there are two types world those who wake up in the morning like this and those who wake up in the morning feeling like this we know which one we are but the question is what's the difference Carl Jung a very famous psychiatrist said at the end of his career that over 1/3 of the patients he's seen actually suffered from no clinical neurosis but rather from a want of meaning or purpose in their lives Viktor Frankl a Jewish psychiatrist and survivor of the Auschwitz death camp said as soon as one of his fellow inmates lost their
purpose they'd be dead within a day or two purpose makes us whole purpose gives us life purposes what gets us out of bed in the morning and without it we're drifters drifting through life with no Direction no destination and no end in sight and life is dull mundane monotonous and meaningless Sheen called this the anxiety of life now some of us will say just get through school get a good job follow your dreams get married raise a family and make a lot of money that's your purpose and these are all good things that are part
of purpose but can't be purpose purpose because first of all what if these things don't work out for me then what and second what if all these things work out for me then what others will just try to avoid the whole thing and convince ourselves that there's no such thing as purpose and we'll try to replace the want of purpose with things like pleasures experiences and excessiveness but you know as well as I do this gets old real fast and the older we get the louder those questions become so what is it what's my purpose
and how do I break out of this anxiety of life well Sheen offers two solutions the first is this go out and help someone today help my neighbor who's my neighbor anyone near me who's suffering the poor the lonely the sick the stressed-out the sad the broken the beaten down the depressed that tired the hungry the addicted the lost the hurting basically we're all the neighbor because when we're living in this anxiety of life were living totally for ourselves trapped and all the junk inside our own heads and the quickest way out and the second
thing is this be open like our phones receive all kinds of signals from God knows where we have built-in antennas able to receive infinite signals from outside we call these but they've long been disabled in atrophy and we can't get a signal anyway because we're surrounded by so much enable it and be open to receive some sort of encounter from God and it doesn't matter who you are what you've done or how far away you think you may be these signals are coming down on all of us even as we speak like rain just be
open now some of us may be thinking all right that first one makes sense but why do I need that second one the whole god thing makes me a little uncomfortable because if the first one is this the second is this if the first is this the second is this if the first one is this the second is this because the first is go out and love my neighbor and the second is opening up a permanent connection with pure love itself that is purpose and this purpose is like the mother of all purposes and takes
all those other purposes into her arms and lifts them all up purpose is not something we rationalize or intellectualize or figure out by just thinking about it really really hard it's something we do and when we do we don't find purpose purpose finds us
