In my continuing journey of self discovery for the new year I have so far asked some tough questions and identified the need in my life that has started this whole she-bang.  And now for the hard part.  What exactly am I trying to achieve?

This is the big, deep, meaning of life question.  The ‘why am I here’ type of soul-searching that I have generally avoided in favour of purposeless living. 

Purposeless living has delivered me this far, granted, but I’m missing something, so perhaps it is a purpose.  And if I am going to continue on with the next steps, I really need to understand the general direction I am going.  I need to find that direction.

I did do okay with Step 2, Identifying the Need.  I’ve identified why I started this, but that need doesn’t give me the big picture idea of where I should be going.  I know why I started walking, but not where I want to end up.  Purposeless again, right?

So in order to work out where I’m going, I did what I tend to do in situations like this: research.  I’m not a religious person and in keeping with that (lack of) philosophy, I have avoided the traditional methods of determining what you are on the planet for.  I did check out a number of other people’s ideas (I’m not sure if Oprah actually counts as a religion yet?), but none of them really struck home with me.  So I’ve decided to go with something that may or may not provide the answers for me, but that I’ve been meaning to try for about two years now: Steve Pavlina’s method.

So I’ll get myself a quiet room, a computer and about 20 minutes (okay, I’m stubborn – probably 60 minutes) and see what I can come up with.

A couple of days ago, I sat down and asked myself some tough questions about my work/life balance and the amount of ’stuff’ I was metaphorically carrying around with me. 

The next step in my ‘Change in 2008′ process involved identifying the need and while it had sounded great when I’d written the list of steps I was going to take, it didn’t really mean much on its own.  What need?  Need for change?  Need for value in my actions?  Need for more steps?

So I sat down again and really thought about what this ‘need’ was and realised that, for me, it was the need for change in my life and actually stemmed directly from the tough questions.  I need to change my time allocation for tasks. I need to refocus on what is really important.  And I need to get control of my brain and make it do what I really want when I want, rather than wasting valuable time.

So really, my ‘need’ boiled down to something very simple:

I need to fully engage; bring everything I have to the task at hand and keep focussed on the big picture.

Easy, right?  No, but mission accomplished; I have my need. Now onto sorting out what I’m trying to achieve.

I realised some time ago that holding onto past troubles wasn’t giving me an opportunity to fully embrace the present.  While it is hard to just ‘let go’, especially of things that have hurt and continue to hurt, it can be very freeing to give up on some memories that are only making you miserable.

I decided that I was going to try harder to forgive and forget many of the actions and events that were causing me to reflect negatively and while I haven’t always been so successful in this, I am finding that some of my relationships are really benefiting from the change.

Lifehack.org today has an excellent post on letting go of things that are causing you pain or not adding value to your life, including resentment, revenge and that really hard one; guilt.

I’m still a work in progress on this one, but I can attest that letting go of events and things that are causing you pain or problems now can make significant difference to your future happiness. 

In order to determine what kind of changes I wanted to make for 2008, it was necessary for me to do some serious soul searching as to the problems I thought my life was facing.  I had a look at some other people’s thoughts on this, sat down and looked at my life.

There were a number of things I identified that I wanted to change, including my health and fitness, however perhaps the biggest roadblock in my life at the moment is the balance between work and play.  While initially I thought this was a problem with work/life balance, I realised that it wasn’t as simple as that.

As I have a full time job, a part time job and am half-way through a Masters degree, the imbalance isn’t only caused by my ‘work’.  My full time job is, in fact, very contained and while I sometimes need to complete work after hours or check those emails during my holidays, it really isn’t the cause of the imbalance.

And it isn’t the part time job either.  That is extremely variable, but also quite flexible and has been less demanding over the past year.  The postgrad study is a different matter, but also still not solely responsible for the imbalance in my life.  I study one subject per semester and can generally find enough time to complete my required activities each week.

The problem for me was a combination of longish working hours, study and a number of personal habits and hobbies that were adding no value to my life but draining significant time.

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Just five days in and my bloglines and inbox are full of articles posted everywhere on things you can do to make your 2008 bigger, better, more productive, less productive, happier, gladder, more wonderful than last year.

I’ll update this post as time goes by, but here are a few that I’ve found interesting so far:

43folders – Death and Underachievement; a guide to happiness at work: amazing post by Ryan Norbauer on letting go and enjoying life

43folders – Re-evaluating your online commitments: cutting out those online apps and social networks that aren’t providing value to your life

43folders – Why are you reading all that news?: A wake up call for RSS addicts

Metafilter – Advice for clearing library clutter – some excellent advice in the comments that applies to clutter of all kinds and jump-started my house clearout

DIYPlanner’s 2008 Calendar Templates – excellent for those who live with paper rather than pixels

Lifehack.org – 14 tips for resolutions that stick in the new year

Lifehack.org – 20 questions to help you reflect the past year

Lifehack.org – 8 ways to achieve success in 2008

Lifehack.org – 10 questions to ask yourself to regain your work/life balance