Hi this is Kohanbito as Lake Man.
This time, I would like to explain you about how beneficial for you to set your objects or your goals or your slogans or your mottos of your life because it will give you the sense of responsibility to your life and it will help you to understand how you want to live rest of your life and it will help you to accept your life with understanding and satisfaction.
(1) Only one life
I am one of many people who believe in reincarnation. So I believe that we repeat lives and born again and again many times in this world. But even so, this life is only one chance for me to live with my name and with this family members and with my friends, and with this world environments in this era. This life is only one chance. So, this life in this time is unreplaceable. And it is so precious and so important life we live. If it is so, our life should be the result of our best efforts.
So, we should not live without having aim or we should not live without understanding what you have done in your life and we should not live without understanding how you want to live rest of your life. And you should make your life good enough that you can tell yourself “I did my best” when your life ends. And your life should be good enough that you can accept it and you can consider your life was the result of your best efforts without regret.
(2) Asking yourself what you want to achieve in the rest of your life
To spend your life without regret, first thing you need to do to yourself is, you need to ask yourself and find out what you want to achieve in the rest of your life and you need to find out what would be the things that may cause you to regret later if you fail to do them in the rest of your life.
You better have your answers to those questions first.
And I recommend you to do such actions alone, just by yourself, without having helps from others. By putting yourself in the quiet environment, you need to ask yourself above questions and you better summarized your thought. Doing it by yourself alone is very important point. Since it is decision of your life, you should do it by yourself. It should “not” be done by your parents, not by your kids, not by your friends, but by yourself. Imagine the situation when you face the end of your life, imagine the situation that you are leaving this world. And you imagine what you would regret if you die now. Then you can list up what you need to achieve before you die, and you also find out what kind of way of living can make you to avoid regreting at the end of your life. And you will find out what makes you feel to say “I did my best in my whole life, there is no regret in my whole life.” Again, it is important for you to do it by yourself alone. If we do not do this alone, since we are weak existence, we tend to think that the causes of problems are coming from surroundings, not by yourself. We tend to think that my life wasn’t good because my friends made mistakes or because my parents made mistakes or because my society was bad or such. We tend to think to seek cause of problems are coming from outside of yourself.
So, in order to avoid let you have such negative way of thinking at the end of your life, how to live in the rest of your life has to be decided by yourself. But as you are aware of, how you feel about what happened to your life depends on purely your personal feeling. It just depends on your feeling, yourself. Even when the birds are singing, it may be just noise for some people, but for other people, it is just a beautiful sound and sound of healing. So, it depends on your feeling.
From this simple fact, your evaluation to any events happened in your life are not absolute value but they are just very objective and they are very personal, not absolute, so those evaluation can be changed. So how you evaluate to what happened to your life is purely up to your feeling. So since the evaluation of any events happened in your life depend on how you feel and you can evaluate them and define them all by yourself freely, so we can say that your happiness is all up to yourself. This means, you are the only one person who can make your life was happy or unhappy. So, we should be aware that your life is all up to you and it is under your responsibility.
So to make that point clear, and in order to let you understand what your life was like and in order to let you understand what you want to achieve in the rest of your life, and in order to let understand what will make you regret if you do not do certain things in the rest of your life, you better ask yourself alone and you summarized your answers to those questions and you better set your objects or your slogans or your mottos with clear written words.
This process may sounds very tough and lonely but we should remember that we are basically all lonely existence. When we were born, we were all alone, and when we die, we all die alone, so, we better accept the fact that we are such lonely existence as a bases. And we better do those procedures alone and think deeply about what will make your life satisfied when you die. This action is like a preparation for your death. But this is an essential process to enrich the rest of your life. And after you sort out what you want to achieve in the rest of your life or how you want to live in the rest of your life, you just work hard to achieve such goals or slogans or mottos you set.
(3) From Any age, any times
Of course, it is better you to start this kind of process while you are young. If you start doing this kind of analysis and settlement of goals while you are young, that means that you can face yourself and your life more seriously at early stage of your life, and it means that you will have much longer period that you lived your life more serious with your best efforts. And that means that you could spend more valuable time in your life than just live without doing these process, without facing yourself more seriously.
