Don’t Panic
Some of you may be tired of hearing me talk incessantly about finding purpose. Sometimes we don’t want to ask hard questions about our lives or our purpose. We just want to live comfortably, largely go through the motions, and be reasonably happy.
Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to live that way. We can no longer expect the patterns that worked for the past few decades to keep working, or wait for the powers that be to sort things out for us—just look at the chaos everywhere on the planet, in every area.
I see more and more people around me feel this and, as a result, live in ever-increasing fear, helplessness, anger, or all the above.
We are being called to proactively and intentionally manage our reality. If we want to be healthy, we have to do our research and decide what “healthy” means for us. If we want to have a job in the AI era, we have to plan for it. Whether we want something to change or stay the same, we have to take action, at whatever scale and scope feel right to us.
Taking small steps to live more intentionally can both abate our fears and get us to a better place than contributing to the social media outrage-fest and waiting for another shoe to drop ever could.
But there are multiple obstacles:
We see the gap between where we are and where we want to be and think we have to change or resolve everything in a short period of time: Most of us are fine and will be fine in the foreseeable future. We have time to wander around, make mistakes, fix them, and find our way.
We think we have to know exactly where we’re going: See previous point. We have to take one step in a general direction we care about and go from there. This one step will inform the next one, which will inform the next one, and so on. In a fast-changing world, planning too far out is pointless anyway.
We forget that what seems like negative change can be positive: Things not working are an opportunity to improve upon how they used to work. Hitting rock bottom is an opportunity to rise up.
We don’t think of ourselves as creators and innovators: We don’t have to limit ourselves to what already exists or used to exist. We can invent something new. Anyone who doesn’t think they’re creative just hasn’t found the right space to be creative in.
We are afraid to make moves that don’t fit other people’s ideas or expectations of us: We stay uncomfortable in our own skin to avoid discomfort in our relationships. When we start to notice that, it’s easier to make different choices.
We see the downside of this type of life—the loss of predictability and safety, but miss the upside—a sense of purpose and aliveness that we can’t find by following the predictable path or waiting for things to change.
We don’t have time: How much time and energy do we expend on fear, frustration, overwhelm, or vices to self-soothe? Can we redirect it to take one small step every day, or even every week, towards a more intentional life?
If the sky isn’t falling right this second, what can we do in the next month, then year, then 10 years to manage our world instead of letting our world manage us?
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