Life Purpose in 20 Minutes exercise – rather weird result

[Wolborg]

I would like to share with you my experience with the exercise "How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes".

I did the exercise about 8 hours after I first saw the blog post describing it.

I had slight doubts as to the possibility of finding out my life's true purpose so easily, but I wanted to give it a try. I thought that in my case, the exercise would take rather much time, and when I started writing, I thought that maybe I shoud quit after 1 hour, but I was unable to make up my mind about that.

It so happened that I found out my life's true purpose on step 40, after only a few minutes.

I began by writing down a goal that is my biggest conscious desire in this moment, and kept writing new items, not caring that much of the stuff I wrote was silly. Occasionally, I repeated something I had written before, and a few times I just wrote "I don't know". But I kept writing line after line.

On step 30-something, my ideas turned to my childhood. On step #38, I wrote: "To get back the dear toys of my childhood." (This is the translation into English.) Suddenly, I felt my eyes filling with tears. I thought: am I crying yet? No, this is propably one of those "mini-surges of emotion" Mr. Pavlina had mentioned. Besides, that "purpose" was obviously absurd. So I decided to write on. I wrote something different as item #39. On step #40, I couldn't think of anything better than repeating item #38 word by word. And then I found my self undoubtedly crying. I kept crying whenever I read those words or repeated them in my mind, and I'm still crying as I'm writing this.

I should explain what that phrase means. When I was 9 years old, my parents and I moved from a little township to a big city. Shortly before we moved, my parents threw away many of my toys without telling me. They obviously thought that I was big enough not to care about all that stuff, but it did hurt to see them in the dumpster like that. It's not like I was left without toys or something, but today it somehow seemed to me that I had lost pretty much all of them as we moved to the city.

Anyway, the supposed true purpose of my life that was revealed to me so dramatically today can impossibly be my true purpose. Firstly, it's physically impossible to get those toys back after almost 30 years – they have certainly dissolved to elements by now. Secondly, they don't really matter that much to me anymore. Thirdly, even if they hadn't and if they did, a quest to find and get back the toys thrown away 30 years ago would be utterly stupid and pointless.

But that's what Mr. Pavlina's exercise spat out as my life's true purpose.

I'm not asking you to tell me what to do. I didn't write this in order to get any advice. I just wanted to shake Mr. Pavlina's confidence in this execise a little bit. :-)

I don't mind if you find this funny. I bursted out laughing when I read Mr. Pavlina's result, so you're allowed to laugh at my "true purpose" too.

[carenkh]

I don't need to laugh - I'm wondering about the metaphorical meaning of those toys. What do they symbolize for you? Do you feel like other things were taken from you without your permission? (joy of being, self-determination, self-will)

I bet if you did some writing about those toys, when you played with them and when they were taken away, you'd uncover a deeper meaning.

[Lawliet]

The exercise aside, there's obviously emotion attached to these toys. Few things I can think of off the top of my head:

Do you possibly have some resentment issues with your parents to iron out? The memory of them doing this to you could just be a key to a larger problem - a tiny reminder of something they often did (not consulting you or considering your feelings) which you may benefit from addressing.

Perhaps you miss your childhood, freedom and/or innocence. Maybe you just need to take a more child-like approach to aspects of your life. Take more time to yourself, enjoy being silly (being serious is not maturity) if it's something you want to do but feel you should hold back, occasionally look at the world from a child's perspective and enjoy it, etc.

[Wolborg]

Originally Posted by Lawliet

Do you possibly have some resentment issues with your parents to iron out? The memory of them doing this to you could just be a key to a larger problem - a tiny reminder of something they often did (not consulting you or considering your feelings)

Oh, absolutely. I am perfectly aware of things that were very wrong in the way my parents treated me. Only it's in the past and I can't change the past. They no longer have any power over me, so I should just shrug off the past and go on living my life now.

Originally Posted by carenkh

I'm wondering about the metaphorical meaning of those toys. What do they symbolize for you? Do you feel like other things were taken from you without your permission? (joy of being, self-determination, self-will)

That's a long story, bu in short, I have clinged to stuff as long as I can remember. As a child, I tended to excessively hang on to things as well as people. Eventually, I realised that I was making a fool of myself by doing that, so I began to consciously suppress my desire to cling to everything.

I can imagine that a psychologist would most likely say that I didn't get enough parental love and attention in very early childhood. I wouldn't be able to verify that, as I can't remember so far back. It seems plausible, however, but that's a long story, too, and again, it's in the past and digging it out, even if I could, would hardly be of any help today, would it?

Originally Posted by Lawliet

Perhaps you miss your childhood, freedom and/or innocence.

Yes, I often feel that I emotionally miss my childhood, although intellectually I can hardly think of anything worth missing back then. When I try to observe my feelings, that yearning has got something to do with being without worries, being taken care of, being unable to notice bad things. And yes, innocence. And, of course, I have badly missed my friends and the friendly environment that I had lost when we moved to the big city.

[Wolborg]

In the meantime, I have read the article in which Mr. Pavlina discusses the limitations of this method. I now realise that my irony on his address was based on incomplete information and unjustified.

I'm sorry.

[backpocket]

Well, if you were a moviemaker, I can see how this could be interesting. But don't give up, your life purpose tends to unfold in ways you won't expect, and you'll always get what you need when you're ready for it.