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Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org And in this quick self-help segment, in about 10 minutes, Iím going to talk about what is the purpose of life. This is actually a super-deep and fascinating metaphysical topic that I actually love to think about, being a philosophy major. This is something I delved into years ago in my college days. But now let me share with you some practical advice that I have about what the purpose of life is. And how that relates, and how that actually applies, and influences your day to day life. How I think it should. So, of course, this is kind of a controversial topic. And different people have different opinions. But Iím going to tell you my side of the story. The purpose of life is: that there is no purpose. And this is actually a very deep concept. Iím not saying this flippantly. This is something that Iíve pondered for a long time, and this is something that Iíve really studied. The fact is that life, and reality, is neutral. Right? We have to understand that there is an external world, so to speak, and then there is an internal world: whatís happening in our mind. And meaning only exists inside the mind. It does not exist in the external world. And the same goes for other human-type conditions. For example: happiness, sadness, depression, confidence, anxiety, fear, stress. Any kind of emotion, and generally any kind of meaning thatís attached to anything in life, exists only in the mind. Thatís the only place it exists. And purpose is meaning. And that does not exist anywhere outside. So, there is no objective, one purpose to life. It kind of is whatever you make it. And this really reminds me of the Henry Ford quote, which goes: whether youíre right, youíre right... ErÖ If you think youíre right, youíre right. And if you think youíre wrong, youíre also right. Itís kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So whatever you feel your purpose is in life, it is what it is. You make your purpose. So that means that if youíre a nihilist, and you think there is no purpose, and that life is pointless, then thatís what it is for you. And, you will be right in that. And yet if you think that your purpose is to go out there, and to do something: to raise a family, to go out there and build a business, to make some sort of contribution to society, to just go travel the world, to explore life, to understand life, to read a bunch of books, whatever, that will be your purpose. And thatís pretty much the end of it. Because hereís the thing, like the Buddhists say, reality is pretty much neutral to your wishes, to your desires. Itís totally neutral. We live in a world thatís consistent with that. That means that people can do and think whatever they want, and believe whatever they want, and there is nothing really restricting them from that. I can believe whatever I want, and if I believe it strongly enough, thatís going to be my reality. Sure, I canít believe Iím going to fly and Iím going to fly all the sudden. Thatís not going to happen. Iím not going to contradict the laws of physics. But, in general, purpose doesnít work that way. Purpose kind of stays inside your mind. It doesnít usually hit up against something physical like the way flying would, or jumping out of a building and not dying. You know, that you canít work your way out of that with your mind. But as far as purpose goes, itís just whatever you feel it is. And, you know, even though I say there is no purpose, that doesnít mean I live my life with no purpose. In fact, I think Iím more purpose-driven, even though I believe there is no fundamental purpose, than most other people out there. Because for me, I feel like life is short. And I feel that even though I have a purpose, I understand that itís one of an infinite number of purposes. And that Iím not saying that itís the only purpose and that itís the one purpose that everybody else should have. Iím just saying itís my purpose. And for me, my purpose is: I want to be the best that I can be. I want to live up to my full potential in life. I want to be excellent. I want to live up to high-consciousness values. Like, I want to honor beauty, and truth, and I want to understand life, and I want to experience life. To me, living a full life is the point of life. And also, another big purpose for me is to use my conscious mind to understand life. Because I feel like we are one of the only organisms, maybe in the whole universe, but at least on Earth as far as we know, that has a conscious mind, which means that we can actually understand the universe. Itís kind of a cool idea that we, being part of the universe, is like the universe understanding itself. And I feel thereís something kind of sacred in that. Not objectively sacred, but subjectively sacred. To me, thereís meaning in thatÖ just understanding the universe. Like itís cool that we as humans get the privilege to understand, like, how gravity works. The laws of gravity, weíve figured that out. We understand mathematics, to a very exact degree. We understand certain things in philosophy. We understand human psychology. We understand how all these things work. We have all this data, all this knowledge that weíve built up, and thatís amazing that we get to be part of this reality. We donít even have a good definition really of what this reality is. We donít even understand it, but we understand parts of it. And to me, that process of understanding it, thatís like an end in itself. And then of course also, experiencing life. I think that every organism thatís alive also has this privilege of having consciousness. So there is like, the kind of analytical consciousness that only humans have. But then there is just the experiential