Elon Musk Life Purpose EXPLAINED

Finding Your Purpose in Existential Crisis

Let’s jump through a wormhole…

Elon Musk is sitting in the SpaceX Control Center and staring intently at the screen before him.

As he awaits the Falcon 1 launch, he must be pondering how much is at stake.

His companies are on the verge of bankruptcy, the country is going through the worst recession since the Great Depression therefore making capital hard to acquire, and to add fuel to the fire, he’s going through a divorce with the mother of his 5 children.

And in leading up to this moment, he already had three rocket failures in a row, which means if this launch fails, he’ll be forced to shut the door on SpaceX and therefore his dream.

We were running on fumes at that point. We had virtually no money… a fourth failure would have been absolutely game over. Done.— Elon Musk

He’s a nervous wreck.

I never thought I was someone who could be capable of a nervous breakdown. I felt this was the closest I’ve ever come. Because it seemed pretty, pretty dark. — Elon Musk

Lift off in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

He holds his breath.

The Falcon 1 blasts off the launch pad, shoots through the sky, and breaks out of the atmosphere, becoming the first privately funded, liquid fueled rocket to reach orbit!

Cheers ring through the control center! Bottles of champagne popped!

The next day the phone rings.

It's NASA offering a billion dollar contract. He can't even hold the phone he's so excited, Elon blurts out, "I love you guys!"

"When something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favor." -Elon Musk

When the going got tough, why did he choose to fight on instead of give up? Obviously he isn't driven by money. If his goal was to make money then he said starting a space company would be the last thing to do.

He also isn't driven by a desire to be significant because in the grand scheme of things he believes we're likely a simulation and will likely be eclipsed by artificial intelligence.

According to Elon Musk, the thing that drives him is vision.

"I think it's important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing. There has to be reasons you get up in the morning and want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What: inspires you? What do you love about the future?" - Elon Musk

Actually, he's driven by two visions. He's pulled by the vision of an exciting future, one where we colonize mars, and he's repulsed from the vision of a depressing future, one where we don't even get to mars.

"If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing." Elon Musk

He's therefore motivated by heaven and hell.

What's your heaven and hell?

As a kid I was taught "good people" go to heaven and "bad people" go to hell. But since I believed everyone was a "good person" deep-down that would mean everyone goes to heaven. This is a comforting thought to a child who may have lost loved ones, but uninspiring for an adult who wants to get sh*t done.

It's uninspiring because it means the person who lives a life of consumption and taking has the same chances of achieving the ultimate goal as someone who lives a life of service and sacrifice.

But what if we taught children something else?

"I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment." - Elon Musk

What if we believed that heaven isn't something we must die to see, but something we must live to create? And what if we admitted that we can do everything "right", and still fail, which means we need to try that much harder?

"The problem is we think we have time." Buddha

One of my psychological pitfalls is that I'm over-confident about the future. I think it's a pitfall of my generation. We've grown up in the greatest era in human history, and although we may intellectually worry about the future, we subconsciously assume things will continue to improve, but like Elon Musk said, technology's improvement is not guaranteed....

"We are mistaken that technology automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work to make it better. And actually by itself it will degrade."

So I think it's helpful to have an exciting vision of the future and a nightmarish vision of the future, and then to do everything we can to create the positive version because in the end, nothing is guaranteed. And then to achieve our vision faster we should, like Elon Musk, set ambitious deadlines.

In the past 5 years, Tesla has missed more than 20 deadlines and SpaceX has missed more than 6 deadlines. But here's the thing... If he get's us to Mars, people won't look back and say, "Well you know, he was a few years late on that."

I think the primary reason he sets. ambitious deadlines is because they motivate him and his people to work harder so even if they miss more deadlines than the average Fortune 500 company they still achieve way more than the average Fortune 500 company.

"People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working." Elon Musk

And he seems like the type of person who needs to be in a constant state of motion or deep in flow to ward off some of the existential dread that might come with slowing down.

"The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I'd be super-duper bored. I like high intensity." - Elon Musk

In conclusion, Elon Musk's purpose is about setting ambitious dead lines to speed faster toward his heaven. If more of us think like this, then with a little help from Elon Musk, we just might create a heaven on Earth... and a heaven on Mars.

Sat Nam 

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One True Question Will Clarify Your Life Purpose

Your personal question will illuminate what’s most important to you

What is your one true question?

The question that comes up for them over and over again and that can never reach a definitive answering spot. The one that is endlessly fascinating.

It might be “Am I loved? "or “What are the guiding laws of nature?” or “Who am I?” or 

“What does A-N want from me?” It might be “How shall I live?” or “To whom do I owe allegiance?” or “What does it mean to be Jewish/a woman/the child of a coal miner/Deaf?” or even “How do I fill the emptiness of my being?” 

It might be the question Ta-Nehisi Coates asks in Between the World and Me: “How do I live free in this Black body?” Or 

the question I heard over and over as a child: 

“Is it morally permissible to feel joy after the Holocaust?”

When we look inward to discover our own question, we are looking for a core dissatisfaction that animates our thinking and that drives us intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

Philosophy itself grows from the relentless pursuit of a single question — one that “arises at the intersection of thought and life at a given moment in the philosopher’s youth.” 

That early puzzle reinvents itself again and again in new guises. The matter of this deep question is intensely personal. As you read these words, you may know instantly the question that is yours. You see it at work in your life and are familiar with its pull. Others of you may struggle to find your question. You may even wonder if you really have one. I think you do — but it may take some time to bring it into conscious awareness. You will need to quiet your mind and let the quest for the question take root for a bit. You will need to mull it over and maybe talk it over with someone who loves you and knows you well..

