Up to now, I have lived an accidental life. I don’t mean that I was an accident because my parents made a mistake. I mean that many of my decisions were on accident. I chose to go left or right, to change jobs, cities, relationships, but a lot of these decisions were on accident in a sense that I didn’t purposefully arrive at the place to make these decisions. I was faced with making these decisions due to my neglect of my own plan.

As Jim Rohn says:

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

I have never really thought about my life plan. I simply lived life and took opportunities that arose. This lead to falling into other people’s plans and many big decisions I made weren’t on purpose for myself. It was on accident for someone else and/or to fit into a social system.

Repeat this enough and you’ll end up wondering where the time has gone and why you aren’t feeling accomplished or satisfied. You neglected the biggest part of living, which was to live on purpose.

This seems to be the irony of “finding purpose.” You don’t actually “find” purpose. It has to be built, designed, crafted, catered by you, on purpose, for you. A lot of us will float through life without working on your own path. Then you look up one day working and living in a way you don’t want to and you wonder where the hell things went wrong.

It will be daunting to come to this realization at any point in life. Fortunately, it does not matter when you realize this. The only thing that matters is what you do after you come to this realization.

I am at this point now and it is terrifying. It feels like I’m starting over, when it actually is not. I have way more life experience than I did years ago, and I know much more about myself. It’s now up to me (and to you, if you’re in a similar situation) to decide what to do next. Decide, with purpose, where you want your life to be.

Honestly, it’s unclear to me how to break down what feels like a huge decision into actionable steps. Where do you even start when thinking about a “life plan?” What the fuck does a life plan even mean?

My next article will be a continuation of my research into living on purpose, instead of by accident. I will try to answer in my own way on how to take actionable steps on building a life lived on purpose.