So now that things seem to be a little back on track (or I’m just getting used to the new way my life seems to be going), I thought I’d sit down and give this another go.  I went to my local coffee shop as I can’t seem to get 60 minutes at home that will be guaranteed to be without interruption.  I bought a coffee as I seem to experience much better everything with a bit of caffeine in my system and I started typing.

I gave this a truly good shot.  I spent an hour typing away line after line and I’ve got about 100 lines of thoughts.  Somewhere about the middle I went off on a tangent but most of my items seem to be heading down the same path.  And while I seem to be able to generate a good and substantial purpose for my life, none of the options I created seem to bring me that ‘Yes, that’s it!’ moment of clarity.  I came very close and definitely misted up a little on some of them, but nothing that I’m truly happy with.

So I’ve put it to one side for a little bit of time and have spent the past few days doing a bit more inner exploration of my plans and feelings.  I will go back to this exercise, start again with a clean slate and see where I end up. 

I think my problem was I was thinking too much; putting down things that looked good and that I seemed to think would be a good purpose in life rather than what I truly felt.  It doesn’t matter if your life’s purpose doesn’t include curing cancer and being nice to little kittens specifically.  I need to find what is truly me.

I started to really analyse my life from the outside.  Rather than looking inwards to how I was feeling, I studied my entire life and feelings as if I was watching someone else.  And in doing this rather odd thing, I discovered some really interesting things about myself.  And then I started to change.

I gave up a lot.  Random television was bringing me no joy so I stopped watching it.  I now watch a very small number of shows that either interest me or give me some other benefit.

I stopped blaming other people for much of my life.  I gave up a lot of negative thoughts and old baggage and became much happier and more stable as a result.  This had the odd effect of releasing a lot of old anger and making me a nicer person to be around.  As such I have a stronger relationship with a number of people and am able to better cope with their shit when it happens.

I put on indefinite hold a number of projects that ranged from ’slightly niggling’ to ‘full blown anxiety’ over their incomplete status.  I packed up books and projects and hid them in a cupboard.  I may go back to them one day; I may not.  It doesn’t matter.

I threw out everything that I didn’t need and could easily replace.  I put everything irreplaceable but not currently useful away so I didn’t see it.  As a result, my home office space has reduced from a whole room to a small desk in the corner of the spare room.

But possibly the most amazing thing to come from this unexpected purging of my life is a new sense of adventure.  The biggest thing I gave up was my fear.  My fear of the unknown, my fear of failure and my fear of looking like a complete idiot.  And as a result, some amazing things have happened to me over the past six months that wouldn’t have otherwise come my way.  I have a number of new ventures opening up to me and my life is heading in so many new directions, both professionally and personally.  That isn’t to say that I don’t still have fear.  Fear can be very healthy and certainly can stop you from doing some really stupid things.  But it can also cripple you and stop you from getting what you want and realising your potential.

I never did get around to working out my life’s purpose, but it is still on my list.  For now though…well I’m enjoying the ride regardless of the destination.

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.

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 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. 

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.

In order to gain a bit of confirmation, I used Lifehack.org’s ‘10 Questions to Ask Yourself to Regain Your Work-Life Balance’.  I identified strongly with the author when she spoke of being on the computer when her daughter needed attention, so tackled the questions with hope they might clarify my thoughts.

The questions, in and of themselves, are not difficult:

1. What is it to be completely fulfilled in life?
2. What values, qualities of being must be present for you to have a fulfilled life?
3. How would honoring those values impact your experience of work-life balance?
4. What are you committed to? (Not goals… goals are the doings that happen inside the field of commitments.)
5. What actions give you the least joy?
6. If you were committed to an organized, energetic, juicy, fulfilling experience in your work and life, how would that change your perspective about #5?
7. What two or three actions could you take right now that would create the most impact on your wellbeing?
8. What three things do you do in your daily life have absolutely no relevance to work or life fulfillment?
9. What are you willing to give up?
10. When will you commit to answering all these questions?

but answering them gave me some unexpected responses, including some serious committment to change that I hadn’t expected so early.  Perhaps the most serious of these was ‘What three things do you do in your daily life have absolutely no relevance to work or life fulfillment?’.  I had a hard time whittling this down to three, but managed to identify some things that not only add no value to my life whatsoever, but in actual fact manage to devalue my life.

Having answered the questions and identified the things I was actually committed to, I felt that I was ready to determine what the need was in my life.  That bit wasn’t so easy.

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

Personally, I like new year’s resolutions.  While I’m inclined to embark on a life-changing clearout of my responsibilities and projects at any time, having a clearly defined starting point just feels right.

I normally start my self-assessment in the week between Christmas and New Year.  It is a great time to start as I have indulged in the excesses of Christmas and am ready to make a change.  Not waiting until Jan 1 to plan also means I can be ready to start on the first day of the new year.

This year I’ve taken a slightly different approach to normal in that I’ve planned my planning a lot more carefully.  I’ve read a lot of articles and posts regarding New Year resolving and life-clearing and have identified a number of things I need to achieve before I can start on those all important resolutions.

I initially listed the major steps I need to achieve before I can make my resolutions, or even know what I wanted to resolve:

1. Ask some tough questions
2. Identify the need
3. Sort out what you are trying to achieve
4. Work out how you are going to get there
5. Describe the path to enlightenment
6. List the journey of 1000 steps
7. Make the hard decisions

So far I have handled numbers one and two.  Number 3 involves identifying the real purpose to my life, and while I have read a number of articles on how to do this, I’ve yet to really find the time and inner strength to do it. 

Just what happens if you find your life’s purpose, and it isn’t what you expected?  What happens if it conflicts with everything you’ve previously thought? 

So far I’ve seen posts on recycling notepads, planting trees, turning off computers and influencing ‘green’ political parties.  And while I haven’t seen many tips or posts of a very novel nature, that is probably more to do with the feeds I watch, rather than the quality of the blogosphere’s offering to this project.  I did rather expect a bit more retoric on the nature of climate change, but again, perhaps it is just because I tend not to hang with that crowd.

Needless to say, the gremlins of time stole up on me and I missed it completely.  Bugger.