“Trying a million different Things hoping one of those things is going to be the thing that makes you happy and hustle our way into a life lottery ticket…Most of you are buying the life lottery ticket.  You are playing the lottery with your life and you are hoping holding onto that number, hoping my number is going to come up and then boom I’m happy.  I get this money, this job, meet this person, take this trip, this experience.  It doesn’t work like that.  You have to understand who you are and what makes you happy in order to even know where to go.  Most people don’t take the time to understand who they are to then be able to create the strategy for your life that will actually make you happy.  Get that insight to design that strategy and then start the journey where you will eventually win the life lottery because you did it with intent and purpose,” Rob Dyrdek.  How many of us have been here?  I spent a huge amount of time throwing darts, hoping something would stick.  I wanted my purpose to come to me rather than take the time to figure it out.  But life DOESN’T work like that.  We must dig and find who we are and then work in alignment with that, then the rest unfolds.

For a long time I thought it was practical to try as many different things as I could.  Part of me still does.  I struggled to commit to one thing, one definition of who I am because what if I didn’t like doing it later on?  I didn’t want to get locked into doing something I didn’t want to do.  Ironically, following the path that I was told was safe and would get me where I wanted to be locked me in the exact cage I was trying to avoid.  Now I had no choice in how I lived my life.  Now I had to maintain where I’d gotten via means I didn’t enjoy.  And then I started trying new things and ended up spreading myself way too thin.  When we get to that burnout point, we lose sight of what brought us joy in the situation in the first place.  Then we end up doing nothing because we exhaust ourselves.  Most of us know that someone won’t come with the magic ticket, the number that changes our lives forever, we know we aren’t Cinderella waiting for the prince to find us.  We start putting as many irons in the fire as we can, throwing as many darts as we can, hoping something sticks.  It’s in those moments that we have to learn to be still.  In stillness and connection we find the answer.

Life is too short to spend it hoping we find what works for us, hoping we find who we are and that our purpose will miraculously be laid out in front of us.  I’m not saying don’t try new and different things, and I’m also not saying don’t try as many new things as we can.  I am saying to Rob’s point, that we can’t aim at nothing and expect to get the results we want.  We can’t do things that aren’t aligned with who we are and expect they will make us happy.  We need to embrace the pause and do the digging to find what that answer is.  It won’t be something on the surface, it will come from within and it will be clear as day.  As we spend time meandering and hoping we find our way, we waste the precious time we could be spending in active creation and purpose.  So take the pause.  Even if it feels like it takes too long, getting our bearings is the best thing we can do.  Getting in touch with who we are and using that as a north star  is worth the time it takes to find it, because once we have the direction, we can set the course and start making moves.  Try new things if we must, but learn to recognize what is aligned with who we are, and then life unfolds for us.