FORGET PURPOSE, MIX YOUR COLORS AND BE A DA VINCI !
I always heard that a critical factor of success was to have
ambitious goals and a clear vision of the future. As a result,
I spent many years of my life designing a plan for my
future, creating vision boards and trying to identify what
my purpose was in life. Today, I find myself living a ‘future’
that I never imagined. The things I wished and hoped for
didn’t actually happen, but other things I never envisioned
became my reality. How did this happen? I never imagined
to be living where I live now or to be involved in the
businesses I have. What got me to where I am were a
series of random events that I never planned and today, at
the age of 34, what I have realized is that having plans and
dreams is important, but for me, what they give me is a
sense of direction and not the certainty of arrival to a
destination. What really determines where I actually end up
is probably a combination of other factors. !
What I’ve learned from my own experience, and that of
others, is that we no longer have total control of where we
go. The world and the people around us move fast and the
industries and societies we are in contact with are
reinvented everyday. Our environment and the people
around us also change and therefore the possibilities and
opportunities we have available to us are constantly
changing also. What is more, we as individuals also
change, we mature with age and our understanding of the
world and ourselves evolves, highlighting new needs,
wishes and desires. It is therefore natural that our goals,
dreams and sense of purpose also change. !
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For me, what is important now is ‘why’ we do what we do
and specially, how we approach the ever-changing world
we have today. !
Four Traits To Successfully
Approach The Future!
Here are the four traits that I consider critical to
successfully approach the future (or rather ‘present’ I shall
say!):!
1.
Developing our ability to spot opportunities: We
must develop the ability to listen to the opportunities
that life present to us. They might not be what we
have envisaged in our ‘plan’ or for our life but I’ve
learned that seizing the opportunities that life present
to us can lead us to places you could have never
planned or imagined and these are the places that
can allow you to create your dent in the universe. !
2.
Being Resilient: In this ever changing and highly
competitive world we will all experience failure,
sudden change or hardship; we have to have the
ability bounce back and recover quickly from these
difficulties and be able to spring back into shape. !
We should not dwell in what we lost or didn’t achieve,
but rather focus on what we can do with what we
have in front of us, because that is exactly what can
help us move forward. !
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life design
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The belief that I had (and many
people still have!), that we have
one purpose and that we have to
discover what that is and create a
plan to make it happen, is for me
somehow old fashioned, limiting
and outdated.
3. Having an Internal Locus of Control: A person with
an internal locus of control believes they can control
their life whereas a person with an external locus of
control believes that their decisions and life are
controlled by environmental factors that they cannot
influence. Having an internal locus of control is
renouncing to being victim of the circumstances and
the excuses and rather taking ownership for your
reality and the initiative to change it.!
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And finally, !
Why would you expect your vision of the future to be the
same as to when you were seventeen and when the reality
of the world was so different to what you are and where
you are today? !
4. Being Prolific: An artist who is prolific is someone
who produces lots of different works or work
simultaneously across different disciplines. Leonardo
Da Vinci was prolific; he was a painter, an astronomer,
a mathematician and an engineer. He never chose
‘one’ dream or purpose, but rather, he explored all the
passions he had. He concentrated in producing work
(or what Seth Godin would refer to today as
‘Shipping’). Da Vinci never chose to become who he
became and made a plan to get there. It was the
extensive amount of work and art that he created that
crafted his role in history and not the other way
around.!
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The Delusion!
I think that forcing yourself to find your purpose and define
a vision of the future can be paralyzing and limiting. In fact,
I actually believe it is a ‘delusion’. Let me explain why:!
We cannot exclusively work towards a specific goal or
purpose, we should work towards the values and
emotions that drive us and towards having lots of options
open which can lead to many possible futures. Hence,
‘what’ we do becomes irrelevant because with time it
would change. !
26 | Dey Dos Magazine
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Forget about discovering what your purpose is or about
creating plans for the future. We are a constant reinvention
and evolution of purposes, goals, dreams and desires and
our lives become the beautiful result of this ever-changing
spectrum of colors and flavors. !