When you feel that your life has no purpose…

When you feel that it’s useless to keep trying to be good…

When you feel like giving up on trying to stay positive and be uplifting and supportive to others…

When you feel like the people in your life would be better off without you…

When you feel frustrated that your life has not turned out the way you wanted it to turn out or that nothing ever seems to works out…

Wise words from Mick: Sometimes you don’t get what you want but you get what you need.

It’s good to be good. But we can’t always be good. We’re humans and we make mistakes and choose unwisely and act selfishly and say the wrong things at the wrong times and we miss some things that we might have not wanted to miss or that we realize we shouldn’t have missed. We are not perfect. But we don’t need to be perfect. We just need to grow.

Growing means changing. It doesn’t always involve the kind of life-altering changes like moving to a new city, quitting your corporate job as an international business consultant with a Fortune 100 company and taking a job as a yoga instructor in your neighborhood studio, leaving your spouse of twenty years to pursue your dreams of being a street performer, trading your 14 bourbons a week habit into a five AA meetings a week habit, leaving the Catholic Church and converting to Judaism, or pushing aside your carnal appetites for steak and video games and porn for a life as an asexual, vegan cyclist.

Sometimes a lot of growth can come from small changes, like changing the radio station, turning off the radio, putting away the cell phone, going for a walk, or eating an apple instead of an entire can of Jalapeño Pringles.

Just like we can’t be good all the time we can’t think positive thoughts all of the time. I mean, we would like to think positively about each and every situation, always see the silver lining, always see the glass half full, always see the bright side, always take note of the hope. It’s good to think positive thoughts. Our thoughts attract other like thoughts. Our positive thoughts will attract other positive thoughts and negative thoughts will attract more and worse negative thoughts. So the idea is to try to keep eating the positive, good-for-you-type thought-stuff so you’ll be fat on positivity.

It’s worthy to be good and it’s worthy to cling to positive thoughts. These habits will attract other good habits and will also attract like people who are good and positive into your life. It will open the doors to good and positive places and things, as well.

We all live our lives, making choices, living with other choices that are made for us or that were made long before we existed. We encounter people, places, and things in our lives. Sometimes these people, places, and things become more of a thing with a place in our lives. Each and every relationship with a person, place, or thing that we brush up against in life is an opportunity to connect. Through these connections, and thus our connection with (the universe, God, the creator, the great spirit, the divine….) our purpose is revealed.

I believe our purpose is connection. We are social animals. We evolved to what we are, regardless of your personal beliefs about Darwinian Evolutionary Theory or adaptation or natural selection, in social groups.

In America we focus so much on the individual and being individually important and unique. We seem to minimize the importance of our extended families, the places where we grew up, the wisdom of our elders, the traditions and practices of the past. We’re so busy “making it happen” that we blind ourselves to the fact that there is no single person who has ever made it happen without lots of help from God (or whatever you believe in, whether it’s pure scientific cause and effect or the Flying Spaghetti Monster), without lots of help from other people, without lots of influence from certain places and things.

Connection is important. And there are many different types of connections.

Love is a type of connection. Compassion is a type of connection. Generosity is a type of connection. Forgiveness is a type of connection. All of these virtues which characterize a life of “being good” are all about connection.

Connection also happens when you become conscious. When you “pay attention” or when you focus on something or when you’re “being present” or “being in the moment” or “being mindful” or “being in the here and now” or “consciously being” you are also connecting with something “bigger” than your “self”. Some people would say that you are connecting with your spirituality or connecting with God, your maker, your Creator. Other people might say you are connecting with something else entirely.

What I see is that being mindful connects you with YOU, the Real You, your True Self. This is your “true self” underneath all this stuff connecting to the “true world” underneath all this stuff outside of us and all around us.

There is a hidden self beneath all of the masks and costumes we live in and behind. There is a hidden world beneath all of the lies, deceptions, illusions, and false images of the world we see around us. Your purpose is to connect with your True Self and connect your True Self with the True World.

How do you connect with your True Self? How do you connect your True Self with the True World? Listen. Look. Smell. Taste. Feel. Use your senses. But know that your senses can fool you. Use your mind. But know that your thoughts can fool you. Use your memories. But know that your memory can fool you. Use your heart. But know that your heart can fool you.

Walk your path. Trust in the process. It will come to you when the time is right.