The important question of your life might not be what you think!
Not being sure about what you desire in your life requires you to pose one big question, and it’s not a question that everyone likes to ask themselves. The answer to this important question determines how you will deal with the process of achieving your life’s aims.
Everyone desires to feel good, carefree, loved, respected, and, admired. It seems that we all share the same hopes essentially. Ask anyone about what they want to achieve and the big majority will answer you something like this, “I would love to live a happy, family life with a career I like.” But, the catch is, why doesn’t everyone achieve their desire?
It seems that you need to approach the matter from a different angle by asking different questions. Here we will explore the most important question of your life.
What is the most important question of your life?
The question that might determine how and why you can achieve what you want in life is “What am I willing to endure and struggle for?” This question is related to pain more than the pleasure that’s why most people are not ready to pose it to themselves.
Al the people want to have financial independence and wealth, but only a few are willing to endure 60 hours of work a week, dealing with paperwork that seems to never end (because it doesn’t), and climbing the hierarchies that seem colossal.
People want the pleasure of achieving a goal without thinking about what they have to endure to reach it. It requires sacrifice and delayed gratification. You have to deal with reality, and the reality principle defers radically from the pleasure principle.
What is the difference between the pleasure principle and the reality principle?
To simply put these terms of Freudian psychoanalysis in a manner that everyone can understand, the pleasure principle is the drive of instant gratification, and the reality principle is the act of delaying that instant gratification and endure pain because the real world doesn’t always give you what you want at the moment. The reality principle develops as we grow older and realize that seeking pleasure all the time is destructive in some cases like drug abuse for example.
As you grow older, you become more reasonable and understand that some life pursuits require enduring pain. These life pursuits, like artistic talent and honest careers, don’t pay you with pleasure instantly. You have to endure learning and sacrifice before they pay.
How to apply the pleasure and reality principles to ask yourself better questions?
When you ask yourself what you want, your mind immediately regresses to fantasy because what you want is far reachable at the moment. The pleasure principle seeks pleasure, and since it cannot find that pleasure you want, it gets its dose of it from fantasizing about the moment of achieving the goal. Fantasy creates a substitute reality where you are safe. You have to understand that a dream is a continuation of reality, and reality resides at the end of your dream.
To embrace reality, you have to deal with the pains of the world and take their responsibility upon your shoulder. Finding true happiness is not a goal, but a symptom of enduring the pains of delaying instant gratification. Otherwise, the pleasure principle will keep you in a childlike world where everything is possible, but nothing is achievable.
Achieving goals is an act of limitation that you burden yourself with. If you want to be a Rockstar, you have to ‘not be many other things.’ You have to endure the process of learning your instrument, building a fan base, and finding gigs. You have to endure the time of being broke and hungry. Metallica didn’t become the greatest band just because its members dreamed about being that. They suffered a lot before they became big. The same goes for writers, creative people, entrepreneurs, and just people who want a loving relationship.
Your dreams don’t define who you are!
If your dreams don’t define your identity, then what? Many things define your identity dreams are included, but they are only ten percent of it. It’s hard to pin down who you are (or what you are if you wanna get philosophical. You are a complex creature who has the qualities of its creator.
A better answer to the question of your identity is what you are willing to endure in your life to make your dreams come true. When you answer that question and finally find something you are willing to sacrifice for, you might see a bigger picture of who you are as a unique individual.
Conclusion
To end our article, it seems like such a cliché thing to say, but the old saying “No Pain, No Gain”, might be a perfect way. So, choose wisely the pain and struggles that you will endure in order to achieve what you want.
