Be the hero of your own life, never the victim. When the question is if it’s ever too late to find purpose and discover yourself, the answer is a firm, loud, “No! It’s never too late.”
And you know what? It’s also never too late to enhance your quality of life, improve your self-esteem, find fulfillment every day, achieve a sense of greatness, and live your life without regret and with intention and joy.
Welcome to Snapreads! Today, our subject is “You’re Never too Old to Start Your Spiritual Journey.”
Our society’s problem is that there’s a suffocating amount of pressure that’s placed on us to “prove our worth” in our younger years, but it’s actually during our middle-age years when we start to come into our own.
That societal pressure, that obsession for “youthful achievement,” can prevent us from achieving what can give our life meaning. We are unable to find that self-fulfilling and embrace our true selves.
Some people in their youth don’t know their true path, but that doesn’t mean that it’s too late. Everyone should live their lives in a way that makes them feel fulfilled.
The Purpose Driven Life
by Rick Warren
⏱ 12 minutes reading time
🎧 Audio version available
It Doesn’t Matter if you’re 30,40,50, or 85
No matter what your age is, it’s never too late to not only start your spiritual journey and find your purpose, but it’s also never too late to change your priorities.
Your spiritual journey is about making room in your life for more meaning, and if what you’re doing right now isn’t fulfilling, then there’s a need for a change in priorities. To begin this change, you need to figure out what matters to you.
It can often feel like you have wasted the last two or last ten years focusing on the wrong thing such as the wrong career path, the wrong person, the wrong you, but there is never any doubt in it being never too late to create the life you want.
Because you know what? You’ll always have tomorrow, and the day after, and the day later. And each one of those days exists for you to choose how to spend it. And the beautiful thing is that these days haven’t yet happened. They’re just waiting for you, full of potential and excitement.
Stop Thinking of Excuses
Now, you may be wondering that there is a 20-year long list of excuses that prove that there is nothing to be done at this point, but we’re here to debunk these excuses, the first being that you have invested too much time to get where you are today.
The more time you put off making a change, the more powerful the excuses get. But there’s a significant reason why this line of thinking won’t help at all in the long run. That path you’ve been following? The one you have invested too much time in it? It’s utterly useless if it’s not what you want.
And shifting from that path doesn’t mean that you’re throwing away everything you have built. Even if it feels like this path has no place in the new life you’re trying to create, it does have some positive benefits.
Everything led you to this exact moment. Your experiences have shaped you. The skills you mastered during those years will help you in what you want to do next. And most likely, you won’t even want to use the skills you learned in this new path.
But what matters most is that the path you have taken so far has made you who you are today. It helped you discover what you want and deserve and dodge the things you don’t want or need in your life.
Sure, you can think back and find something that you should have done differently, but regret is another subject. What your past did was provide more information on what you want.
Related: Why The Best Things in Life Can’t Be Planned
You’re Afraid of What People May Think
Are you afraid of what people may think if you suddenly start changing career paths? The next time this happens, think about those people again. Are they happy with how their current life turned out, or are they trying to drag you down into living as stagnant as they are?
And too afraid of what people think may have brought you to this crossroad in the first place. This is the main reason why you need to surround yourself with the right company.
Seek out people who live their best lives, the lives they want, and spend more time with them, whether in person or even online. You’ll soon see why those people who try to bring you down are okay with being stuck in jobs they don’t want and in relationships that don’t make them happy.
Focus Your Energy Somewhere Else
Somewhere along the road, you got distracted and fell off track, and fell into monotony. Life threw a hurdle at you that moved your attention off your dreams and goal.
Of course, you said you would revisit your plans as soon as money was available, you paid all the debts, and when the kids were all grown up. But that never happened, and a monotonous routine was what you got.
So now, you have to change your mindset and shift gears. Now, it’s time to spend your energy focusing on how you want to spend your life and time. What are the goals you want to accomplish? How do you plan on getting there? And what will it take?
And then start taking small steps towards making your goals a reality. Plan what you want, gather all the ingredients like you would if you were baking a cake, and then follow the recipe.
Of course, this journey will take more time and energy than a cake recipe, but the results? They’re so much more satisfying and fulfilling than you think.
Let Go of Your Old Habits
How can you expect to change if you continue to hold onto old habits and old beliefs about yourself? You can never transform your life, health, and future if you’re gripping onto the way things have been with a death grip.
So let go. Let go of those beliefs. And declutter that mess– that mental and physical mess that’s no longer serving what you’re working towards. At this point, it’s unnecessary heavy baggage that’s dragging you down.
The Purge
The Purge is more like “pruning.” So start pruning your life, mind, home, and spirit of what’s blocking your vision and weighing you down. You can change your journey, but only when you put in the effort to do so.
The truth about life, especially the middle of life, is that you have a whole second half for all kinds of possibilities. Yes, you have some baggage– you’ve gone through countless heartbreaks, disappointments, betrayals, and hurt. Instead of dwelling on those countless memories, start believing in the endless possibilities for your life.
Define What Success is to You
What do you define success as? Is it happiness? Job fulfillment? We start our path in life thinking our jobs will be glamorous, exciting, and lucrative.
All the decisions you made and that energy you pushed into achieving your younger self-thought was “success” might have been misguided because the end goal is happiness. And that didn’t happen, but it still can. You can choose to be happy as best as you can.
Finding Your Purpose
There comes a stage in everyone’s lives when they debate whether they need a sense of purpose or not? Are we just supposed to sit by and enjoy the rest of our days? When we’re young, the world is full of possibilities.
Students are just starting their career paths, young parents are starting their families, and the rest? They may have already gone through all the shebang.
But later on, having a purpose in life or re-finding that purpose is essential. And it’s not exclusive to the younger crowd. Even research has proven that having sense throughout one’s lifespan and especially in adulthood results in better physical and mental health.
The Path to Your Spiritual Journey
And now we have come to the end of this journey– it is time to start your exciting and fulfilling journey of spirituality and purpose. Now, at the beginning of any spiritual journey, you may feel slightly or dramatically overwhelmed. You’ll also think that you are not sure where to even begin.
But like any change you want to make in your life, start small; otherwise, you may end up giving up. But remember, this is about you and your evolution.
You may have all the answers you want inside yourself, or you may need some help finding your footing in this path. But remember that your spiritual journey will always be unique to you.
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