Third Personal Examination: Purpose and Motivation
The third and last part of the examination looks at your purpose and motivations in life. This is a process that will be repeated throughout the course as your understanding of your life and drives will become clearer the further along you go.
Purpose and Motivation
There is no scoring or correct answer for the following questions. This section is designed to stimulate self-examination of your purpose and motivations. Be as detailed in your answers as possible, taking time to consider your responses before committing them to paper.
1: What are you naturally curious about?
This is essentially about your interests. In order to understand yourself better you can ask yourself;
- what kind of non-fiction books do you enjoy reading?
- What is the topic of the documentaries you like to watch?
- What are the newspaper or magazine articles about that you always read?
- What do you enjoy learning about?
2: What would you like to change about the world?
This is a very powerful question.
- What are the kind of issues in society that make you angry?
- What in the news makes you angry?
- What do you want to change in the world, for the better?
3: What would you love to do or accomplish before you die?
Try to make the list as big as you can (use a separate sheet of paper if necessary).
4: What would you do if you could not fail?
There are no limits – whatever you decide to do you will succeed at. If there is NO fear of failure, what would you do?
5: What would you do, if you were not limited by money?
Sometimes we set barriers for our thinking, because we think in terms of monetary limitations. If there wouldn’t be any, what would you dedicate yourself to?
6: What would you like to hear at your funeral?
Imagine it’s your funeral and everybody close to you is there, one by one they give speeches.
- What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life?
- What kind of a friend and family member were you?
- What characteristics would you like them to have seen in you?
- What contributions, what achievements would you like them to remember?
- Look carefully at the people around you, what difference would you like to have made in their lives?
7: What are the things you currently enjoy doing?
- What are the activities that make you feel the time just flies?
- Try to think about both the fun stuff, and productive activities.
8: What were the activities or tasks you were doing when you felt most empowered?
Think about the jobs you have had, voluntary work, school and so on.
- What were you doing when you felt the happiest, most productive and eager to do what you were doing?
9: what would you most like to be acknowledged for so far in your life?
- What is it that you have done or participated in that you are proud of?
10: If you only had one wish; What would it be?
- Think about this for a minute, and make sure you really nail it.
11: Whose life do you want to be living?
- Who are the people (current or historical figures) that you admire, even envy a bit perhaps?
12: What ideas are you most inspired by? And Why?
- The ideas might be about life, career, or society. Examples of an inspiring idea could be carbon emission free living, free clean energy supply for all, free education for all (without all the old world social dogmas and limitation programming) or a world where intercultural understanding prevails and so on (use a separate sheet of paper if necessary).
13: With whom would you like to surround yourself?
- What are the kind of people you would like to be surrounded with in terms of lifestyle, occupation, wealth, interests?
14: Do you take responsibility for what is happening to your life?
- Look at the kind of person you are and where you are with your life right now
- Do you believe it is you, who is the reason for the way things are?
- Do you believe you can create your own future?
Have you ever heard of the Ten Second miracle ?
It’s where you stop and realise that you are responsible for your life; every good, bad, and indifferent thing, that has ever happened in your life happened because of you and your thoughts.
This realization can be a somewhat daunting prospect, however once you accept responsibility completely, it’s a wonderful liberating experience.
Why?
Because when you accept your life is created by you, you will become aware that: If you created it up until now you can create it in the future – Giving you complete control over YOUR life.
All the outer circumstances of your life i.e. what you call your reality, is a mirror of your inner consciousness, a sort of “feedback loop”. This is why it is said : “You become what you think about”.