What Is Your Masculine Purpose In Life?

by Steven on September 15, 2009 · No Comments

masculine purpose work satisfaction I’m going to take a wild punt and guess that you were not a born trust fund baby.

Which means just like me, you probably spend a big chunk of your daily life at work. Earning cash.

When I’m not doing AI stuff, I work in a bar, and I see many of my customers just after they finish work.

“Hey James, how was your day?”, I like to inquire.
“Glad it’s over. Gimme a beer”, James likes exhale.

It’s a typical conversation over the bar.

As I’m poring James a beer, I usually note, not without a sense of irony, that that the beverage I’m serving only takes the edge off his symptoms – and doesn’t do anything for the core of his problem.

(If you read this blog regularly, you’re aware that we’re big here on looking that the core causes of mens problems, rather than temporarily subduing the symptoms).

This is what got me thinking:

I can’t remember the last time I had a customer who walked into my bar and said:

“Gimme a beer and some nibbles, quickly – I got so caught up with this job that I love so much, I totally forgot to eat today. Hurry up, because I’m beside myself with excitement and I can’t wait to run back to work and get stuck into it all again”.

OK, I’m exaggerating here, but you get my drift, don’t you? You don’t hear men speaking with passion and enthusiasm about their work nearly as often as you hear this:

“I don’t want to go to work tomorrow”
“I can’t wait to go home”
“I can’t wait to get another job”.

So, why is work merely ‘work’?

Why can’t it be something we draw satisfaction from? Something that is borne out of passion, rather than need for cash?

Something that’s fulfilling NOW, not when the paycheck is big enough (will it ever be big enough, really? – but that’s another blog post in itself).

Why can’t it be something that we do for its intrinsic satisfaction, rather than just a paycheck?

Why can’t it be a job which lets you be a small cog in a company which exists to makes the world a better place?

Rather than making you into a faceless employee in a company that exists solely to buy and then sell something for a profit?

And why is it, that after we aspire to be everything from cosmonauts to rock stars as little boys, we so readily accept that work is just a recent memory that we must drown out with a glass of beer?

And why is work satisfaction something we accept as a dream that only little boys are naive to dream about (before they face the “realities” of life)?

Or something that grown men aspire to “get” – when we get that promotion, or that raise.

But lets leave the subject of work alone for a moment and have a look at mens time outside work.

After all, it is outside work that we get to find satisfaction by spending some of our hard-earned cash, right?

Do we spend our hard earned cash in ways which we think will bring us happiness and fulfillment?

We go out, buy clothes, buy gadgets, buy holidays. At least a considerable chunk of our cash is spent on items which ostensibly ought to bring fulfillment and feel-good.

I know I’ve spent many a thousand of my own hard earned cash on things I felt I “needed”, and couldn’t wait to own – because of the feeling I got from owning them.

Don’t know about you, though, but that feeling of satisfaction and excitement was very soon replaced by a feeling of hollowness. And a desire to buy something new, again.

Which helped me see that satisfaction and pleasure (or, lasting pleasure, at least) is not to be found in commodities.

So, is there a trend that we can see here? We work in jobs we feel very little satisfaction from doing – and are mainly driven by the paycheck (and the promise of a bigger paycheck, one day).

Then, we spend the paycheck in ways which we think will bring us fulfillment, but which have very little ability to do so.

I realise that I’m painting with a broad brush here, but unless a stampede of people run into my bar tomorrow and begin to excitedly ramble about how crazy they are about their jobs…

And they are followed by another stampede, which tell me that they finally bought a commodity which has brought them a great, lasting amount of satisfaction…

Then I’d like to insist that my theory has a notable degree of truth to it.

In which case, I’d like to suggest that perhaps we got this whole work thing the wrong way around?

We accept the fact that work is crap, but spending money in our time off work holds potential to feel good.

So we slave away at work, waiting for the moment to spend cash in creative ways which will let us feel excitement, or relaxation, or abandon, or importance.

The process of spending cash (from my own experience, anyway) has little ability to bring us that inner contentment we search for.

Is it any wonder, then, that we overspend, end up in credit card debt and feel the need to ‘take getaways’ for a temporary relief and have ‘shopping therapy’ for a temporary boost?

What if were to reverse the situation?

What if we were to stop, right now. What if each one of us were to take a day, a month, a year, a decade (!) to figure out what the gift of each one of us is.

And then find a job which becomes our vehicle for offering our gift to the world. A job where you create. A job where you channel.

A job through which you give, rather than take. A job which you can barely distract yourself from to eat, drink or catch up with friends from.

I’d argue that this is the kind of job which would bring you all the fulfillment you’ll ever need.

Don’t know where to start? I’ll give you a hint. Your biggest problem, your biggest fear, your biggest frustration is your gift to this world.

It is your purpose. It is where you draw your satisfaction from.

You can either spend your life moaning and bitching about your problems, wishing for something better and wondering why the other guys seem to have it so easy.

Or you can embrace your own inner crap as a lesson you must evolve through in this life. And then offer this lesson of evolution to other people.

Are you bald? This lifetime is the time when you learn that hair has very little bearing on what it means to be a Man.

Were you born into a poor family? This is the lifetime where you learn that wealth (and chasing wealth, as your parents probably have done all their life) has little bearing on the quality of life.

And I’m not talking about “learning” as an intellectual process, but rather as an experiential one. Plenty of men “know” that looks or money have little to do with satisfaction whilst continuing to experience the world as:

“If only I improve my appearance a little bit and make a little bit more cash, I’ll sit back and be content with myself”.

Your inner crap is your gift to the world. Because if you have it, others do as well. And if you find a way to cure your biggest frustration, you’ll come across others suffering in the same way – and offer them your help.

Then, refine your methods, find some more people who seek the cure, and offer them your help, perhaps for for a fee.

Even if you make no money off such enterprise it in the end, I’m willing to bet that the satisfaction you get from doing it will offset the everyday pains of your ‘real’ job.

Much more effectively than a fancy designer watch or the latest gadget.

Thing is, if you’re truly coming from a place of wanting to give, to improve the world a little bit, I’m prepared to bet that you will make money off it.

You tend to attract what you are.

If you walk around in life, labouring to make a buck just so you can spend that buck in a way which makes you feel better about the way you made it, you’ll attract into your life people of the same mindset as you, with the same needs, same desires, same ideas.

You’ll attract people who live their life from a place of need. And there is very little opportunity to be had, and very little wealth to be shared, in circles where everyone lives on a level of “I don’t have enough”.

But if you walk through life evolving and giving, you will attract others who want to give.

In such circles, wealth is abundant and opportunities are abundant. You will be able to part-take in what others have to offer, as they will be enriched by your gifts. Money may just become a by-product of you walking through life.

Better still, will you need to race down to the pub and “thank God it’s Friday” every week?

Will you have an overdrawn credit card?

Will you be as easy prey for marketers, who tell you that you NEED to part with your paycheck NOW because this latest designer underwear will make you feel better about yourself?

Maybe, maybe not.

But what have you got to lose by trying? If you have a tendency to “thank God it’s Friday” a lot, what are you risking more than just a lifetime of groundhog day?

Steven