Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome Back to episode 54 of Working towards our

purpose. Thank you for being here. In today's episode,

it's going to be part two of making better

Decisions. And before we get into that, gonna do our

normal. Check in. How are you feeling today? Check in with yourself.

See how you're feeling. I am feeling a

little all over the place for some reason. A little

not able to focus on certain things. I feel like,

yeah, I spent a little longer planning this episode this morning. I

just noticed my mind was kind of bouncing between thoughts

more easily and a little unable to focus,

which makes me a little insecure about recording the podcast.

But now that we've identified that, hopefully it

can pass. So, yeah, check it. Check in with yourself. See. See where you're

at. And then, yeah, in today's episode, we're gonna

do part two of making better Decisions. And,

yeah, I think. I think I do want to expand a little bit more on,

like, why I think decision making is important.

Yeah. And mostly just

noticing that, like, so I just started this new book, and

it's a book about Dharma. It's called the Book of Dharma by Simon

Haas. And in the beginning of it,

there's a quote I want to read. There's a quote about

making decisions. And it's so interesting

how things can happen, like, synchronistically. I've had this book for

a long time, probably like two years or something. And I

remember it sitting on my table for a really long time because the COVID

is so familiar to me that I thought that I had already read this book,

but I didn't. It was just laying out on my table for so long, and

I just, for whatever reason, never got to it. So

I started reading it the other day because

I kind of got led into the word of

Dharma again by this other book that I read. And, yeah.

So I picked it up, and I realized that I hadn't read it yet. And

I was like, okay, I gotta start reading this book now. So I get into

the first, like, the intro and chapter one, and it's

talking all about making decisions. And it just so

happened that I picked it up and started to read it right between

the two episodes that I'm creating of making decisions.

So I thought that that was really synchronistic and also

just kind of shows the magic of books. I feel like books just

kind of come into your life at the right time. Definitely big proponent of

reading. And. And I haven't always been that way, so I'm.

I'm fortunate that, like, I do like reading and enjoy reading

and get so much from reading. But anyways, back to this book,

the Book of Dharma. There's a quote in it that says, what

is life but a consequential

dynamic of accepting and rejecting, of saying yes or

no. The simple process guides the direction of our

life. It creates our world. So basically saying, like, our

life is a result of making decisions. And

yeah, I just. I felt that to be pretty true. And

I just really think that it's an important

topic. And I don't know that I stressed enough, like, in the last

episode, like, why making decisions is important

because I think it literally shapes the way that your life is. And I think

that if I think about

sort of my lack of ownership of decisions in a previous

version of myself, you know, when I used to work in corporate, when I decided

to go to engineering school, I didn't have as much

ownership over my own decisions. And it led to

a life that I didn't really enjoy that much.

And now I feel like I try to take more ownership for my

decisions. And I believe it's led to have

me not only enjoy my life more, but feel

like I'm getting to do the things that I want to do

because I'm deciding to. And,

yeah, just, you know, one little decision

at a time. You know, nothing like super major.

Although I guess maybe leaving an engineering career might have

been a major decision. But. But yeah, it. You know, it doesn't have to be

that. That deep all the time. It can just be, like, the simple

questions that we. That we're answering every day. So. So that's why I kind of

felt like I wanted to record these. These two episodes. And if you didn't listen

to episode 53, it's the first part of

getting to make better decisions. And

this is part two. Wow. I'm trying to remember what the first part was.

Oh, yeah, it was. So last episode 53 was about,

like, calming yourself, calming your nervous system, and being able

to make better decisions. And

then I actually wanted to read another quote

from a book that I read because it also

kind of played into that. And it says

here, this is the great work of your life. Which is the book that

I just finished. And I have a review for it up on my substack, if

you're interested. And the quote goes.

And it's actually come. It's a quote that's quoting the Bhagavad

Gita, but it says Arjuna, which is the main character in the

Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna. You do not Know how to act because

you don't know who you are. And that brings me

into the

first. Or that. Sorry, I'm getting distracted by looking at these books.

That brings me into the. See, I told you my mind was a little all

over the place today. But that brings me into the topic

of today is that the second thing of making decisions

is not knowing who you are. And I think when you don't know who

you are, it can be really hard to make a decision, and it can be

especially hard to make a decision that's best for you. Um, so,

yeah, that's. That's what I'm gonna talk about today is. Is like,

do you know who you are? And

I think that could be sort of a hard question to ask yourself, because

I think first reaction, like, first off,

you kind of okay, me. I. I would get

defensive if somebody asked me that question. I'd be like, yeah, of course I know

who I am. Um, you know, I think that might be my first reaction,

Especially when I'm thinking of an older version of myself working in corporate

America. I think I would kind of come off as like, yeah, of course I

knew who I am, but I were. I would argue that

if that version of myself, if I look at. At that person

now, I would say that they didn't know themselves very well.

