The Purpose of Our Lives

I have learned a lot over the years from Anthony “Tony” Robbins. His insight and keen understanding have helped me in different stages of and aspects of my life. Similar after a few years ago discovering Brendon Burchard’s YouTube channel I have appreciated another voice of giving direction. Tony and Brendon are having success in their personal and business life and have helped transform many lives. Yet in my own reflections on their messages for life I felt something central was missing. It is about the big WHY. Why are we here? What are we aiming for with all this self-improvement? And touching even more deeply – what is this the purpose of our lives? Contemplating this will help you tremendously to staying focused and having a skillful motivation for living a meaningful life.

In all your aiming for greatness in all aspects of life, please do not aim for the sake of being “good”.
For example don’t go study for some promising degree, just so that your mom and dad appreciate your achievements. Then alter don’t aim to be great at work so that you can proof to you and the world that your expensive car, house or watch now finally confirm you are great.Don’t be fooled your mind will play tricks on you and you are likely not even noticing this need for being “good” and unskillful motivations driving your car of life.

You really will need to practice your mindfulness muscles to get behind the scenes of your movie you call your life. It will take some sitting down, doing nothing, reflecting in order to discover your learned behavior and motivations. In some way we are all raised in a way to be good. We want to be “good” for our parents and relatives, so that they like and love us. We want to be “good” at school so that we are formally labeled “good” with grades. The story goes on and on. Yet we can take the time to practice and realize a natural truth.

Don’t you see you are already great? Intrinsic; or so to speak naturally. Stop this hunger for perfecting yourself in all aspects of your life to confirm your goodness and trust that you are already and tap into that for guidance and strength.
Truly grasping this will lead you to the next world and life view changing leap of faith, which is letting go of your big ego. The following meditation / reflection “topic” is a tough nut to crack, but will yield the most profound insights for life:

Life is really much more like a dream, then anything else. It is a dream, because we give it a nature of true existence that it substantially and ultimately does not have. Two examples to explain and as input for your reflection training:

Example 1: Ourselves. What are we?
We define ourselves through our body. My body that is me! We define ourselves with our emotions. My emotions that is me! We define ourselves by our senses (like taste). My senses that is me! We define ourselves by what is going on in our head! My mental formations that is me. We define ourselves by our consciousness. My awareness that is me!

Who are we? 5 factors of being – How to Live a Skillful Life, by Andreas Metzen – Cognizant Life Art

All this we define as “me”, “ego”, “your_name_here” and claim this to be of an independent and true existence.

Example 2: Our World. Where do we live?
We define our world by subjects and objects. Our home. Our house or apartment. This is my world. Our car. This is my world. Our partner. This is my world. Our kids. This is my world. Our friends. This is my world. Our money. This is my world. All these and many more aspects of our world. This is my world.

We even cross over and define ourselves by the external environment. Quickly our partner can become how we define us, for example out of fear of being alone. Or we feel that the world only exist of us and our super inflated ego makes us extremely ignorant of the constant interbeing of it all.

Think about it. Not even a single atom exists with a reality separate from the mind. Although we perceive ourselves by the above 5 factors of being described above you are but an appearance of the mere aggregation of dependently originating things. Our so perceived “self” or “I” does not have an eternal or uniform nature. We all are actually engaging in the activity of going and coming and interacting with objects.

So how does this lead to understanding our intrinsic and natural goodness? We come to life with a natural wisdom, ethical conduct and concentration, but we fail to realize it because we cling to mislead thoughts and attachments. We grow up in the environment we are born into. Some are more fortunate to grow up in a society and family that is more skillful. Still we all struggle in a way and our sound goodness gets scratched and for many of us we leave it behind and re-identify ourselves. Lost and clinging to external factors and unskillful internal concepts.

Hence, let’s not waste our precious human existence of leisure and opportunity. Let’s seek skillful happiness so you can benefit yourself and equally important others! That is our purpose of life!

And don’t run after, fame, fortune or a supposed greatness when all that you need is already there inside of yourself.

Be happy, love yourself.

Mr. Andreas Metzen is the founder and director of Carpe Momentum Advisory which offers services for sustainable change, leadership and lifestyle since April 2016. One of the core offers Carpe Momentum Advisory is Cognizant Life Art practices – a set of life functions and factors to enrich people with, in a way, a full set of life’s capabilities. Mr. Metzen served as SVP for Risk and Finance Integration at DVB Bank SE for over 6 years and has held quality management and leadership positions at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) for 14 years. Mr. Metzen is also an experienced practitioner of mindful leadership and has integrated these practices in his business strategy, leadership, organization and life transformation efforts.