clear picture of what each area should look like!
   1. Work/career – What are you doing for your career? Is it something that you enjoy? Is it something you can have freedom? Can you make a lot of money from it?
   2. Finances – What does your financial situation look like? Are you out of debts? Do you have a portfolio of investments, paying you an income? This is the key to financial independence after all. You need to have enough in finances to give you all the free time in the world to focus on everything else.
   3. Free time/Recreation – What do you do in your free time? Are you going on holidays each year?
   4. Health/Fitness – What is your ideal fitness? Are you 80 still in great physical and mental health?
   5. Relationships – Marriages, kids, parents, everyone etc.
   6. Contribution to the world – Do you give back to society?
   7. Personal goals – What do you want to do before you die? Can fit into the previous – so merge
8. Remember, that your personal vision is where you want to be – so you need a clear picture on what it looks like, what it feels like, you should almost be able to taste it!
9. Purpose is what drives you towards this – but goals set out the actions on what to take

Goals - hone your inner GPS – help to fill in the gaps and reverse engineer some steps to build your ideal life

1. Goals are the ‘building blocks’ of your vision - want to lose weight, start saving or investing?
   1. these aren’t really goals - they are just good ideas.
   2. arbitrary goals that don’t align up to our vision typically fail to be achieved – no motivation through resistance
2. This is why having your vision and knowing what you want is so important.
   1. can’t achieve something if you don’t know what it is, and you must actually want it
3. Put a goal against each vision to build your purpose
   1. Where I want to be: Vision
   2. Where I am: Personal inventory
   3. Fill in the gap! Reverse engineer - nobody is going to make your dreams come true - action on your goals will!
4. Smart Goals
5. S – Specific: Who, what, where, when, how & why? – Comes back to the overall vision for each
6. M – Measurable: Something measurable on what you want to achieve.
7. A – Attainable: Believe that your goal is attainable, developing the skills and attitude to achieve them.
8. R – Realistic: Must represent something that you are willing and able to work towards. The bigger the better – This can create a high motivation!
9. T – Timely: This anchors a timeframe by when your goal will be achieved. Putting a date on a goal allows for you to break this time down and with it, the goal in to smaller segments.

This is where knowing exactly what you want to achieve really helps as the more definite your vision is, the more details you can use when defining your goal.

Now it comes time to do an action plan on your goals. The last part is the hardest, especially if you don’t know how to.

However, what you are trying to do is likely what someone else has done, or knows how to do.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants - Isaac Newton: So you can ask for help from them.

One of the best bonuses from this is an Increased happiness from working towards goals! Achieving them is great, but working towards them and planning them gives bigger dopamine releases, studies have found. This is why setting goals is really important as well, not only to achieve your vision, but to enjoy the ride along the way.

That is it for this episode. In summary:

1. Try to find what is going to get your out of the bed in the morning – purpose
   • You can sit around pondering what is the meaning of life, but it is much easier to find the meaning of your life
2. Set your SMART Goals based on your vision.
   • Break it down into small achievable tasks.
3. Do your action plan Once your reverse engineer - Ask people/research what needs to be done.

Remember to go to Finance and Fury to get the pdf workbook for this

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you want to get in contact you can do so here: http://financeandfury.com.au/contact/