Purpose and Targets

You must understand the purpose for which you have come into this incarnation, and these bodies. A person with purpose will make specific targets. You must balance your life and also targets. You must have constancy of purpose and effort. Foster your ability to focus and develop industriousness at physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. At emotional level it is emotional commitment. Mental industriousness is finding ways and means of achieving the targets. Let us discuss some important targets to be considered simultaneously.

Financial Target

We try to get a job or run a business to earn money. We spend substantial time for our education and to qualify ourselves in order to have a better career and make substantial money. We also continue to upgrade ourselves, for better growth opportunities. Why are we linking all this progress to money? It is because money is concretized time and energy. People spend time, energy and effort to obtain it. They lose their youth in acquiring wealth. If you are employed, you look for your salary at the end of the month. A businessman invests and expects profit or good returns. Everyone is like a farmer who sows seeds and waits for harvesting his crop. Similarly, you are in a physical incarnation in this physical world; you have a responsibility to meet your family needs, take care of your parents and people connected to you. There are karmic obligations that you cannot run away from. You must fulfill these as well as balance your life.

You must save, so that at some stage, you become financially independent. You cannot keep on working like this. You must have a timeline and date, and work towards it to achieve that financial independence. So that, from then onwards, you don’t just work for money, but work for what you are passionate about. Whether it fetches you enough money or not, it doesn’t bother you anymore because you can financially sustain.

Everyone has to make a financial target to become financially independent. How much you have now and how much you want to have? What is the gap? How to get there? How much time will it take? Plan for it! Make a detailed plan, parallel plan and backup plan for it.

In the present condition, you must understand that no job is permanent. Therefore, you must have a parallel plan. You must be ready to change your profession or livelihood when required. To avoid getting stressed and keeping quiet, you must have a backup plan. You must not have only one way, but may be two or three different ways to sustain yourself to earn enough. There may be ups and downs; it is part of life. But you must have a plan, definitely a parallel plan. You cannot get stuck with one profession in general, because you don’t know whether that profession would last or not? Or even if it does, whether it would give you enough returns?

For example, with the emergence of digital printers, people using typewriters went out of job in just one day. Similarly, with digital photography, the requirement of the photographic film was gone. So, you must be aware of what is happening around. The future is dynamic and everything around is continuously changing. Therefore, you must have a parallel plan, a backup plan and not be stuck with just one plan! Your focus must be on attaining financial freedom. That is the purpose. All this money earned can help you meet the needs of the people connected to you, make them grow and become self-reliant, address the requirements such as health, education, shelter, food, etc.

You must spend money and also save some for future. Only then can you become self-sufficient financially. It is in giving that you receive. Consequently, you must also donate or tithe 10% of your net income after taxes, for charitable and spiritual purposes. You may save about 30% and also reinvest, but not all eggs in the same basket. You may distribute the investment.

Money is a resource to be utilized. It should not make you run behind it; you must use money; it is time and energy. But, are people happy after having substantial or enough money? If they are not, then there is something missing. Other targets must be balanced too. Another invaluable objective to be considered is relationship.

Relationship Target

You must have a relationship target. This must be simultaneously worked on and maintained. You cannot say that you will take care of this relationship later. It is a part of your life. If you are not happy, then it doesn’t make any sense that you have money. You must first work on the relationships within the family, with colleagues, relatives and balance these relationships. Where it is not so good, at least neutralize the enmity and where it is already fine, sustain it. Even to sustain it, you must put effort. Like, for sustaining good health, you need to work regularly.

Health and Self Development Target

If you do not have good health, your financial target goes for a toss. So, you must maintain health. Even if you do not have any major health issue, you must sustain it. There has to be some method by which you do so. You have to have a health target.

In case, you have a health issue, you must make a target to come to normalcy (there must be a specified target date), in terms of body mass index, blood parameters, etc. You must have a health target or an improvement target and at the same time you must have a self-development target in order to advance yourself to meet the demands of the future.

You cannot be stuck; status quo is not acceptable. Continue to improve, world is going by law of change and law of cycles. So, you must upgrade yourself apart from sustaining, maintaining and improving your health.

All these targets must run concurrently. You cannot say that you will look into health target after making money. Health is wealth!

Look at all the ways that you can improve your health, physically and emotionally too. There are multiple ways by which you can improve. Use a holistic and integrated approach.