But on the other hand, I can say that it is also OK that you start this kind of process of analysis and settlement of goals even after you gets older. No problem at all. Because, as matter of fact, if you repeat this kind of process of analysis and settlement of goals many many times, you will find out that your goal tends to be amended in time and tends to become much smaller and smaller in time, gradually. As you start to notice and understand the limitation of your ability and limitation in your power and limitation in your talent and so on, gradually you feel like to modify your goals to make them more realistic and suitable to your abilities. That is very natural process. Especially when you are young, you tend to set your goal very high, and sometime it does not match to your ability, but if you set your goal when you gets older, your goal may be much smaller but more realistic and it may fit to your ability and so it tends to become more constructive object. So it is hard to say which is better whether you start this process while you were young or after you gets older.
And if you start this process of analysis and settlement of goals while you were young, later, after you gets older, you can compare the goal you set when you were young and the goals you set after you get older, then you will be surprised to see the big difference between those goals you set when you were young and goals you set after you get older.
At the same time, you will be surprised to see how difficult for younger people to evaluate themselves correctly. And you will be surprised that goals you set when you were young tends to become inappropriately too big for your ability and talent. It is always privilege of young people to dream big but it is also true that the disappointment is bigger when there is a huge gap between what you dreamed and your ability. So, more gap can cause more disappointments. So, I recommend you to set the goal little higher than what you are or what you have. The goal has to be realistic and achievable. That is good enough. You do not need to put yourself too much pressure by setting your goal too high. And if you succeed to achieve the goal you set in the past, then you may amend the goal again and set it a little higher, then you try again to reach the new goal you set. I think that is enough for most of us. Important thing here is to let you accept and understand and satisfy with your life. So, you do not need to set your goal too high and too aggressive. I believe so. I want to advise it so to younger people. If you are already not young but old, then I do not need to concern much about this kind of things. Because they know who they are well. They know more about what they can do, what they are good at, and limitation in their ability and talent, limitation of their physics and finance. So, they can set the goal more realistic and achievable than younger people. I do not worry about elder people. So, again, starting this kind of process of analysis and settlement of goals after you gets older is fine.
More realistic goal can cause you less disappointment. So, again, starting this process after you gets older is not bad at all. I wish elder people can enrich the rest of their lives through this process.
And also, I need to point out to you is that, it is OK to “repeat” this process many many times in order to make your goals more appropriate and realistic to your capacity in time. And I recommend you to start to list up any actions that may cause you regret at the end of your life if you miss them to do. In other words, you better list up any actions that you may feel to say “I cannot die if I miss to achieve these.”
And the other point that I want you to know is,
if your goal is very big and if it takes some time to achieve, then I recommend you to break them down into smaller objects in order to make them more achievable with less pressure. If the goals are smaller, and if you can achieve such smaller objects step by step in time, then it may be easier for you to achieve goals in time and it will help you to have sense of accomplishments more and the sense of confidence. And simply it will help you to enjoy this process. Since the most important purpose of this process is to let you satisfy with your life, enjoyment is also important aspect in this process. So I hope you enjoy the process of achieving goal more and more. This process does not need be bitter or tougher all the time for you. I recommend you to enjoy this challenge more. So, we recommend you to set your goals achievable and not too tough. And I hope you gain the sense of accomplishments and confidence and joy through this process.
Now let me explain two important points when you set the goal.
(4) 1st Point : appropriate for your ability
As I explained you before, it is common that your goals changes in time, in many cases, it tends to get smaller and smaller in time. If it is so, I recommend you to do this process of analysis and setting goals more frequently and I recommend you to modify your goal very often. May be once per year, or once per month, or even once per week, if it is possible. And I recommend you to set your goal appropriate enough that you can achieve with some reasonable hard works. Because if you set the goal too high, then some of you may suffer for the gap between your goal and your ability. And you will be stressed out and your body and your mind will be damaged and gradually you will start to deny and blame environments and starts to say that “I am in such tough situation and being miserable because this environment is horrible and my parents are not talented and my friends are mean and they do not help me”. You may be possessed by such a negative thoughts. But again, the purpose of this process is let you accept and satisfy with your life. So I should say that having such negative attitude is almost opposite direction from original intention. So, we should always look back your goal is appropriate contests for you or not, and if you find out it is too high then we should modify it and make it achievable by your reasonable hard works. That is the 1st check point I want you to check when you set the goal.
