the purpose of life

note: this was shared yesterday in our internal agency meeting, so at the end there are a few insurance references, but you can substitute insurance to pretty much any other career.

why i’m sharing this is to provide questions to life so we can answer it, and hopefully this improves our quality of life and outlook in life. this can be applied to various things, such as studies, work, financial decisions, life decisions.

a trip to the psychiatrist

i went to the psychiatrist for a psychotherapy session last friday at umsc. the bill was shocking for an hour of what seemed like casual conversation (it was RM 425). i will share to you how she guided me so that you don’t have to pay for this. note that she guided, but not provide answers, because that’s for us to find out.

1. i told her that i have been aimless lately in life. i don’t know what it’s for, what’s the endgame. how are my friends not asking the same question? they seem content having a family, a career

   reply: it’s good that you’re asking these questions. your friends are in a conveyor belt. they just follow what they’ve been told is good by parents, or by societal expectations. in this example, being married is good, and having children is good, only if you want it. it should not be imposed or expected of you; and even if you think it’s voluntary, it might not be.

2. i grew up with thought anchors in life. i was expected to study well and earn well. now that’s done, that anchor is also gone. during uni, i thought the natural course of life was to start a family. that anchor is gone. when working, i thought the end game was to retire. as long as i can work, i don’t think i want to retire. that anchor is gone. the anchors that i’ve held on as purposes in life is now gone. how do i reconcile this?

   reply: that’s for you to think, and process, and solve. it’s good to think, and don’t expect it to come easily. life is about figuring things out.

3. why do people become depressed and/or commit suicide?

   reply: when we do things we are not genuinely happy with, it could lead to sadness and depression. why is that? if we live our life on the conveyor belt, and we accept it at face value yet it isn’t true to ourselves, that could happen. we need to process information, and draw an honest conclusion on how a subject impacts our lives

4. if processing information is the key, then intelligent people should be able to figure things out in life and not get depressed, correct? yet they do, and some even resort to suicide

   reply: there are multiple domains of intelligence, and the wisdom on reflecting on certain things in life needs to come with training of the mind 5. whenever i ruminate, i tend to feel unhappy. is that a cause of concern? reply: again, thinking is good. happiness and sadness are just events in daily lives, everyone experiences that. what’s important is being at peace. are you in a peaceful state? that’s important.

naval ravikant on the meaning of life

1. 3 types of reasoning people always end up with:
   1. First is infinite regress. Right? “Why?” “Because of this.” “Why that? Why this. And it just keep playing forever.
   2. The second is circular reasoning. “Well, A.” “Why A?” “Because of B.” “Well, why B?” “Because of A.” You’re trapped in that.

   3. the third is an axiom. And the most popular axiom is God. But it could be anything; because of math, because of science, because the big bang, because of simulation. These are all axioms. These are all just stopping points.

      So you end up in one of these three dead ends, essentially. So there is no answer. The real answer is because.

2. You get to make up your own answer is the beauty. If there was a single answer, we would not be free. We would be trapped. Because then we would all have to live to that answer. Then we’d be Borg like robots. Each one competing with each other to fulfil that single meaning more than the others. Back to signalling, like I’m better at it than you are. But luckily there is no answer, so you just do whatever you want.

3. How do I matter in this infinite universe? You’re completely separated. No one will have your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, your experience, so your life as a single player game. You’re trapped inside your head and you’re just aware of a bunch of things going on and that’s it.

   The act of pursuing them is actually really useful because then it gives you certain intrinsic understanding in your life that brings a level of peace. source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sctMPouTWiQ

what does this all mean in real life

1. Does this mean that if we don’t have anchors in life, we can just be lazy and waste our life away?

   answer: survival is a primeval force. unless we are born rich and spoiled, and some people are, we can’t afford to do nothing, as we can’t afford anything.

2. what this can mean is evaluating life choices of what matters to us.

   it could be from a minor decision like whether a purchase is necessary, or whether if what we’re eating is healthy.

   it could be that we need to add, improve, or remove daily habits that benefit us or are detrimental to us.

   it could be bigger decisions such as pursuing a career after uni, finding the right partner, and evaluating our level of religious spirituality.

3. what if we’ve crossed the Rubicon?

   there will be things that we’ve done that’s in the past, or is in the present, but it has passed the point of no return.

   depending on the situation, we can accept and make peace with it, improve the situation, or walk away from it. there should be no prescriptions to life, we get to chart our own paths.

what does this mean for our careers?

1. we’ve chosen to become agents, out of the many careers or business options available. our choices should be intentional. we have chosen to make a small footprint in this infinite universe, in this field of insurance, not knowing how it would turn out in our lives when we started.

   i started as a poor agent, so did moses, so did ren en (my colleagues). from the batch inducted in my year, probably more than 90% have left the business. why did we stay?

   consciously, or subconsciously, we decided to make a difference in our lives and our communities, and took it seriously. that’s the thought anchor.

2. for those who didn’t make it, it could mean that they did not take the work seriously. there are a million different permutations that’s out of our control that made it not happen. we need to accept that sometimes, some things are beyond our control, despite our best efforts, after we’ve exhausted all our efforts.

   this is because luck plays a role in any outcome, and some people don’t find any luck. otherwise, life would be predictable, and there will be no failures, only successes. poverty will be non-existent, and all prophets and gods will be by our side, navigating us in a utopian world.

3. as for myself, and i can say the same for moses, we’ve had times that we’re unhappy. there were times we wanted to give up too. remember, happiness and sadness are normal events in life.

   we made that peace, that we wanted to make a good living from insurance. we kept working hard and improving our ways of doing business. the harder we worked, luck found us more often, and we were able to recognise luck more often to take advantage.