And I feel more confident in knowing myself now,

which I think leads to me making better decisions and making

not only just better decisions, because that's kind of an arbitrary term,

but better decisions for me. And when you know who you

are, you can make a decision that more aligns

with what's going to work for you, because everybody's different,

and everybody should be making different decisions

because we're all unique individuals. And if you don't know who you are,

then it becomes really hard to make the right decision for you. So.

So, yeah, I think that this is sort of a simple concept, but also sort

of difficult. It requires a lot of

honesty, I think, and, like, introspection to, like, think of

yourself, because it's sort of a weird question to ask, right? Like,

do I feel like I know myself?

Sort of meta, if you will. Sort of

introspective, but. So that's why in today's episode, I have

four questions to kind of ask yourself to see

if you do know who you are. And

also, I want to caveat this with, like, it's not a yes or no question.

Like, I don't think. I don't think you can say, like, yes, I fully know

myself, or, no, I fully know myself. I think it's an ever ending process of

getting to know who you are and also a lifelong process

of constantly evolving and changing and, you know,

noticing that maybe you're a little bit different of a person

now than you were last year or five years ago. And hopefully you are

because I think, you know, if you were the same person you were

since you were 12 years old, probably, probably run

into a lot of issues. So yeah, hopefully we are

always evolving and, you know, moving in

some direction. Hopefully positive. But yeah.

So today's episode I have four questions you can ask yourself

to try to see if you know who you are.

And so the first question is,

are you, are you happy with your choices right now? Like,

are you happy with the way that you are living

your life? I think this

question is important because,

you know, I can only reference myself in

what I speak about. So I'm thinking to like, me

engineering, me sitting in a corporate office. I remember

having thoughts that I did not like. The choices that

I was like, I did not like where I ended up. I remember being like,

I don't want to sit in this office for eight hours a day, Monday

through Friday. I just like, I don't feel happy about this.

So I think that that would have been a clue into me not really

knowing who I am because I was the one that made all those choices to

get there. And if I knew myself a little bit

better, I probably at some point would have been like, I

don't think I'm going to like to do that. So maybe, maybe I shouldn't keep

following this direction or maybe I shouldn't, maybe I shouldn't do

these things. Maybe, maybe I should think twice about going into engineering school. Maybe that

wasn't the best decision for me. Maybe I was

thinking about other people's opinions or impressing other people.

You know, people love to say people that go to engineering school are

smart. Maybe that's what I want to feel, maybe I want to feel smart,

but maybe that isn't like what I needed personally.

So first question, like, are you happy with your choices

and where you're at? And you know,

I think if you're not, that's not, that's not a negative thing. I

think it's just information for yourself and you can use that information

to make more informed choices going forward.

So, so yeah, I think, I think really trying to sit,

sit with that and like ask, ask things about yourself and you know, there's always

going to be things that you're not happy with. You're not gonna have a perfect

life. There's things in my life that I'm still, like, working on and

unhappy with, but. But as

I think, yeah, so don't want to say that there's no perfection

here, but, like, just thinking about it in that way.

So that leads me to the second question, which is, do you know your values

and, like, the things that you like? I think if.

Again, if I'm thinking of my engineering self sitting in

corporate America, I don't think I ever thought about my

values and, like, what values are.

Values are the things that, like, you really care about and

can be articulated into words. So that way you can

put, like, you can kind of name them and you can see.

See them like in. In your real world, in. In real life. And

instead of just, like, feeling like,

you know, maybe something doesn't, like, feel right, you can be like, oh, well,

I have a value of integrity. So I don't

feel right about the situation because somebody's asking me to do something that

I don't feel good about, you know, and that's sort

of a vague example. But I think now more

so than ever, I know what my values are. And,

yeah, I'm still. Still kind of thinking about that. Honestly, I think

it's sort of, again, a long process of

really trying to articulate what's important to you and what your values are.

For me, right now, I know some of my values.

I think perhaps I'm still struggling to put into

words some other ones. But the ones that I do know, I know that

I value people more than I value

money or, you

know, doing. Doing something I'm supposed to be doing or a job or

something. I think the reason that I left my last job was because

they started to not. It wasn't people

first. It was more. Even though it was a nonprofit, it was more

trying to do whatever they saw as gains, you

know, whether it's, like, profitability or

doing things that make the company look good. And

they were doing all those things at the expense of the employees and not taking

care the employees and asking them to overwork and,

you know, not really being treated as a human. And I think that one of

my values that is closer to the top is treating

people with, like,

humanity, if that's the right word. I don't know. But

people first. Like, I care about people's emotions. I care about, like, how somebody's

feeling. I really try to do that.

And when I'm thinking about what I'm doing, especially for work,

I don't want to just like, you know, that's why I could never be, like,

a telemarketer or something, because it's like, I'm not going to have a job where

I'm going to annoy people all day long just to get, like,

this job or this paycheck. I'd much rather do something

that's in service of people, like be a barista at a coffee shop, you

know, getting people what they need to get through the day. Working in food

service, that more aligns with that value of me

putting people first. So, and

I'm speaking in kind of vague terms here, but. But that's something

that I know about myself, is that I do care about people. Another

thing I care about is, like, being present with somebody, like

when I'm with somebody who's not able

to sort of focus on a conversation or, like, put the

phone down for 10 minutes or, um, you know,

not really, like, make eye contact or. Or be honest in a conversation and be

vulnerable. Like, those are things that I value.