(5) 2nd Point : Good for you and good for the society
Your goal in your life does not need to be gigantic or monumental. It can be simple as “live your life cheerfully and brightly” Or “live healthy” or “be kind” or such. No problem at all. As long as it is positive and it does not damage others, no problem. The important point here is, let you decide your goal or motto by yourself and let you be responsible to your life and let you understand and accept your life in the past, and let live the rest of your life with your goal and let you do your best to achieve such a goal you set. And let you satisfy with your life. That is the purpose of this process. So, simple object is fine at all as long as it is positive. But one thing we need to care is, if your goal is good for you but if it is bad for others and if it damages others and society, then you need to avoid to have such wrong goal. That is the 2nd point I ask you to care.
Even if you succeed to earn money by achieving your goal, if your goal results to pollute environment and damages the nature and suffer other people, then people around you will start to blame and complain you and they will not welcome your success and they will not admit the wealth you made. And the hate from people will remains throughout some generations, then your families or your ancestors will be blamed and will be hated even though they did nothing wrong but you. It will be expansion of unhappiness throughout some generations. We would like to avoid such a thing to happen. So, you need to check whether your goal is good for both you and society or not.
And if you goal can make you satisfy, and at the same time, if it becomes beneficial for society and others, and if it will make people smile and happy and if it will create some wealth and good reputation, and if those are succeeded to your ancestors, than that will be like chain reaction of happiness has happened throughout some generations. That is what we want to see, that is ideal self-realization we should look for. We should seek for such win & win type of goal. In order to do it, we better repeat the process of analysis and setting goals more frequently.
If I tell you my case, my goal and my motto are actually embarrassingly small goal. But since I used my hand name here in this blog, it may be OK to reveal my goal as an example here.
My objects or my mottos in the rest of my life are below 7 things.
Object (1): Always try to have and keep the right mental attitude and live with them intentionally. That is the 1st thing.
Object (2): Trying to attend town events, especially cleaning event as much as I can. And trying to keep my town and around my house clean in order to realize nice atmosphere in my town.
Object (3): Always trying hard to match the success of my company and benefits to society. And trying hard to be the most knowledgeable person in my company to make any judgment always right and appropriate to lead the company in right direction.
Object (4): raise my children until they become independent (it is normal as a parent but)
Object (5): Trying to finish paying off my housing loan. And pass my house free to my wife and kids (This might be a long way to go but I want to finish it before I die)
Object (6): Explaining my honest feeling and thoughts to the world through this blog and share opinions with people who has similar kinds of idea or way of thinking and encourage each other and influence each other. (I am doing it now)
Object (7): And praying to the higher beings such as gods and Buddha and ask them for help to do all those above things right and live with their supports and live together with holy spirits throughout my life.
Above 7 objects are my goals that I set to myself.
As I see them here again, I am so surprised and embarrassed to know how normal and how small those my goals are. But it is true myself, so, I need to accept it.
So, revealing my thought through this blog itself is like achieving one of my goals. So, honestly speaking, I am so glad and happy and being satisfied about this blog. But doing blog is nothing special and anyone can start anytime, but it fits to me and I like it very much.
Like my case, setting up goals can helps you to enrich your life more.
And there is one more thing I want to say in this article.
If I have to select the most important object among my 7 objects, then I would say, it is “Object (1): Always try to have and keep the right mental attitude and live with them intentionally”.
I will explain the reason why I think so in other article later.
I hope this article was beneficial for you.
Kohanbito as Lake Man.
(Revised version 1:2016.12.04)
