Alexander Den Heijer - Nothing You Dont Already Know: Remarkable Reminders About Meaning, Purpose, and Self-Realization

Nothing you don't already know

Remarkable reminders about meaning, purpose, and self-realization.

Alexander den Heijer

Nothing you dont already know:

Remarkable reminders about

meaning, purpose and self-realization.

2018 Alexander den Heijer

Re-edited, October 2019

All rights reserved. This book or any portion

thereof may not be reproduced or used in any

manner whatsoever without the express

written permission of the publisher except

for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Photo by Steven Borghouts

Editing by Julia Willard

www.alexanderdenheijer.com

alexander@purposologist.com

Life is a school where you learn how to remember what your soul already knows.

Unknown

Introduction

In September 2015 I started an Instagram page called @Purposologist. I wanted to have a platform where I could share ideas about self-realization and purpose. All my life Ive been fascinated with these topics, and in 2015 I felt the desire to share some insights that I thought might be useful to others.

Self-realization means two things to me. On the one hand its about the actualization of our potential; to become what we are capable of being. On the other hand, its about getting to know our true selves. This book is about both.

The words I share on Instagram have been read and shared by millions of people. Im very grateful for all the support and feedback that I have received so far. The encouragement and support of so many people resulted in the idea to write this book.

I once read that if you write to yourself, you write to an eternal audience. Thats exactly what I did. What I have written was initially meant to make sense of myself, and to remind myself of the things that I believe are important in life.

Each page in this book has a new insight for you to reflect on. The book is laid out in such a way that allows you, the reader, to read it from start to finish or to flip it open to a page and use that insight as a daily reflection. The chapters of the book represent my own journey. They follow a path that may be recognizable to many of us; from being stuck in a place where we dont want to be, to being in a position where we can inspire others.

I have also been inspired by many people on my journey; philosophers, psychologists, spiritual teachers and many more. In the back of the book youll find a list of people that have inspired me in one way or another.

This book is not meant to tell you what to do; its only meant to make you think. Its not meant to tell you the truth either; its meant to encourage you to explore the truth for yourself. Just see what resonates with you. I believe the best books dont necessarily teach you anything new, they just point to that which is already inside of you.

The only thing that I can do is share with you what I have learned, and hope that it will inspire you. The word inspire literally means to breathe life into. Thats the most beautiful thing words have ever done for me and I hope the words in this book may do the same for you.

Alexander

Contents

1. A call for change

You often feel tired, not because youve done too much, but because youve done too little of what sparks a light in you.

We spend more time at work than with our loved ones. And when we come home, we are busier connecting to our devices than to the people we love. We have become little more than zombies. Yet we wonder, Why am I so tired? We figure its because we work too much.

What if were not doing too much, but rather were just doing too little of what truly matters?

Its not hard work that exhausts us most, its meaningless work that exhausts us most.

The most harmful road is not the road with the toughest obstacles, but the road thats heading in the wrong direction.

Sometimes life pushes us in such a way, whether it be through circumstances or our own choices, that we end up walking down the wrong road. We may not have wanted this but somehow we ended up in this situation. And with each step this road is leading us further away from our true North.

Turning off a familiar road is one of the most difficult things to do. We may be afraid of the unknown. Maybe were afraid that all the other roads are even worse. What if we never find a better road?

Fear holds us back from choosing another road. And so we continue, one heavy foot in front of the other, hoping that one day things will end up resolving themselves. But in our hearts we suffer.

Unless we have the courage to get off the road, we will only get farther away from our true North. We may not know our destination yet, but our heart will tell us when were headed in the right direction.

The reason many people suffer is not that life is too tough; its that they havent found something worth living for.

Life consists of suffering. Theres no getting around it. A fulfilling life is not a life thats without suffering, a fulfilling life is a life thats worth the suffering.

Many of us struggle to find meaning in life. We are so absorbed by our work and our daily distractions that we do not take time to reflect and ask ourselves where we would like to go in our lives. Many people are not even aware of what they are aiming at. And because of that, life slowly becomes aimless and unfulfilling.

You may be perfectly aware of what it is that you are working on , but are you also aware of what you are working for ?

What is your aim? And to what extent is what you are currently doing aligned with that aim? Theres a lot of fulfillment to be found in aligning yourself with a meaningful aim, and to work toward it, every single day.

Hardship without purpose may weaken us.

Hardship with purpose may strengthen us.

If we have something to aim for, then the unavoidable struggle will have a sense of meaning to it. Hardship stretches us and enables us to realize our potential. This is how we grow. We don't grow without pressure. But if we are unable to find meaning in hardship; we just wither.

It depends a lot on the story we tell ourselves. Do we see hardship as a meaningless way to make us suffer, or do we see it as a meaningful way to make us stronger?

Sometimes, if people discover something valuable beyond themselves, and they dedicate their best energies to it, they transcend their own suffering. As Friedrich Nietzsche said,

'He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.'

You cant discover your passion by thinking about it.

How many of us have said, I think about it all the time but I cant figure out what my passion is? Well the reason we cant figure it out is that it doesnt work that way. One does not discover passion by thinking about it. We dont think passion, we experience passion.

Passion comes as a by-product of putting effort into something meaningful. The only way to experience passion is to put effort into that which is important to us.

Passion manifests as a result of wholehearted effort.

Go follow your interests. Experiment, explore, discover. Do things worth doing until you ignite that spark inside yourself. But remember, igniting your spark is like falling in love. That's the easy part. Staying in love and weathering the inevitable storms is the hard part.

It takes time, commitment, and continuous effort to keep a fire burning. The more care and effort you put into it; the better it gets.