Don't Just Live Your Life, Lead It

My plan for the future

Nov 15, 2022

selective focus photo of boy at the bridge near body of water — Photo by Japheth Mast on Unsplash

We all live and struggle through the many stages of life. We will face many sorrows and constantly pray for success and happiness. After searching for half a lifetime and ending up in many blind alleys, I have realised that success and happiness never lie elsewhere; whether our life is successful or otherwise, the decision lies in our own hands.

We might wonder about our success and search for the meaning to fill our emptiness within. But life doesn’t happen by chance, and success doesn’t come by accident. You have to live your life through every stage, you have to lead it in the direction you intend to go.

“To transform your life, you must live an intentional life.
Most people don’t lead their life, they accept their life.
When you accept your life, you are living on things that are not worth your time and effort.
To go uphill, it has to be intentional; nobody ever goes uphill by accident.”

Imagine Judgement day. God asks how you would judge your life. What are you going to say?

The only person who truly empathizes with you is yourself. There is a saying that when you see your life from a higher perspective, your failures become minuscule, and your purpose becomes clear.

Never mind how others might judge you. It is important to live your life as you intended and lead it to where you want so that in the end, when you judge your life before God, you can say with absolute certainty your life is not in vain.

What happens when you do not yet know where you want to be?

For the people who have no clue where to go, don’t be, because you are not alone. I was lost, just like you, but doing these three things have helped me understand myself better. The process allowed me to figure out what is important and what are distractions. It might be useful to help cut short your search.

1) Write

A large part of my life has been filled with writing, it has become the centrepiece of my life, powering my growth and beliefs. I write whenever I feel lost or have to figure out something but am not quite there. Writing down forces my mind to give a structure to whatever I am troubled with, and I force myself to frame my problems into proper context. Many of my problems cannot survive this process because they are nothing more than self-created worries.

A man has only one worry when he is hungry, but as soon as he has eaten full, he will have other worries.

The above quote is probably why Steve Jobs has always said, “Stay hungry, stay foolish!” because when you are not hungry, you worry about other useless things, which is a distraction to your goal in life.

So whenever something is troubling you, jot it down, write out your thoughts and struggles, and put them into context. Doing so will either end up with a good story that could earn you many new subscribers, or you will realise you have nothing to worry about.

2) Learn

“Much like a shark has to keep swimming till the day it dies, a man has to keep learning till the day his heart stops beating.” Continuous learning is the centre of what this means. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, and we have to make it a habit to learn new things every day.

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

I leverage my writing habit to force myself to read; the more I read, the more things I devour. It is through learning that I build knowledge, and it is through experience that I build wisdom. The beautiful thing about learning and experience is that nobody can take them away. This is how I grow and how I shape my life.

Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”

“Let your passion for writing develop your need to read; let your need to read drive your urge to learn, and let your urge to learn to dominate your growth in life.” A simple philosophy yet an impactful growth mindset that would transform your life.

3) Enjoy

Many religions expect people to accept life as hard and suffering, and the rewards come in the afterlife. You are expected to deal with the harshness of life and endure physical pain and torture to redeem yourself and have a chance for a good reincarnation. A chance to be accepted into the gates of heaven.

There may be some truth in it. But life need not be filled only with suffering and pain. I am not so noble; I don’t believe God gave us a life to be tortured and for us to live in pain. I believe life is also meant for us to enjoy.

I asked for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things ...
I got nothing I asked for—but everything I had hoped for.

“God gave us life so that we might enjoy all things.” This is what I believe, and a large part of my life was to figure out how I could enjoy this life without squandering it.

Every hardship you have been through, every moment of sorrow you have experienced, are they not something you are proud of? And are they not something you have enjoyed despite the hardship?

In Singapore, every Singaporean son has to serve in national service, and most of us end up in the Army. It is probably the most dreadful moment in life. We went through gruesome training and subjected ourselves to mental torture. Despite the hardship, what national service has made me acquire was the skill of “苦中作樂”, which means making merry in bitter hardship. I was made a man through hardship and, from such experience, acquired many valuable life skills.

Viktor Frankl’s life changed abruptly when he was sent to a Nazi concentration camp along with his family in 1942. He survived hell in the prisoner’s camp and drew valuable lessons from his experiences and observations. He developed the theory of logotherapy, which claimed that individuals could survive and overcome suffering if they could find the will to meaning.

If you can find your will to meaning, you will not only be able to endure any hardship, you can even come to enjoy the process. When you do, success is inevitable!