When somebody's being, like, vulnerable and

honest about something, those are the people that I kind

of lean more towards. I try to surround myself more around

people that are honest and. And valuable or, sorry,

not valuable. Wow, that was a bad. I just looked at my board and it

said value. So I said valuable. Everybody's valuable.

But more honest and vulnerable. I really

pride in trying to be as vulnerable as I can.

Always working on that. So, yeah, kind of rambling on this point,

but what are your values? You know, what your values are? And

again, sort of a lifelong evolution. Maybe they change.

Maybe different ones come in and out,

but what are your values? And the third one, the

third sort of question you can ask yourself to know if

you know yourself could be or is

to recognize your strengths and values. And I think this

one's important because it's really hard to

sort of accept or acknowledge your strengths and values. At least it was for me.

I'm still kind of getting used to, like, figuring out what my strengths are,

but, you know, we kind of live in a society and,

you know, growing up through our school systems, we don't really ever focus

on our strengths and what we're good at, but we focus more

on, like, what we're bad at. And, you know,

I guess it's good to be aware of maybe what you're lacking in, but I

think it's more important to look at your strengths

and to see how you can find

work that aligns with those strengths, that you can use your

strengths, like, you know, what's the point of having them if you're not going to

be able to use them? And, you know, one strength

that I know that I have about myself, again,

is having empathy for people and being

able to communicate. Like, I haven't always been good at communicating, but I think

I'm pretty confident in my ability to communicate

again. Still always working on it. But communicating with people,

being empathetic, like, that's a strength that I have. And a lot of my jobs

in the past did not use that strength or did not need that strength at

all. So, you know, it's kind of almost

silly thinking back on, like, being an engineer

and then having this strength that, like, I really never ever got to use.

So. So really, I use that to try to help me make decisions. Like,

okay, is this thing that I'm going to do, does it play into a strength

that I have? And will I be confident in being able

to do that or be good at that? And also, a

lot of times people, I think, just sort of have a

blind side for their strengths because it comes easy to them.

It's something that they're not aware is a strength. They're like, oh, everybody knows

how to do this. Everyone knows how to empathize. Like, I didn't realize that

not everybody can, like, empathize with people as much.

And, yeah, just accepting that, Accepting your strength and recognizing

them. So then that brings me to the fourth point,

the fourth question you can ask yourself, which is,

do you feel at ease or at peace? I think

this one kind of came again from thinking of previous corporate version

of me. And. And I never felt at ease.

I always felt like I had to do something more

to figure out, like, how I'm gonna fix something. Like,

I always was doing something on the side to

supplement my corporate job. Cause it didn't give me any of the things that I

needed other than money and I guess

maybe security. But that's. I don't know if I believe in that word,

but. So, yeah, it didn't give me

any sort of pride in my work or

I didn't feel like I was making a difference for anything. I didn't feel like

I was helping anybody. So

if I think back to that time, I was trying to start a side

job, trying to get out of corporate, trying to find something that

was more in alignment with what I wanted to do. These

questions in my head and, you know, trying. Trying to chase those,

I never really felt at ease or at peace with myself.

And nowadays I. I do. I do find moments of Peace. And,

you know, it's probably unrealistic to think you're always going to be at peace,

unless maybe you're a monk, but

even then, probably not. But, like, you

know, do you have a little bit of areas of. In your life where

you can really feel at peace and at ease? I think that that's an important

one. And. And yeah,

I think that leads me into one more quote

that I wanted to read from the. From a book

that goes in with that last sort of question. You know, do you feel at

ease? And this is again from the Great Work of youf Life. I'll link these

two books in the show notes so you can find them. But the. The

quote that I kind of wanted to end the episode on is. Is.

And again, this is kind of in the context of, like, knowing who you are,

right? So it says in remembering who you

really are, we are liberated from striving to be someone else. To be

someone else. So to me, that means you're.

You're at peace. You're not trying to be somebody else. You're not trying to be

the person, anything other than who you are. So when you

know who you are, you can be that person and you can be more at

peace. So, yeah, I thought that those quotes kind of really

tied these two episodes together, part one and two

of making better decisions. And yeah,

hopefully these were helpful for you. Let me know. You can

always comment on YouTube or,

you know, I'm trying to figure out a better way to get, like, feedback, because

I know podcasting, it's so hard to get feedback. I do have a feedback

form, but, uh, you know, I guess it's pretty hard to ask

somebody to fill out a whole form. But, yeah, I'll have to

think on that. Maybe I'm tempted to, like, give a phone number

and, like, you could just text feedback. I had that thought today.

Um, so maybe I'll get like, a Google Voice number and.

And we can try to do that maybe. But, yeah, I'll keep you posted on

that. But hope you have a good rest of your week. Thank you

for listening, as always, and I will see you on an episode real soon.

Sam.