Nothing is more rewarding in life than doing things that effortlessly empower you to become the person you desire. Anything in life becomes effortless only when we are doing things that are repeatedly rewarding in life. - Me
For many years I was really lost and confused in my life. I mean I had to really think hard on questions like Who am I as a person? What are my dreams? And the most terrifying one was ‘what do you want in life?’ I mean, in spite of doing well in life with a decent personality and confidence, I would tremble like a small fish running out of oxygen on the question - what do I really want from life?
Trust me, the struggle was real. I would sometime google it so that I had some ready-made answers to give away. Sometimes it was painful too because I could see a gap between the person that I was and the person I secretly desired to be. The gap was huge and I would find it hard to articulate it because it caused me unhappiness. Any experience that is driven by unhappiness is something we all desire to reject and I too rejected this question for many years.
It was the lowest point of my life back in 2019, I decided to change my life. I made up the courage to find the answer to the most uncomfortable question ‘What do I want in life?’ Since I had no idea about it, I decided to find out what will help me find an answer to this question.
To my surprise, the answer existed in my daily habits and behavior. They turned out to be indicators of the possible things that I wanted from my life and I figured out that my old self was limited to fulfilling others’ dreams, making sufficient money to collect things, and being part of every craze. The uncertain future and endless desires in life seem to me like a grinding effort. This is when I decided to make my life simple and easy. I decided to change my daily habits.
At first changing habits scares you, because it looks overwhelming. It happened to me, I was dead scared to leave my old habits as they were comforting and didn’t ask much from me, whereas the new ones demanded new actions, behavior, and routines from me. It made me think hard what would make my life simple and easy? What are my true priorities in life? Is it about spending 30 minutes of mindless scrolling on phone or 30 minutes of mindful strolling? Is it about spending 30 minutes of quietness with myself or 30 minutes of entertaining the noise of the world? Is it about spending 12 hours of skills on fulfilling other dreams or spending 12 hours learning new skills? Is it about sleeping at 9 pm to give the rest to my body or choosing to party till 9 am and give the stress to the body? Finding answers to these series of questions helped me find joy in the questions of life and repeating these habits daily started to reward me with the benefits of being effortless in the process of becoming the desired me.
Today when someone asks me about you what I want in my life?. I don’t google it anymore, I just pick the habits and say them as my life goals. It is through these new habits changes and intentional decisions, I have been now constantly doing things that help shrink the gap between the current me and the desired me.
