Setting a direction in life

A good friend of me sent me this facebook message recently.

"Hi Ruihong! I read your blog again. Do u know how to set a direction for ourselves so that we are able to embrace a whole new year? What do u mean when u say 'set a direction'? Thanks!~"

Interesting and Important Question! Haha

Imagine now you are walking into a church. The church is decorated with flowers, with a peaceful music playing in the background. There are a lot of people with a big portion of them being familiar faces. As you walk closer into the church, there is a coffin and inside it lies you! Then someone started speaking. You turn towards the voice and you see someone whom you respect a lot. You then realised what he/she is speaking now is your eulogy.

(with all due respect, the above paragraph is fictitious only. I do know that Chinese New Year is coming soon too haha)

What will your eulogy be?

This is an exercise that I have read in several self-help books and this has stuck with me strongly. When I did the exercise, I realised that I wanted the person speaking my eulogy to speak of me as someone who is widely respected for the impact I had in others' lives. I guess this is one of the reasons why I said I wanted to be a respectable person when the PSC scholarship interviewer asked what do I want to achieve in life. I remember clearly that I did not think through it to give a politically correct answer and I just said something (although vague) that I wanted. 

I wanted to be someone who has made an impact in the society, perhaps through means like funding education. I guess I was heavily influenced during my study in The Chinese High School by all the famous Chinese businessmen such as Tan Kah Kee who have made an impact in Singapore society. 

I wanted to be someone who has made an impact in people's lives in helping them achieve their dreams. Dream making in a dream-taking world. I have a very good friend who changed her MOE overseas scholarship to Beijing University to a local one, partly to the negative comments saying that she will not be able to take care of herself alone Beijing University. Apparently, I was the only one who encouraged her to go to Beijing University, out of the 20 people that she asked for advice! In the end, she stayed in Singapore to study and her dream of studying there just dissipated. While I do not know whether she is just not the type of dreamer who will work and persevere towards her dreams, I do remember feeling angry when I heard her decision, feeling angry towards the dream stealers. It makes me really wonder, how many peoples' dreams are stolen everyday in this world? I know that I alone will not be able to do much, but if I can gather all the dreamers, we can certainly make an impact.

Something I realised is that what makes who we are today are our experiences and our responses to it. Though some things may seem tiny at the moment, they may sow seeds in our minds and manifest into certain beliefs.

These sums up my current life vision: "Empowering dreamers around the world in achieving their dreams".

While I really do not know whether my purpose in life is exactly that, I do believe that I am born to be great, just like everyone else. 

My mentor will always say,"There is a dash between the birth date and the death date, that represents your life. Life itself has no meaning, we give meaning to it"

Birth Date - Death Date

So basically, setting a direction in life will be clear when we ask these questions to ourselves.

What meaning do you want to give to your life?

What do you want your eulogy be?

I am recently reading this book called "Goals" by Brian Tracy! Will share awesome goal setting tips from it on my next blog entry :)