How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love

Maria Popova, curator of brainpickings, had this article published back in February. She lists seven insights from philosophers that should help you make the choice of looking for and do what you love. Very appropriate for graduation season.

These are my favourites from the full list. It's very well worth it to go to the webpage and take a deeper look.

• Ditch prestige - it's a powerful magnet that causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like. [Paul Graham]

• It's perhaps easier than ever to feel carrier anxiety. We think we know what success is. We should make sure we own our ideas and we are the true authors of our own ambitions.  [Alain de Botton - his TED Talk]

• "The best way to get approval is not to need it." [Hugh Macleod]

• You will be working a great deal of your life. Make sure you are satisfied with it. If you aren't, keep looking. [Steve Jobs]

I loved the first point, maybe because I feel too sympathetic. The next two bullet points are sound echoes of the same idea. As Alain Botton said: 

"Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along."

You can even find pop references to this. I like more and more what Alfred tells Batman in "Batman Begins":

Why do we fall sir? 

So we might learn to pick ourselves up.

We can't find what we want, what we love, if we don't dare to fail in the process. Failure is good. If we learn how to learn from it. And the earlier we fall, the earlier we learn how to get up. The earlier we learn to let go of fear. The earlier we find our true selves.

#embracefailure