Assess your life's purpose

A major source of stress in society today comes from sources that when broken down in more detail do not deserve the importance attached to them. Stress is also caused by the feeling that you are not living a life of meaning or there is no purpose to what you do - combined with the fact that you do nothing to change this.

Look at society today, how complicated and meaningless it has become for many - focus on making money, getting to top of career for nothing more than to say you were the boss, becoming fit just to look good and better than the rest of society....truly meaningless in that you have added nothing to the human race and when you are dead what good is your money, your fitness or your career. Now I'm not saying there isn't good in these things; you need to make money for your family, achieve in your career for personal growth and be fit/take care of yourself to ensure a healthy life. However we need to truly assess what the purpose is of each thing we do and make it count.

How many of us live a life of excess and consider the less fortunate simply a topic of conversation. That the phrase 'social enterprise' sounds great but that is it. Could you honestly assess any meaningful contribution you have made to society in the past year, three years, 10 years? Do you accept life for what it is and focus solely on yourself? It is obvious we as a race are looking for more - online dating trying to find the perfect solemate, online personalities and avatars to live a life you dream of but do not have in person. The fact it is becoming 'fashionable' to give your time to charities through social enterprise activities. The evidence is there that our society wishes for a more meaningful and exciting existence but struggle to live it in the real world.

My advice is take a look at your life and look beyond the next promotion, pay rise etc and consider one thing you can do for someone else or for society's benefit. From a psychological stand point personal growth and development is one of the underlying needs of humans, though many of us do not openly recognize it as such, therefore by undertaking deeds to benefit others you will also benefit yourself and add some real purpose to your existence.

Consequences of financial markets greed

There are two things that can be guaranteed in life - and it isn't death and taxes. It's human greed and human anger when being ripped off and lied to, and that is exactly what is happening in financial markets at the moment. I'll focus on Wall Street at the moment because the majority of blogs I read about current market events relates to the US.

Okay so this current financial situation is something new...result of cheap (and unrealistic) credit, Wall Street knowingly providing credit to uncreditworthy families, the parcelling of junk mortgages into AAA securities and onselling to Mums and Dads - all for the sake of providing fee income to the big investment banks (and therefore the large number of overpaid executives). Who can blame the average investor for being angry and feeling hard done by.

Financial markets were never meant for this kind of activity - it was for the facilitation of trade, fair trade where the playing field was level. Now the largest players hold all the cards and you cannot gamble against the house. Except that we don't know which way the 'house' wants the market to go.

However the consequence of this is a huge breach of trust on behalf of Wall Street and one which the average investor will not forget soon. There will now be a strong case of mistrust, while in the past did exist, was not a problem whilst the game was being played relatively fairly and with a degree of visibility. Now it appears that the sole purpose of Wall Street is to reward itself with no regard for why it exists in the first place.

Mark my words...this is the start of the end for the financial markets industry, an industry that in reality creates nothing, adds nothing and is really quite useless considering the large number of people working within it. This latest act of greed has caused negativity toward financial markets to a level not seen before. This is because the problems are not fundamental but caused by a few taking advantage of many for the sake of personal advancement.