I Enjoy Working and Learning But On My Own Terms
One of life’s hardest questions is “What do you want to do with your life?”, especially when you have no idea what to do or when you are in a transitional state. I couldn’t tell you how many times I failed to answer this question. It is difficult to reply to this question even if you know what you want to do with your life, but you haven’t done it yet because you don’t know how to achieve that.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? You aren’t honest with yourself because you haven’t given yourself the freedom to be in your true nature. That’s definitely not a good sense, you never answer that question confidently until you schedule time to know yourself systematically, so are you ready to know who you are?
However, how so you start the journey of self-discovery? It’s a big and long subject, so if you are lost and find it difficult to start, this article will explain to you how to know yourself.
What’s the first step for changing your life?
Countless reasons make people change their lives, you may have motivation for payment debt, be financial independent, gain more control over your life, spend some more time with family, travel over, focus more on your passion, or reduce your anxiety.
Regardless of your motives, I think that the process of changing your life starts by making your work doing the work for you in order to understand the way you want work. First of all, you need to know yourself as it is the most important topic that you have never learned.
Most people are trying to design their lifestyle by making themselves look like someone else, but that’s completely wrong. I think designing your lifestyle should revolve round the acceptance of your identity and harmonising your needs with your goals, not around copying some online experiences or upon the experts’ advice of designing you lifestyle. The more you know about yourself, the more ready you will be to design a unique and appropriate lifestyle in accordance with your values, your needs, your powers, and your motives, especially if you are thinking about working on yourself, so you need to know yourself firstly. I couldn’t tell you a number of entrepreneurs who start businesses hoping for more freedom, but they end up in a miserable place because they founded a business venture that matched their work needs.
What’s the most important subject that you have to know for building a successful lifestyle?
Your life is a huge and wide subject, and there’s much to know and learn. What follow is major themes I think you need to know to build your lifestyle:
- Personal.
- Ask yourself “ why”?
- Identification of your own total value.
- Knowing your motives.
- Learning how to learn.
1. What is personal productivity?
How do you want to work? What do you want to do while working? Why are you working? We all learned to work in a way that may not be usual for us as individuals. I think most of us don’t like to work because we don’t work appropriately. For example, periods of peak workload to me extend from about 7 morning to 12 noon everyday. I prefer to mix between working alone and collaborating with others. I want to base the value of my work on the quality and not on the amount of time I spend in the workplace. Additionally, I need at least an hour everyday to perform a physical activity like walking, yard work, or rowing to revitalize myself. I also want freedom to determine the amount of time spent with my family.
2. I want to work but on my own terms:
The needs that I have just mentioned are the necessary elements to improve my personal productivity. It is not what makes everybody productive, but it is to me. The elements of your productivity will probably be different from others. Also, I won’t be a person at high productivity if I have to spend much of my energy trying to bring my functioning with one size fits all. The most consuming experience in my life was to work by circumstances that were not in accordance with the needs of my productivity.
I once believed that productivity is more concerned about what is done in less time as I thought that managing my time actively is the key to my productivity. I realize now that the key to my productivity revolves around managing my limited energy. This was one of the most important factors that led me to the decision of working in line with my needs and energy.
I may have a ten hour workday, but now I realize that I have only 3 to 4 hours of energy to process high quality work. Believe or not, I spend at work less time than I spend at the office; however, I am more productive, and I owe for that to learn what makes me a personal producer.
3. Ask yourself “why”:
It may be a simple question, but it’s hard for many of us to answer. Have you ever wondered why? I think that this question is causing a lot of suffering to us because as social creatures, we don’t like to disappoint the other, but we want to feel accepted and we’re excited about that and always yearn for we can’t live without practising it occasionally. People don’t like when someone asks them why or how, but they simply like people to agree with them.
What is behind chasing money? Why are you working? The all various options for work, why do you do the work you’ve been doing? If you are interested in designing your life around working that you wish to do, you need to be clear about “why” it’s a special purpose or the reason why you want to work everyday.
IF you’re not sure of what you want to do, ask yourself why I don’t want to do the work I am doing now? What sides do you enjoy and which are the ones you don’t? I’ve developed a habit of asking myself “why” about anything I am about to do or think about doing. It's been one of the easiest self awareness habits and the most effective to me.
This simple question stops me a little on the way to my goal so I can take a moment to ensure that my decision is in line with my needs and the ultimate objective for all this striving. I couldn’t tell you how much time, energy, and concern this simple question has provided me with. Once you know why, all of your decisions and actions for designing your perfect lifestyle will flow.
4. What is the role of your personal values in identifying your life and work?
What is important to you? What kind of work do you want to do? Your values are your personal codes that guide your actions and your reflexes in various circumstances. They provide you with a bunch of standards which supervise the process of designing your life and work. Your values may be the basis of your personal productivity.
One of my fundamental values is choosing experiences over tangible property. When I’m about to buy some product, I always think about how to employ it to enhance my experiences and expertise without compromising it.
I also appreciate simplicity, and I do not necessarily look for the easy way to get to the top quickly. I’m looking for actions that make the best of my time and energy. I’m constantly looking for ways to reduce the number of decisions I need to take everyday or the number of steps needed to reach my goal.
5. What makes you excited to do something without coercion?
If you want to work on yourself, you need clear understandable sources of encouragement, is it money? working with others? Spending time with your family? Is it a competition? Helping others? Or solving a very big problem?
So, your motives are how you live and act according to your values, so you should make them your new boss. You also need to figure out how to harness the power of your motives to provide you with a sustainable energy source to build the lifestyle that you want and aspire to.
6. How do you like to learn?
You would like to learn from your mistakes, or maybe you have a completely different motive. Most people learn better when they are in cooperative groups, so force them to sit alone working on a task, and it is going to be like torture. For example, reading is a terrible form of learning for some people; therefore, they prefer listening to classes or audio lectures. You may be a visual learner, and need to see the concepts clearly outlined and projected in various contexts.
It might be the official certificate led by an instructor is the thing you need for learning a new skill or maybe you can learn in greater flexibility through watching a series of videos on YouTube. It doesn’t matter which way you choose, as long it complies with your motives and your own learning style.
In conclusion:
When you give someone the answers they want to hear, you’re satisfying your need for social acceptance, but you might end up disappointing a certain someone who is yourself. Thus, at the end of this article, our advice to you is to always look after yourself and respect it as it is the only one which will remain after everyone is gone.