What is your reason of being?

How many people are wandering without any goal or roadmap? Have you ever wondered your “reason of being”?

Elif Shafak the Turkish writer said wisely “No matter who we are and where we live, deep inside we all feel incomplete. It is like having lost something and experiencing the need to find it back. What is this “something”? Most of us will never find it. And among those who succeed, even rarer are those who go on its quest.” The key question will be to identify this mysterious “something”. Maybe finding it could represent a part of our mission? Happiness can occur on the road not only at the final destination.

Dalai Lama said “What surprises me most about humanity is a western man. He sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies never having really lived”.

In our “modern times”, our western society goes so fast and it is so overwhelmed of information that very often we do not question our routine and/or we flee the existential questions like who I am? Why I am here? What is my contribution to the planet? What if I die tomorrow?…

Vaclav Havel said “The tragic element for modern man is not that he does not know the meaning/sense of his life, but it bothers him less and less. “

When we launch a company, a business, an enterprise we establish a business plan and the first point, the most important key question before starting is to set up the reason of being of this new project.

For life it seems to be the same, undertake one’s life: to take it under one’s wing literally to fly to new horizons. Seneca said wisely “there is no favorable wind for someone who does not know where he is heading”. It seems to be obvious but how many of us, just rush, run always, with craze but without any idea to where or without a goal. Binary and as a truism in football the goal is to goal. But those who ignore it would see 22 crazy persons running endless and pushing a ball senseless.

That’s why the first step is to define what we like then set up our objectives by establishing a methodology (the tools to reach them) then the deadlines. It is important always to have a different backup and integrating corrective actions to adjust the realities according to our forecasts.

Here is a mapping, a tool allowing to visualize yourself. It is called “Ikigai” in Japanese it means “Reason of Being”.

Why it is so important to choose a job we like? Confucius said wisely ” Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Then having a good job and then a personal balance and harmony are essential, this is the tree of life with the roots which can be seen as a good personal equilibrium allowing a stability and permitting to the branching to touch the sky.

 So doing what we like is primordial. Then maybe the fact to feel useful can be one of our reason of being. Knowing that one of the 4 hormones of happiness is oxytocin which is secreted when you feel useful for a cause. This is the fulfillment to belong to something higher, deeper… that we can feel with association, charity… Indeed giving brings you a lot: the more you give the more you receive…

Indeed letting a fingerprint on the earth could be one of the different reasons of being… Compay Segundo said, “I am eternal because I had children, I wrote songs and I planted a tree”. With this simple triptych of offspring, arts, and ecology… he had found a simple sense of life but once again it is personal and in addition may be no need to reach the moon.

Joseph Campbell said “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

In Shambali retreat we will not tell you what is your reason of being, if you ignore it we will just give you some tools for you to find it on your own. This approach is based on the principle of maieutic (the Greek philosophy) that’s to say to help people to find themselves.

Issa ~ AM