Finding Purpose

From the previous post, I'm actually done with all of the things I said I wanted to do during semester break and I still have one month of holiday haha. Watched Penthouse up until the latest episode in Season 3, Nevertheless too. Done reading the three books I mentioned. Attended a few online events, like Undi18's 111 Initiative Becoming an Informed Citizen workshop, Boston Consulting Group's Emerald's Program info session, and Mulazine x New Waves Running Club's writing workshop.  Yikes, I'm back to feeling empty not knowing what to do. It seems like I have so much energy and productivity to do every other thing NON-academic-related and outside of research 💀 God, please give me the strength to carry on for the next half a year. 

This post is meant to feature some quotes I found through one of the books I'm done reading - Finding Purpose at the Crossroads of Me + We by Alvin Ung. It's a free book I got after having a chat with my managing director at SOLS Health. Basically, the book follows the journey of the author meeting all these wonderful individuals whose life revolves around giving back to others and creating positive impact to the society. The author who was also a Fellow in Khazanah Nasional Berhad and co-founder of Leaderonomics also shares a tool/process readers can use in determining their purpose and how to go on about making it a part of their life. 

Let's get on straight to the quotes:

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Tom Rath, an expert in strengths assessment has observed that "if you spend most of your life trying to be good at everything, you eliminate your chances of being great at anything."

Perhaps one good way to discover our strengths is not by aiming to be great but by being faithful in doing small things with love and excellence. "The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love," wrote Mother Teresa in her journals. 

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To use the words of Nietzsche, the journey is "a long obedience in the same direction." It is a fine balance between taking risks in new directions, while staying faithful to the long obedience.

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Good decisions help us to focus and not overextend ourselves. As the brilliant investor Warren Buffett is credited to have said: "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."

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"You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." - Rabindranath Tagore

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In The Four Loves, author C.S. Lewis asked readers to imagine the following scenario: You are walking on a mountain trail back to your village. At noon, you stop at a cliff and look down. If you dropped a rock, it might hit someone in your village - you are that close to your goal. Yet you can't take the shortcut of jumping down that 1,000-foot cliff. So you make the choice to step away and take the long way home. Many of the steps you take might take you farther from the village, but this circuitous route actually brings you closer to your goal. 

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"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." - Mahatma Gandhi

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The good news is that if we acknowledge that we are lost, it will spur us to look for purpose.

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So those are some parts that I marked from the book which made me reflect. That's all for now, gotta have lunch! Take care, always.