Pelman Day SIX: Purpose, or What is your Goal in Life?

Make this part of your consciousness. Where a serious decision must be made about your goals in life, think about it long and carefully.

Ask yourself “What is my object in life?” The question is fundamental because it concerns your mental efficiency.

In order to get the best out of yourself you must have an aim in life: not a general aim, but a particular aim: not a mere desire to be successful in everything that you undertake, but a definite purpose to accomplish a definite end. There are many reasons for this, and chief among them is that without a proper plan of life your mental ability will not be developed.

Consciousness of Aim

An aim, or purpose, implies that you are moved by a specific desire or feeling; to be an artist, to develop a useful invention, to write the great American novel, or perhaps to make a name for yourself in politics. In your mind there must be a clear idea, which means that your intellectual powers are intimately concerned with your aim, but the idea is so emotional that it a feeling rather than a thought. There is more heart in it than head. You are driven by this aim.

The significance of feeling, as a mental function, becomes evident when it is realized that a strong desire to achieve, to attain, to master, to conquer, is the basis of every plan of life.

What is this feeling? In a general sense it is interest. Take games as an illustration. Why do you stand for hours watching a football game? Because you are interested in the game and want your side to win. Why do people devote two evenings a week to physical drill, or to “trapshooting,” to languages or to altruism? Simply because they have an interest in these things. Other men have other interests and act accordingly. The tragic thing is to have no interest at all. It spells mental decay, unhappiness, and often disaster.

If you will read the biographies of people of thought and action, you will find that in every case the motive power was interest; and it manifested itself in two ways: (a) It had an end in view, and (b) it devised means for attaining that end. They were ambitious. Do not imagine that only Emperors with world-designs are ambitious, or Oil and Railway magnates, or would-be Senators. We are all ambitious: or we ought to be—so long as our ambitions are just.

The Forward Look

All progressive men and women feel this inward something urging them forward. They have ideals to aim at; purposes to be fulfilled; ends to be achieved. In some cases it is the writing of a book; in others the possession of a world-wide business; in others, again, it is the more modest aim to secure a decent pension for their old age. A few will look forward to becoming amateur champions in golf or billiards.

Interest and Mental Synthesis

Interest and aim help you in the development of your mental ability. (a) First: they give the mind unity of action.

This is so obvious that it hardly needs attention, and yet its importance is often overlooked. Without a purpose we are sure to be drifters – going with the stream. We work because we must, but when work is over we look round for something to pass the time. Life has no centre. We are without a policy or a plan. A wish is not an aim. The effect is plain to the seeing eye: our abilities lose their edge: and there comes a day when we realize that we are not what we once were, and then we get a glimpse of what we might have been.

Interest and Concentration

(b) The effort to realize a purpose develops one of the specific functions of the mind, CONCENTRATION.

Without concentration, our minds wander and destroy our ability to focus on our aim in life. Mind-wandering may be overcome by reconstructing your inner life on a new basis of desire, and partly by practice. Set a goal for yourself. It may be difficult at first to work up interest in meeting this goal, but if you do, it much easier to concentrate your attention. You will set up a mental habit, and instead of your thoughts flitting here and there, they will be focused on ways and means of meeting your goal.