You’re meant to do something here. And you know it.
Don’t do it, and you’ll end up successful and miserable.
You’ve obviously mastered the art of optimization, as you’re crushing it in your career. Fancy job title? Check. Investment portfolio? Diversified. Morning routine? Locked in. You’re hitting your KPIs, crushing your goals, and your LinkedIn profile reads like a success story.
But something still feels off. When you sit in the quiet, you know you’re meant for more, that you’re not living the life you were meant to live. So you numb yourself; zone out with Netflix, drink a bit more than you should, and scroll on your phone.
I know many of you feel that way, and here’s why: You’re optimizing for the wrong variables.
You can’t design a meaningful life until you know what your life is supposed to be optimized FOR. And most successful people have no idea what that is.
The Assignment You’ve Been Ignoring
You weren’t put here to climb corporate ladders or accumulate achievements like Boy Scout badges. You weren’t put here to maximize quarterly returns or hit arbitrary performance metrics someone else invented.
There’s something specific you’re meant to do. And your current dissatisfaction? That restless feeling that success isn’t enough? That’s the signal you’re off track.
Ignore that whisper at your own peril.
Successful people are often the worst at hearing this whisper. You’ve been rewarded for ignoring your inner compass for so long that you’ve forgotten it exists. You’ve gotten really good at what pays well, doing the things that get noticed at work, what gets promoted, what looks impressive on paper.
But impressive to who? And for what?
The Right Question, Asked Wrong
Here’s the question you need to ask yourself: “What would I love?”
Not what should I do. Not what can I monetize. Not what skills do I have that I can market. Not what others think I should do.
What would I love?
It’s the perfect question, but most people answer it with other people’s voices. They think about what their parents would approve of, what their industry expects, what their peer group values.
The real work is getting quiet enough to hear what YOU actually love. Not what you think you should love based on years of “practical” choices and social conditioning.
Your real desires have been buried under layers of “shoulds”, market dynamics, and optimization for outcomes that were never yours to begin with.
The Business Model Trap
The moment you get clear on what you’d actually love to do, your analytical brain kicks into overdrive: “But how do I monetize it?”
This question kills more visions before they’re born than any other fear.
You start thinking: “I can’t make money doing that.” “There’s no career path.” “It’s not practical.” “I have a mortgage.”
But here’s what I know: Your soul doesn’t give a shit about your business model.
Figure out what you’re actually here to do first. Then get creative about the economics. The world is full of people making money in ways that didn’t exist ten years ago. The “how” will reveal itself once you’re clear on the “what.”
But you can’t reverse-engineer your calling from market opportunities. That’s how you end up “successful” but empty.
The Other Fears Keeping You Stuck
Even if you get past the money question, there’s a whole army of fears waiting to keep you playing small:
- Fear of seeming impractical or naive. God forbid someone thinks you’re not being “realistic.” Better to stay miserable and strategic.
- Terror of discovering your assignment requires dismantling your current success. What if what you’re meant to do doesn’t look anything like what you’ve built? What if you have to start over?
- Fear you can’t actually do it. Easier to never try than to risk finding out you’re not capable.
- Fear of what others will think. “Who does he think he is?” “She’s having a midlife crisis.” “That’s not very practical.”
- Fear it will force you to take action. As long as you don’t get clear on what you actually want, you don’t have to do anything about it. You’re not on the hook.
These fears feel rational, but they’re just comfortable prisons of your own creation. They keep you stuck in a life that fits you like a suit three sizes too small.
Vision as Soul Blueprint
Once you know your assignment, once you get clear on what you’re actually here to do, you map out your vision, what you want your life to look like. This isn’t about goal-setting or strategic planning. This is about crafting a vision that serves your deeper purpose.
It shouldn’t just be about work; common trap. People focus on one aspect of their life, not realizing that each aspect of their life impacts directly on the others. Your vision needs to encompass all the major domains of your life:
- work / career
- Finances
- Relationships
- Health
- Spirituality
- Personal development
- Recreation
If your vision doesn’t include all of the elements that are important to you, it’s easy to build something exceptional in one of these areas, but be miserable because you don’t feel fulfilled in the other aspects of your life.
Your vision needs to be bold, yet specific. Even though you have no idea how to do it. (If you knew how, it would be a plan, not a vision.) It needs to be inspirational, and even a bit crazy. Definitely scary to you.
Think about JFK’s moon shot. He didn’t say “We want to beat the Russians.” He painted a concrete picture: “We will put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade is out.”
Specific. Impossible-seeming. Bigger than his current capabilities. But aligned with something larger than personal ambition.
Your vision needs to be the same. It should make you feel simultaneously terrified and alive. It should be specific enough that you’ll know when it’s happened. And it should require you to become someone bigger than who you are today.
This is your soul’s blueprint for what you’re meant to build in the world.
The Design Work That Actually Matters
Then —and only then — can you start architecting a life around your calling instead of your comfort.
This isn’t about work-life balance or optimizing your calendar. This is about designing every major decision to serve your deeper assignment.
Where you live. Who you spend time with. What projects you take on. How you invest your energy. All of it gets filtered through one question: Does this serve what I’m actually here to do, or is it just feeding my ego?
Your vision becomes your decision-making framework. Without knowing where you’re trying to go, every choice becomes arbitrary. With a clear vision, most decisions become obvious; aligned with the vision? Do it. Not aligned? Avoid it.
The Alternative
Here’s what happens if you don’t do this work:
You keep succeeding at someone else’s game while your real life waits in the wings. You accumulate more achievements that feel hollow. You get promoted into roles that drain your soul. You make more money that doesn’t buy you meaning.
You become really good at optimizing a life that was never meant to be yours.
Your soul has an assignment. Something specific that only you can do, in the way only you can do it.
Your job isn’t to judge whether it’s practical or profitable or impressive. Your job is to figure out what it is, then design a life worthy of it.
The world doesn’t need another person climbing someone else’s ladder. It needs you doing the thing you’re actually here to do.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to take this seriously.
The question is whether you can afford not to.
Quotation I’ve Been Pondering
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
— Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical early Christian text
Journal Prompt
“What is the one truth I already know deep down but keep ignoring? What’s the cost of continuing to silence it?”
Until next week!!
Work and live well.
Tim
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