Are You Just a Sophisticated Animal?

I had it all. The successful IT company. The TEDx stage. The big car, the big home. I was checking every box on the wishlist.

But deep inside, I was completely lost. Scattered.

I had no idea who I was.

This feeling, this quiet emptiness despite external success, is what pushed me to leave everything and spend over a thousand days in the solitude of the Himalayas. There, I had a lot of time to think. To observe. To understand what separates a fulfilling life from one that just looks successful on paper.

I realized a profound truth: many of us are living like sophisticated animals.

Now, before you disagree, let me explain.

If you observe any animal, you’ll see their life is driven by three core purposes:

Survival through food (We go to offices instead of hunting berries, but the imperative is the same).

Reproduction (We’ve institutionalized it through marriage and family).

Physical security (We build homes with locked doors instead of nests and burrows).

If a person focuses their entire life only on these three purposes—working to eat, marrying to reproduce, and maintaining a safe home—then, in a functional sense, their existence is not much different from that of a lion, a bird, or any other creature that successfully achieves these goals.

But we are not just animals.

We have cognitive capacities, creative powers, and a spiritual dimension that has no parallel in the animal kingdom. To limit ourselves to those three primal drives is to waste our extraordinary human potential.

This is where the concept of the Fourth Purpose comes in.

This fourth purpose isn't something you find. It's something you create.

It’s the uniquely human ability to ask:

What can I contribute that has never existed before?

What problem can I solve that others have ignored?

How can I make the world different because I was here?

While animals are confined to nature's programming, we can write new code for our lives.

For me, this purpose grew from my darkest depression. My mission became clear: to help others lost in that same darkness. That purpose is what gave me the strength to rebuild.

Pursuing this Fourth Purpose is what requires real mental strength. It’s extraordinarily difficult. Animals follow their instincts automatically, but creating a human purpose requires conscious effort, resilience through failure, and perseverance against doubt.

This is the real distinction between merely existing and truly living.

A question to reflect on today: Beyond your job, your family, and your home—what is a problem you feel compelled to solve? What is a contribution that only you can make?

In my book, "The Unshakable Self," I begin this journey by exploring how to move from a life on autopilot—driven by ancient, animalistic programming—to one of conscious, created purpose. Building the mental strength to do this is the first subject of what I call the School of Life.

If this idea resonates with you, if you feel that quiet pull toward something more, you might find the next steps in its pages.

[Link to "The Unshakable Self" on Amazon]

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

To building your Fourth Purpose,