How To Find Your Purpose In Life

No matter what challenges we experience in life, the answer seems to always come back to “finding your purpose” or understanding what we are really here for.

For example…

• You’re stuck in life, can’t get motivated – you know that you procrastinate constantly, but can’t figure out a way to stop
• You watch those around you that seem so energized, focused and driven, but can’t get to that state yourself
• Waste your time on TV, video games, alcohol, drugs or just hanging out instead of doing something meaningful
• You find yourself stuck in a job that you can’t get out of…your pay is good, but you hate going to work each day
• People don’t seem to want to be around you and you believe it is because you just have no reason or purpose in life
• You are always low on energy, can’t get motivated or excited about things
• You are unhappy far more than you are happy…that would just change if you could find your purpose

We put a great deal of stock on being able to change things in our life based on the elusive notion of finding our purpose and triggering massive change toward a happier, more fulfilling life.

That certainly can happen, but the question is why hasn’t it so far?

TAKING CONTROL

A good deal of what you are about to experience was pulled from the much more broad Attracting Greatness…Experiencing The Five Pillars Of Greatness In Your Life

The first step on the path to realizing one’s true purpose and potential in life is having a healthy view of what is possible.

Many people simply stumble through life with the notion that they must accept what comes their way – that they are a passive passenger with little or no control over their own lives.

That’s the first thing that needs to change.

We cannot be a victim and improve our lives at the same time.

Sure, we cannot control every aspect of the world or what happens to us…but we can have a degree of control much larger over what matters to us.

A mother has a great deal of control how her family is raised, a teacher an immense ability to influence his or her students, a writer a significant ability to have an impact on their readership.

The point being, the more we BELIEVE we can impact the world around us as aligned with our purpose, the more we impact we really can have and the more happiness and fulfillment we will experience.

PURPOSE – SHORT-TERM AND LONGER-TERM

Finding one’s purpose in life is typically an exercise in formulating some long-term objective toward a major goal, that’s not an entirely effective way to go about leading a purpose-driven life however.

Here are some key aspects of finding your own meaningful, important and relevant purpose in your life:

1. A Personal Purpose and A Societal Purpose.  What you will find consistntly among those people who are among the highest achievers, most fulfilled that live with the most meaning in their lives they have both a purpose around improving themselves (which is linked to improvement outside of their lives by the way) and a purpose outside of themselves (impact their family, co-workers, customers, community, etc…) where they help others.  I suggest you do the same – you have two guideing purposes in your life that are algned, that do not conflict

2 Short-Terma and Longer-Term – Your purpose should not only result in impact many years from now, but should impact each and every day you live. Instead of recognizing your purpose to help the world become more healthy through your nutritional teachings and training, you could start with changing your own life making it healthier and aim to change one person’s life each day for the next year as your purpose.

3. Purpose In Motion – what makes leading a purpose-driven life so effective is moving towards something.  So, in a sense, it is the process of moving toward your mission more than any single achievement that will give you the energy, motivation, fuflillemnt and happiness you seek.

4. Purpose Evolution – Let’s begin with the realization that your purpose today may start small, but may grow into something incredible later on in your life. For example, a purpose in your life right now may be to help your 15-year old son find his way in the world, to be confident, happy and on the right path as he works his way through school and his first jobs.

In 4-years that purpose may expand to your entire family and perhaps kids of friends around you…you branch out and share your experience to help those close to you

In 10-years (or sooner) you decide that you can help massive numbers of people and actually impact society by helping produce training programs to help teens get off to the right start in life.

FINDING YOUR PURPOSE

So here’s the big question right?

How the heck do I find that all-important, deeply held purpose that will result in the type of breakthroughs you are looking for in life?

Here is a step-by-step process you should find extremely helpful in identifying your purpose leading to fulfillment and meaning in our life.

Step 1:  Make it a top priority to ask yourself each day “What is My Purpose In life” each day and spend at least 10-minutes frantically writing answers to that question (unedited).  Breakthroughs happen all the time when we focus our mind on important questions like this…so that’s how we are going to start.

Step 2: Incorporate Meaning Into Your Purpose.  You may think of many potential examples of purpose in your life, one way to decide between them is to make sure your purpose has meaning. Tony Robbins often talks about pleasure and happiness being temporary, but true fulfillment is only brought about through ongoing meaning.  Above all else, your purpose must have deep, personal and ongoing meaning in your life.

Step 3: Tools To Identify Your Purpose- Questions…Ask yourself these questions and answer with the first thought that enters your mind –

• What do you love to do?
• What did you want to be or do as a kid?
• How did you want that to make you feel?
• What makes you proud of yourself?
• What are you naturally good at (accomplishments, skills, tasks)
• Would would people around you say you are good at?
• What would people around you say is your #1 skill?
• What makes you angry in life?  (Anger is a good guide to what we feel is important in life…if we don’t get upset about it, chances are we don’t care that much about it)

Step 4:  Go With Your Emotion  – To be effective your purpose must create emotion in you.  For some, that means you have a WoW! moment when you hit on the write purpose, for others they begin to cry, still others just know in their gut that THIS is the right direction to move their life.

Living a purpose-driven life does not come automatically, but with a little effort you can create a road map that continually motivates and energizes you through the day.

It doesn’t matter where you are starting from, how low you are currently in your life.  The only thing that matters is a) You WANT to find your purpose and b) You will persistently work through the exercise above until you DO!

YOUR TURN…

Let us know your questions, thoughts or observations – has this process worked for you?