Adil Najmuddin

Finding life’s purpose through congruency

December is my month for self-reflection and analysis.  Since I’m in the middle of semesters, without work, and it’s toward the end of the year and close to the start of a fresh new one – right now is the perfect opportunity for me to learn about myself.

One of the things I’ve been foggy on is my life’s purpose.  I’ve spent many, many days for the past several years writing, reading, and doing whatever else I could do to find something that would fill this void.  The closest thing I found to fill that void was the following question: ‘What makes you really, REALLY excited?’

As I was searching for an answer I realized something.  By answering this question, was I simply pigeonholing myself into a certain type of activity/work for the rest of my life that makes me ‘excited’ (or my idea of being excited at that moment in time)?  Slowly I wrote down “I might be…”, afraid to answer with certainty.

But then it struck me.

It’s entirely possible there is nothing that really excites me yet.  Instead, it’s more important I live my life as who I want to be rather than who I am right now.  This is known as congruency.

Congruency is aligning your current thinking, actions, and behaviors with your ideal self.

Seneca, a important Roman philosopher in early A.D., wrote:
“Man’s ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born.  And what is that reason demands of him?  Something very easy – that he live in accordance with his own nature.”

Suddenly it clicked.

Life’s purpose can be ANYTHING you want it to be as long as it is congruent with you.

In fact, it might be easier to think of life’s purpose as a coin, and to think of congruency as the one side of that same coin.  By focusing on becoming congruent with yourself, with your nature, then life will find it’s own purpose for you as they are interconnected.

To work making myself congruent, I worked on the two major aspects as follows:
1.  Defining my core values.
These are your values which will remain the same regardless of what you go through, regardless of how old you get.  For many people, they are the same but you will want to write your own.  However, the one thing that may change is how important the value is to you so keep yourself updated through a journal.  Examples of core values: integrity, honesty, trustworthy, courage, friendship, humility, and so on.

2. Defining my Ideal Self.
Write a paragraph of characteristics, values, thought pattern, how you will act, and anything internal you want to have.  Defining your ideal self is the heart of congruency.  This is your self with enhanced characteristics of what you currently think you may not have, but want.  In the end, this is you if you could create yourself as as who you want to be.

Now for the seemingly difficult part.

How do I actually live through congruency?  We all know taking action is a drag.  It can be difficult to get yourself to do something when really it doesn’t necessarily need to be done.  It’s just so much easier to let it slide.

This is where self-discipline is comes in.  You can think of self-discipline as a muscle and the more you work it out, the stronger it gets.  The stronger it gets, the easier it is to do things that you may not want to do.

Working on self-discipline is difficult, yes.  But with the help of your ideal self, the process of becoming congruent will become easier.  I’ll be writing about self-discipline and the Ideal Future Self in my next post which will allow you to become congruent with yourself by becoming who you want to be and walk on the path towards finding your life’s purpose.  Stay tuned friends!

Feel free to share your thoughts below on your idea of congruency, and how you think it can help you.

The Power of a Great Outline

There’s a mentoring program called G.E.M.S. which is available through my university.  That’s how I met Peter Miller, a professor at Metropolitan State University and my mentor.  I’ve been meeting with Peter every other week for close to two months now and he always brings great insights on how to improve; academically, personally, and professionally and sound ability to convey he knows what he’s talking about.  This last time was no different.

I met with him last Wednesday and we talked about my outline of my research paper.  It looked a little something like this:
A. Intro
B. Main point
C. Another main point
D. Another main point
E. Conclusion

What’s wrong with this?

There are zero, nada, no subpoints or details.  Where are they?

He likened me to the importance of developing a complete outline.  Yes, include subpoints and details but also the details of the details, and arguably the most important of beginning with a Table of Contents and Executive Summary/Abstract.   It gives your reader comfort of knowing what’s next, and gives you a tentative guideline.  But not just for a research paper, but for writing notes, thinking through problems, and when you’re exercising your opinions.  You’ll find it sets the theme and fluidly guides you through whatever the venture might be.

Take a few minutes to write the outline of your goals and priorities, and your life.

Ivy League Education – For Free

I love learning.  Even though I wasn’t the best student in school, I have always loved learning.  I believe every human being should have access to top quality education and best scholars in the world.  Everyone should have an ‘Ivy League education’.  20 years ago, this wouldn’t have even been thought possible.  But now, in 2011, we have access to so much information and knowledge all thanks to the Internet.  It is up to us  to make the best use of it.  Personally, I think it’s stupid not to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.  Let’s open our minds and realize this world is filled with great opportunities – free online education being one of them.

I’d like to introduce you to a short list of free, top quality educational resources:

1.  iTunes U – If you don’t have iTunes yet, get it now and check out iTunes U.  iTunes U is packed with hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of free video and audio courses from Universities and Colleges such as Stanford, MIT,  and Yale.   Intemidating?  No worries, they also have a section called “Intro College Courses” to get you prepared for your education journey.  I recently found out about iTunes U, but I instantly know from now on this will be my go-to online resource for top quality education.  And being iTunes, you can download most of content directly to your iPods, iPhones, or iPads and have it in your hands within minutes.

2. Open Course Ware – Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been on the cutting edge of offering free courses, complete with lectures, notes, quizzes and videos to anyone who wants to opportunity to learn from the best. With multiple courses ranging from Architecture to Humanities to Science, and everything between they have done a great job of filling multiple studies.  Other universities could really learn from them.

3.  YouTube – I couldn’t have forgotten YouTube.  For quick facts and know-hows, YouTube has served me well.  YouTube Education is where the true quality lies where courses are conveniently organized by field of study.  YouTube is so easy to navigate, anybody can do it.  Oh wait, everyone already does.  I tend to check up on YouTube on need now basis and it has been great for that.

If you are looking for top quality knowledge, I hope this list serves you well.  Better yet, I hope you share this list with your friends and family because then we can live in a better educated environment which is a benefit for all.

One final note, I wanted to give thanks and say I really appreciate all the professors who have allowed their lectures to be available to the public.

Thank you!

Hey there, thank you for reading my blog!

Hey there, my name is Adil Najmuddin and I want to thank you for reading my blog.  I’ll be writing on life, goals, dreams, fear, entrepreneurship, marketing, self-development, and the such on what works and doesn’t work for me for you.  Stay tuned my friends!