consciousness which all animals and organisms have to various degrees. Even a bacteria has a certain consciousness that we can associate to it, like it can feel things, it can register different sensations. And the same with insects, and birds, and then mammals, and monkeys, and us. And so, we can experience the richness of life. We can see it, we can smell it, we can taste it, we can travel the world, we can experience all this stuff. And to me, to die, and to not take in as much as we could have ñ to not understand as much of the world as we could have ñ thatís a big waste. And Iím not saying thatís factually, objectively true. I think that in fact, if I wanted to, I could totally justify sitting around on my ass and doing nothing my whole life. And that would be, in some sense, one path, that I chose. Carlos Castaneda, in The Wheel of Time, has a brilliant quote about this. And he talks about the warrior. He talks about how in the ancient Aztec and Mexican traditions the shaman and medicine men would train warriors. And these warriors were different then the laymen of the tribe. And these warriors would go out and pick a purpose, and they would dedicate their life to it. And they would be so committed to that purpose that they would bleed for it, and they would die for it. And that gave them direction in life, that gave them satisfaction in life. But, whatís really fascinating about that is that in his quote he talks about how a warrior chooses a path, but, even though he chooses a path with heart, and heís totally committed to it, as though that path were the one path, and as though it were the most important path, at the same time he realizes that that path is no more meaningful, and no less meaningful, than any other. Itís just like any other. And that any path you choose is a valid path as long as itís a path that has heart for you. So thatís the ultimate question. Donít go around and look for the purpose of life in a book. Thatís silly. Donít get it from a video. Iím not telling you what the purpose of life is. Iím telling you ultimately that you have to figure that out for yourself. And whatever you settle on is what itís going to be. So thatís kind of the bottom line of it, is that, take this to heart. And really understand what that means. That if itís up to you, it really is up to you. And you can choose to squander this opportunity, or you can choose to make the most of it. And also, I think you should understand, that as human beings, we have certain biological needs and tendencies. And one of those is the need to self-actualize. Which means, to live up to your full potential. So, as human beings, as Abraham Maslow talks about brilliantly ñ the guy who invented the hierarchy of needs that you might have learned in psychology class ñ well, heís got the lower-level needs at the bottom, like food, and survival, and shelter, and then heís got the highest-level need, which is self-actualization. And he talks about self-actualization. And what he says about it, very interestingly, is that self-actualization is a need. Itís a need! Itís the need to live up to your full potential. And humans have this need. Itís just like a vitamin. You can be deficient in a vitamin and then your body will be dysfunctional. And the same thing with self-actualization. When youíre not living up to your full potential. When youíre not living up to that highest vision of who you know you could be, and youíre not tapping into your greatest strengths, then as a human being, because you have the psychology that you do, as arbitrary as it is we just have this psychology, that when weíre not goal driven, and weíre not pursuing our edge, and weíre not living a big life, then we start to feel dissatisfied. And it starts to rot our soul from the inside. It starts to gnaw at you, it starts to rot you. It leads to a mediocre, regretful, painful kind of life. Do you really want that? Maybe you do? Maybe thatís the path for you: to be lazy, or not do anything, or to think that you can just sit around, or to think that living an average existence, doing a 9-5 job, is perfectly cool. And maybe that is the case, but I can promise you this: even if you do commit to that path, understand that itís going to be a frustrating road to hoe. And I would not want to hoe that road. Iíve done it. Itís soul-destroying. What you want, because you are a human being, you have this need for self-actualization, is you want to live up to your full potential. So that is to me the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, is self-actualization. That is why I named my website Actualized.org. Because I want to help people get actualized. Not enough people understand the deficiency need they have with self-actualization. I think that so many of us are deficient in that one area of our lives that we are dissatisfied and we donít even know why. So, Iím going to wrap it up there. Go ahead, post your comments. Iíd love to hear from you. What do you think about this? What do you think the purpose of life is? Iím curious. Iíll read and comment. And of course, please like and share. And then, if you resonate with this idea of self-actualization, then you will be pleased to know that you can go to Actualized.org and we have got you covered on all the self-actualization materials, theory, techniques, strategies that Iíve researched. And Iíve researched many, many of them, and I continue to do that because Iím really passionate about self-actualization. Thatís what Iím about. Go there, subscribe to the newsletter. A lot of free and amazing content that you can look at right now that will get you on that path, get you on that path to get you self-actualized. You know you want it. I know you want it. We all want it, because human beings need it. All right.