“This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.” -William James
Writing your manifesto can get you clarity immediately. A manifesto is a declaration of your life principles and purpose. It can be public or just a guide for yourself. You’ll find out a lot about yourself in one sitting: your values, what your goals are, what’s important to you. You can then use your manifesto to guide what you do in life.
Your Manifesto Is Your Life’s Guide
It’s easy to decide what to do because you don’t have to guess. Just ask yourself: Is this aligned with my values, goals and what’s important to me? If not, don’t do it.
Take GPS, for example. It’s a guide for your car. Without it, you can drive around the streets aimlessly. But GPS tells you how to get to your destination. When you get off track, the GPS lets you know. Your manifesto is like GPS for your life. You’ll know whether what you’re doing is on track with what you want to accomplish in life.
My Manifesto
For years I would question myself constantly whether what I was doing is ultimately important to my life. I lacked clarity. I was just wandering around, trying too many things with no idea. And I got fed up. I wanted to fix this. I noticed how easy it is to do something when you have a guide to check against. You can see if you’re doing it right. If you’re not, you’ll know what to change. I thought, why not have that for my life? I could then compare anything I did against it.
Creating my life guide meant writing my manifesto. I forced myself to sit down and get it done. 30 minutes later, I wrote my manifesto, and I got clarity immediately. I found out a lot about myself in one sitting: my values, what my goals are, what’s important to me in life. I can now guide what I do based on my manifesto. Like creating this website.
It’s easy to decide what to do in my life because I don’t have to guess. I just ask myself: Is this aligned with my values, goals and what’s important to me? If not, I don’t do it. It’s ridiculous how a 30-minute writing exercise makes such a huge difference.
Here is my manifesto:
I’m a:
- Writer
- Musician
- Adventurer
- Entrepreneur
- Freerunner
Live my life:
- With purpose – make a dent, bring value to others
- Full of happiness – have fun, love what I do
- Truthfully – be open and honest with myself and others
- In control – of time, location, relationships, activities
- Around great people – attract positive relationships
Pursue:
1: Truth
- Never be complacent or content
- Regularly test if my beliefs are beneficial
- Be conscious of societal norms disguised as “right”
2: Nature
- Harmonize with the natural world around me
- Listen to my body
3: Beauty
- Surround with and consume what positively stimulates my senses
4: Elegance
- Seek or create simple and effective solutions to problems
5: Simplicity
- Follow the 80-20 Rule: focus on the 20% that brings me 80% of results
- Minimize possessions and activities to the essentials
- Maximize enjoyment of those things
- Ignore unimportant things
6: Travel
- Explore as much of the world as possible
- Seek genuine places and cultures
- Seek beautiful nature
- Meet new, different and exciting people
7: Entrepreneurship
- Work only for myself
- Create profitable businesses around my passions
- Establish passive income
- Be open to new ideas and experimentation
Write Your Manifesto, Get Clarity
Want to know what’s important to you and what you want to do with your life? Write your manifesto, and you’ll get clarity immediately.
“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” -Robert Byrne
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(Image: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny)
11 Comments
Thank you Oleg for such an inspiring blog. I am new to the blog business and at the moment am only writing without much clue about where to go next. I have always subscribed to writing down my values and progressing according to them and what an adventurous trip that has been! Today I am going to take the time to write my manifesto. I will be following your blog as a favorite.
Thanks so much for your nice comment Kerry. I’m humbled that you find my blog inspiring. Definitely made my day
Awesome that you’re going to write your manifesto. It acts as the foundation for clarity and direction – it becomes so much easier to decide what to do and how to do it.
Glad my article could be of some help to you, and I appreciate you following my blog.
All the best with your blog,
Oleg
Great post! You’re inspiring to many I bet. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for stopping by and the nice words, Thankful Blogger.
Oleg
Just to let you know Oleg that I took your advice and am progressing one step at a time towards my (ridiculously ambitious) goals using my new manifesto. I’m so happy to have stumbled upon your blog – synchronicity!
Thanks for your update Kerry. That’s so awesome my article could be of some help to you – I’m humbled. Writing my manifesto has done wonders for my clarity and direction in life, and it’s great that you writing your new manifesto has been helping you as well. It seems you have a great strategy for working towards your goals one step at a time (rather than trying to tackle one big goal at once).
I’m so happy to have you as a reader Kerry, and look forward to more of your updates. I’ll keep pushing myself to write stuff worthy of your attention and hopefully of value to you.
All the best,
Oleg
Oleg, I really like what you did on the sidebar with the images leading to these posts. Did you just use stock photos?
Nathan, I used the CC-licensed Flickr photos I inserted in each of the articles.
I really enjoyed this. As a new blogger looking around at what makes a blog interesting and something I would return to. Yours stood out. Thanks
Thank you for your comment Stacey – it means a lot that you think Lifebeat stands out and is worth returning to. I’m on the right track
Glad to have you here, and I hope to see you again on Lifebeat. I’ll keep pushing myself to create more valuable and remarkable content for you.
Best,
Oleg
Very clear, short and effective! To sit down and define your life guide as manifesto is the one of the poferful mind tools.
I was exploring net and found your blog. You got very interesting points and some fresh ideas. Thank you!
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