Making my question visible to myself required looking backward at the intersection point of my academic work, my childhood worries and hopes, and my psychological and ethical preoccupations.

I saw that over and over again I was drawn to language and driven to understand its ability to both create and occlude meaning. 

My own true question has to do with the way that language works — its connection to thought, healing, knowing, intimacy, revelation, shame, and self-understanding. Its ability to reveal and to hide. My one true question is this: What is the power and limit of language?

I cry whenever language fails to meet the challenge of the beauty, horror, or intensity of what we see

The relentlessness of this question has been with me for as long as I can remember. It was there in the imaginary made-up languages and words of my childhood play.

My religious experiences, too, have always been grounded in this ultimate question as I bracketed the question of G-d’s existence in favor of what seemed to me the more interesting question of G-d’s language. To me, the holiest space—the space where G-d greets us — is at the border of words and wordlessness. In analysis I discovered the ways my sadness and fear also lay at this border. I found emotional healing as I learned how to mourn and recuperate what was lost when I traded the intensity of prelinguistic infantile experience for the mastery that comes with language use..

In my current professional work, I use words to lead change and to make community, marveling always at language’s power and limits. I focus on expanding the circle of those whose voices matter and who have the power to create and share meanings.

In every aspect of my life — my work, my deepest relationships, my soul — I encounter my question: What is the power and limit of language? And I see how I have followed the threads of that question over and over again.

What is that question that animates your soul?

Badiou describes the intensity of an individual’s question as a “wound” or a “thorn” in her very experience of existence. There is likely a truth here for many of us. The ordinary traumas — of loss, grief, anger, and desire that are inherent in human development — leave each of us with our own idiom of yearning. And many among us live through traumas of a more significant and destabilizing kind. But the negative language of “wound” isn’t enough. Whatever its origin, the gap or opening that our question reveals is also an invitation, a wellspring for creative imagination, and a promise of infinite possibility and beauty.

Speaking your question out loud matters. In giving it voice, you can see the ways disparate pieces of your life connect and find an inner integrity in your passions and pursuits. You might find new paths to follow. You might find as well there are things in your life that you can release because they respond to questions that are not really your own.

Our questions differ depending on our origin, context, and style. They are shaped by the happenstance of the time and place into which we are thrown at birth. But they share a common ontological structure. In their archaic origins — their grounding in our earliest memories and our fundamental sense of what matters — and in their ultimate unanswerability, they point us toward the unfathomable mystery of existence itself. They are our window into the mystery that draws us out of ourselves and towards an infinite reservoir of wonder and longing.

Like you, I did not choose my question. But in letting it choose me, my life gained broader purpose. 

I offer you the invitation to find your one true question. What is that question that animates your soul? How are you called to respond to its insistence? How does your question give direction to your work? To your spirit? To your responsibility to heal a broken world?

When you take up your question with conscious intention, you will shine brighter and with increased heat. You will find the root of your inner creativity. You will become more of yourself. You will come home to the life’s work that is yours.

Sat Nam

 

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You’ve Already Found Your Life’s Purpose Even if you don’t know it

Whenever I hear advice about finding your purpose, I imagine an epic Marvel movie monologue about saving the world. And it stresses me out.

Of course, having a sense of purpose is important — to be truly successful, you need to know your why. But when you set out to “find” your purpose, that almighty, thunder-whopping reason for your existence, it’s easy to buckle under the pressure and never take the first step in any direction.

Here’s a message for everyone feeling like they’re still searching: You already know more about your purpose than you realize. And that’s because your purpose is simply the meaning that you decide to attach to each day. 

Unless you’re Spider-Man, it’s time to reframe your idea of purpose. Here are five ways to do that.

Stop thinking “big”

When it comes to deciding your purpose, start somewhere, anywhere. See what feels meaningful to you. Looking after your kids can be a purpose. Writing for the heck of it can be a purpose. Making good art can be a purpose. Running five miles a week can be a purpose.

Let your life have many different purposes

Why the heck would you limit yourself to just one thing — especially when you’re so many different people over the course of a lifetime? My purpose as a teenager was to entertain people on the internet with electronic music. My purpose as a 21-year-old was to sell stuff online to customers and have it delivered to their door. My purpose in my midtwenties was to find a partner. My purpose as a misguided young adult was to learn the corporate game. My purpose as a creative individual in my early thirties was to write for others. My purpose right now is to finish writing this story so I can hang out with my girlfriend. Tomorrow, who knows? The possibility of multiple purposes is what makes life interesting.

Experiment like Einstein

If you’re feeling stuck as to what gives your life meaning, try stacking up a series of experiments. For instance, you might try not talking about yourself in conversations for two days. Or maybe you can ask yourself a specific question every night: Like What’s one thing you learned? or How did you help someone today? See what makes you come alive and what doesn’t. Iterate. Imagine. Be curious.

Try on purposes that are bigger than you

There’s joy in having a purpose that’s not centered on yourself. “Volunteer at a homeless shelter” sounds like clichéd advice, but it’s worth trying.

Focus on your lifestyle instead

Your lifestyle is made up of your beliefs, the work you choose to do, your hobbies, how you spend time with, how you see the world, and how you earn a living. Thinking about your lifestyle feels less grandiose, but will lead you to the same place: A lifestyle is a container, the thing that holds all your beliefs about how to thrive.

So instead of searching for that one elusive thing to build your life around, bring things back down to Earth, ask yourself: What meaningful work are you going to do this year? This month? Today?.

You decide your purpose. No mythical Marvel universe is going to help you with this one.

Sat Nam

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