The Power of Self-Discovery

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Daily Dose. I'm Dr. Lance Garrison. Today we're going to take on a pretty big question. I think for all of us at various points in our life have wondered, what's the point of all this? What are we doing? All of this experience, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beauty, the joy, the pain, the suffering, what's it all about? And I think attempting to answer this question lies at the foundation, of most of our religious traditions, and really exists at the heart of virtually any and all spiritual inquiries. I think our lives often feel like a whirlwind of activity that pull us one direction and move us in another direction. And as that happens, as we get pulled in these various directions throughout life, it shapes our perceptions of who we are. We know that part of that is advertisers spending billions of dollars to get us to buy into an image of their selves that we can only achieve with their product. We know there's a world of media that's working hard, for better or for worse, to shape narratives about the world around us and how we fit into it. As I mentioned before, yeah, every religious tradition kind of seeks to define our place and our purpose in the world. And even with that, we still find ourselves asking a question, who am I and what is my purpose? For me, it's been an ongoing and big question that I continue to ask myself. And I think this video is part of me continuing to explore that. So what am I? What is my purpose in being? I know that I'm a man, I'm a son, I'm a husband, a father, I'm a friend, a psychologist, educator, and I don't know that after a lot of searching that those are necessarily my reasons for being. There are definitely important roles, there are definitely responsibilities in my life that I take seriously, but maybe not my core purpose. I think we're all many things. We can apply many labels, but we're also things beyond any kind of meaningful label. I feel like what I know for sure is that each of the roles that I live in provide me some sort of varied and nuanced reflections of me back to me. Each role that I play helps me more fully explore who I am at the core. So it makes me wonder, could it be that the point of life isn't about titles that we hold or things that we're chasing necessarily, or the roles that we play, but something much more profound, which is the process of discovering who we really are. The roles that we play over the course of our life, if we allow them, if we open ourselves to them, can serve to create a path for us to figure out who we are. And we have these opportunities in quiet moments of introspection. We have an opportunity to reflect on what has been reflected back to us about ourselves through our role, through our day-to-day experience. And we've got that opportunity each day. Part of it is an opportunity to express and to demonstrate and work toward fulfilling our true identity, whether that's through our relationships, our passions, or our personal growth journey. Every challenge, every moment, both beautiful and terrible, is an opportunity to look within and try to better understand who we really are. Because I think at the core of it all lies that ultimate question, who am I? And I think it's a question that is an invitation, actually. It's an invitation to be on a journey of self-discovery, to explore the depths of our being, and to strive to kind of put our arms around and embrace the essence of who we are. So let's accept that invitation and begin a journey together. Try to uncover the essence of our true selves and celebrate to the best of our ability kind of the richness of life that unfolds along the way. Thank you for joining me today. And remember, Point of Life is not about what you do, but it's who we are becoming. Until next time, stay true to yourself.