Why You Should Decide Your Purpose As Soon As Possible

At the beginning of life, we are all like stem cells.

In biology, a stem cell is an undifferentiated kind of cell. It can become a muscle cell, a neural cell, a kidney cell, a liver cell, or any other kind of cell.

But until a stem cell becomes a specialized cell, it doesn’t do anything for the body. Stem cells are only useful to the body once they become something in particular.

Like a stem cell, a child’s life is pure possibility.

A five-year-old can become anything, from a drug addict to a nurse to the President of the United States.

As we age and go through school, we’re encouraged to hold that feeling of limitless possibility near. K through 12, teachers tell us “You can become anything.”

But as we age, we differentiate. We look at all the things we could become, and we decide to actually become one of them.

A talented teenager who could have been an excellent biologist, chemist, physicist, mathematician, pianist, gymnast, singer, graphic designer, consultant, the President, or a million other things, decides to become a theoretical physicist. She trades in those limitless possibilities for one concrete reality.

Some people get stuck in limbo

They resist choosing a career, a city to live in, or a partner to live with.

They are afraid of getting “tied down,” and tell stories about how life is better when you “have your freedom.” People who do this think commitments make your life worse.

The wise understand the opposite is true; the more commitments you make, the better life gets.

Married people trade in the possibility of hooking up with people for the love of a spouse, a love that is infinitely more deep and fulfilling than empty sex with multiple people. The teenager who chooses theoretical physics trades in the possibility of being president for the reality of being a world-renown researcher. The person who decides to move to San Francisco is much happier than the person who can’t decide between San Francisco, Austin, or New York City, a person who is currently stuck in small-town Iowa.

Sometimes people are afraid to choose because they don’t want to be tied down. Other times, they don’t choose because they’re scared.

They’re afraid they’ll make the wrong choice.

They fear if they make the wrong choice, they won’t be happy. They think “I’ll wait to decide until I know what I’m doing.” They tell themselves once they know the right thing to do, in their heart of hearts, then they’ll act.

Getting stuck in limbo has a cost

Earlier I said children have unlimited potential. They do, but only as children. If children do not make decisions about how to use their potential, they grow up into adults who become nothing.

An example: A student who just picks a major and ends up loving it is infinitely better off than the student who can’t decide on a major, switches majors three times, and ends up dropping out because they can’t afford it.

The punishment for trying to preserve the possibility of being anything you want is being nothing at all.

There are a lot of people stuck in limbo

They go to work, they do the job, they get promoted sometimes, their incomes increase, they get bigger apartments, they go on vacation sometimes, they go on Tinder, but they don’t really have a larger goal in mind.

Eventually, one of those Tinder dates will stick, and their income will get large enough to support a house, and then perhaps they’ll get married and have children, but through it all, they won’t have a real sense of what they’re heading toward.

And then one day, at age 43, they look back on their life and realize none of it mattered.

Then they snap and buy a Corvette.

How to pick a purpose and avoid getting stuck

It’s tempting to think that people are happy when they “make the right choice,” and that we should wait until we know what the right choice is, but that’s not necessarily true.

Humans are subject to what psychologists call choice-supportive bias — a cognitive bias that causes us to think more highly of something just because we’ve chosen it.

For example, if a person chooses option A instead of option B, they are likely to ignore or downplay the faults of option A while amplifying or subscribing new negative faults to option B. Conversely, they are also likely to notice and amplify the advantages of option A and not notice or de-emphasize those of option B.

Choice-supportive bias, Wikipedia

What this means is sometimes, merely the act of picking will lead us to be happy. If a college graduate can’t decide between majoring in astrophysics or the philosophy of human consciousness, there’s a real chance she will be happy no matter which major she picks.

This is important to know because sometimes, there is no better choice.

When you’re choosing which career to pursue out of several excellent possibilities, or which city to live in out of several excellent cities, there’s probably no wrong choice. But your life will be better once you choose, merely because you chose.

This has been my experience in my own life. Before I decided to become a writer, my life lacked direction. I mastered many and worked on many cool projects, but my life as a whole didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. Years passed, but my life stayed the same.

Once I decided to be a writer, however, that changed.

My life has a direction now. I know what I want to be: an entrepreneur-writer who makes a six-figure income each year from passive income streams who uses that income to travel the world in pursuit of wisdom.

When I make decisions about my career now, I don’t suffer from indecision. The choice is easy. I pick whatever option will move me toward that dream.

And with each passing year, my dreams are ever closer.

Don't be the guy who snaps and buys a Corvette.

Don’t wait until your mid-life crisis to decide why your life matters.

Decide what you want out of your life, and start building it now, so that when you are 43, you can look back on your life and see one that has been rich and full of meaning.

Decide what you’re going to be now, before you wake up and realize that you’ve become nothing at all.

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