How To Find A Reason To Live ► Explained With Dark Souls
What if your reason to live doesn’t exist yet? Not hidden or waiting to be found, but not created. At some point in your life, you might have asked yourself, “What is my reason for living? Or what is my purpose?” The conclusion usually ends up being you should just keep trying to do the right things and hopefully it’ll all work out. But I feel like that’s not good enough, especially when you’re feeling really demotivated. It’s hard to
Stay true to a path when you’re not quite sure where it’s taking you. You want clarity and you want purpose because then then the feelings of struggle and tiredness and frustration can all seem actually worth it. And it’s not that you’re weak or incapable of keeping going. You just don’t see any reason to. So, how can we actually find our reason to live? That’s where the game Dark Souls becomes really important. Because Dark Souls is a game
Well known for being brutally difficult. You’re thrown into a world that’s already dead. Not dying, already dead. The people are gone and the ones that remain have lost their minds. Players already know just how frustrating and punishing the game can be, dying over and over again just to make a little bit of progress with each attempt. But I don’t want to talk about how punishing the game is for the player. >> I want to talk about the conditions of
The people actually living in the game. It’s actually kind of hard to imagine that anyone normal and like peaceful actually lived in the world of Dark Souls, you know? Because of how ruined everything looks, how terrible everything is. It’s hard to believe that people actually used to live here. But it’s true. If you look around, you’ll see old worn-down shacks, villages, and even crumbling castles and cities in the sky. But the only remaining people living here are basically zombies. The
Only people we see are the dead, reanimated husks of former people in the long-since abandoned castles and villages. There are almost no sane, functioning individuals left. There are some, of course. We’re one of them, but there’s not a lot. A few of those remaining people decided that they’d had enough with the way things are in the world. They wanted to stop living to the age of fire because the fire was fading, creating a stagnant world that suffers
From a rotting sickness. They wanted a new way of life. So, instead of fixing the world, they left it. They painted a new one. Think about how actually awesome that is. They didn’t wait for the world to get better or try to fix what was broken. They just left and created something new, a world that didn’t even exist before. I feel like this is so out of character of Dark Souls because it’s like a happy ending.
They actually made a place where people like them could finally belong. A cold, safe haven isolated from the old world. A world for people who didn’t belong anywhere else. The painted world of Ariandel. When I first played through this part of the game and I heard the story of why it was actually in the game at all, my first thought was like, “I didn’t even know that was an option.” I had no idea that this whole time it was
An option to escape the age of fire by creating a new world. I love it when that happens in stories. Everyone thinks that there’s no other option. You have to choose between either this option or that option. There’s nothing else you can do. And then a new way is discovered. And it made me wonder, “What if my purpose or my reason to live has not yet been created, not yet been discovered?” Because in the world we
Live in, we all know about other people’s stories, the success stories of people like Steve Jobs and Alexander the Great. So, we look to those people who have already existed for inspiration to our own lives. We spend our lives looking at paths that already exist, other people’s lives, other people’s definitions of success. So, we assume our purpose must already be out there somewhere, just waiting to be found. But what if it’s not? The people of Dark
Souls just wanted a peaceful place to call home without any war or plague or decay. But because nothing in the world actually existed anymore like that, they had to create it themselves. They found a new way, a hidden option. And so, I think that in your real life, if you’ve become demotivated because of your lack of clarity for the future. You know that maybe you want a wife and kids and you want to be happy, something like that.
But you don’t know exactly what that looks like. And the fact that you don’t even know what it looks like is why when you get demotivated at all right now, it feels like just giving up everything entirely. Because what’s even keeping you going? There’s nothing that you can really see that keeps pushing you forward. Just an idea that maybe it can get better eventually. And when there’s nothing in your life that feels worth holding on to, even getting through the
Day starts to feel optional. And maybe you don’t want your life to just be the same as everyone else’s. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. You can make your own reality and create a new option. You don’t need to follow what everyone else is doing just because that’s all you’ve ever known. You can design a new world for yourself and anyone who wants to be a part of it. I think people are so caught up in the world that already
Exists around us that even if you kind of already feel like the world is and you know about the Matrix and the rat race and all that, it still kind of rubs off on you and influences your direction. Because literally everyone around you is part of it in some way. And maybe you’ve already tried it, too. You tried doing what you’re supposed to do. Follow the path, stay consistent, be productive. And it just didn’t feel right. So, you start
Thinking maybe something’s wrong with you. But maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s the path. What has worked in the past might not work forever. The age of fire in Dark Souls was such a prosperous time where everyone was happy and they were building castles in the sky. But then at one point, it stopped being the good thing it was before. The world started decaying and people started dying. And yet some people, especially those in power like Gwyn, still held onto the
Past because of pride and because it still benefited them. But it no longer served as a benefit to those not in power. Some people may have stayed just because they didn’t know where else to go. But some people decided to carve a new path, make a new world where those who are no longer fit for this world can be together and prosper again. So, what does this mean for you and me in our real lives? We know that we might not
Feel super good as we are now. We have uncertainty for the future and an inability to say what our reason for living is, what our purpose is. But now we know that we might not find our reason to live in the places that already exist in the world. We might actually need to create something totally new for us specifically, a new way of living, a personalized experience. Not just following the productive morning routine you saw on YouTube, but making
Yourself a perfect morning routine for you. Not just getting a job because you feel like you should get a job at this point in your life. But maybe getting a job so that eventually, when you have a family and kids and a house, you can pay for it all without worry. You’re preparing yourself for the future, the future that doesn’t exist yet, but you want it to exist and you’ll create it. Like you want something specific in your
Life that you can achieve through getting a job. You don’t get a job just for the sake of getting a job. You get it for a purpose. And when you do things intentionally and with purpose, you start to feel less like you don’t have a purpose or a reason to live. And instead, like every move you make is progress toward that purpose. So, where do you even start with something like this? It’s not about suddenly figuring
Out your entire life. It’s smaller than that. It’s about paying attention to what actually feels meaningful to you, even if it doesn’t make sense yet. What kind of work feels satisfying? What kind of effort feels worth it? What kind of life would you actually want to wake up to? And then slowly building around those ideas. Not perfectly, not all at once, but just intentionally. What works for everyone else will not automatically work for you, too. It
Might take you to actually find the answer in your own heart to find what really works for you. This isn’t about copying someone else’s life. It’s about paying attention to what actually feels right to you. Because if you keep searching in places that don’t fit, of course you’re not going to find anything. If none of the paths in front of you feel right, maybe it’s not your fault. Maybe it just means your world hasn’t been created yet. You’re not
Lost, you’re just trying to walk down a path that was never even meant for you. So, stop searching for something that doesn’t currently exist and start creating it. Paint your own world. And if you like Dark Souls and self-improvement, I have a new free community that you can just join in the link in the description. I also have a new course inside of that community that’s how to genuinely fix your life explained with Dark Souls. So, if that
Sounds interesting to you as well, that’s also going to be the second link in the description, all right? No pressure for either of them, as always, but just if they sound interesting to you, which if you watched this video, I think that it might be interesting to you, then come check it out, all right? But just no pressure, but just come check it out, all right? That’s everything for today, guys. Take care, okay? Don’t you dare go hollow.