Dream Series - Life without purpose and dreams is no life

First of all, let me thank Julio Zavala , my Hult mate for inspiring me to write this. He read my 2013 post on Dreams - Do you dream ?. He made me go down the memory lane and told me that whatever dreams I had written in that blog I have met except one. And he also asked me when am I going

to fulfill that dream. It's so nice to have such thoughtful and kind people around you. They give you motivation , energy and. a push that we often need.

So, thanks to Julio, I am writing this next blog on dream series.  Last time I challenged you to dream or challenged you to activate the part of you that dreams. This time lets go a bit deeper and understand why we should dream and why we should have purpose in life.

Do you have those times where in - 

You don't feel like waking up in the morning ?

If you do wake up, you don't feel like jumping out of bed.

Maybe you are better off than others, you do wake up and do your daily mundane things but you feel a spark is missing in you.

Do you feel lost as to why you are doing what you are doing or you feel confused as to what you want to do in life?

Imagine when we were a child, often we will look forward to our day. We looked forward to waking up to the cuddle by our parents, to the food we will be served, to going to school to learn , play and meet friends. We looked forward to coming back from school to be pampered again. Our parents will push us to study hard so that we can make a better living for ourselves when we grow up. I hardly remember a day  where I felt like not waking up or felt like not having a spark in me. Yes, I used to be confused or lost at times as to what I want to do in life. But this was more in a positive sense.

We experienced those positive feelings during our childhood because those are the forming days of our lives and we knew we were trying to set ourselves in the world with our parents, siblings and friends acting as our mentors. As a child, we had purpose and dreams although that may have been for a short term. We wanted to study and become somebody. If you ask about me , I wanted to study so that I can do computer engineering in the college of my choice.

But as we grow the feelings of being low, lost and confused become dominant because for many of us we don't have the next purpose in life or the next dream. This becomes even more painful when we end up doing a work for living we don't like. We have to do work for living and now you feel stuck and sulk.

So what do we do? isn't there an option ? There is definitely an option - the option to reconnect with life again like we used to in our childhood and find a larger purpose and a bigger dream to chase.

Let me walk through how I dealt with this in my life. During my middle school days,studying well and hard was my purpose so that I can acquire knowledge. Then by the time I reached high school, I knew I wanted to do computer engineering so the next 4 years in my life went in chasing that dream. When I ended up getting an admission in engineering, I wanted to acquire so much knowledge and excel so that I can start my own product based company.

This is the reason when I completed my engineering, while many of my friends were chasing big companies like Infosys, IBM &  Wipro, I was looking to work for a startup. This is to train myself to open my own. I was the 6th contractor in India for a startup called Finicity which is now acquired by Mastercard for a billion.

I was almost living my dream of working in a startup and kinda owning it with me being a key contributor. I soon grew to leadership roles and became head of India operations for Finicity. This is as close I got to my dream. During this, I tried to open my own start up in career counseling and coaching space called eMantra . As you see with this news article the start up was received well but I failed to sustain it. I am answer this question in my blog series - The unforgettable MBA Journey:Part 1 - Why MBA?

 I knew I was still dreaming. I was in the dreamers club and thankfully not in the non dreams club. But I did not know why I was dreaming. I did not yet know the purpose of my life. So I started reading a lot of books on life and how I can best lead it. One book - Who will cry when you die ? gave me what I wanted. It gave me the purpose of my life - which is to serve as many people I can through the means of technology skills I have. So here I am , with a life purpose and many dreams. It is because of my larger dream of opening my own firm, of living and working in the USA and because of my purpose of serving others, I decided to call it quits at Finicity when I was at peak of my career to do my MBA at Hult international Business school. The MBA journey itself was a heck of a journey - emotionally , financially and physically but it was a life changing experience and made me realize another set of my dreams. More importantly, it equipped me strongly to achieve my purpose in life.

So do I not have low days in life ?

Of-course I do but I gather strength and courage from my purpose and dreams.

Do I not have any days when I don't feel like not jumping out of bed? Of-course I do but I tell myself what I am doing today is connected to a bigger purpose in life. No matter how mundane my today may be I live it best as it takes me a step closer to my purpose and makes me realize a set of my dreams.

When you have a life of purpose and dreams you stare away negative thoughts, you convert bad situations into opportunities and most importantly you get up after a beating you may have seen in life to get on with life again.

That's why I say - A life without purpose and dream is no life. What do you think?