How to discover your life-purpose: finding a purpose that fits

One of the most frequent questions I get asked during a reading is “What is my life purpose?”

Have you ever thought about it? What am I here to do? Is there a purpose for me at all?

Your life purpose and your day job

Some people believe that because they are not in a job that they enjoy, they are not living their life’s purpose. This may or may not be true, but it is certainly not an absolute.

I don’t believe your day job has to be your life purpose, but rather your life purpose is a cumulative sense of spiritual integrity – a sustained feeling that what you are doing matters, that who you are makes a difference, and that you are living the kind of life you deserve.

Your life job may be your life purpose. But more often than not your day job could serve as a vessel for you achieve your life purpose. Your day job could provide you with all the learning and growth opportunities you need in order to achieve some part of your life purpose.

There are many options. So don’t be disheartened. Your life purpose isn’t to be the “CEO of a company” or a “hairdresser” or a “engineer”. Your life purpose is more related to the impact you make on the world, and on yourself.

Your life purpose doesn’t necessarily scream at you.

If you are waiting for some kind of awe-inspiring, life-changing moment when suddenly what you are here to do just screams at you – you could be waiting for a long time.

Very few things in life are that black and white. Spiritual stability is found in the subtleties.

A good indicator of whether you are living close to far from your purpose is to check your emotional compass. Is your life leaving you with a feeling of satisfaction? Are you on your path towards what you deem is important to you?

By following the directions on your emotional compass that makes you feel good, and moving away from the directions don’t agree with you, you start to be selective about the kind of experiences you have. The more selective you can be about the experiences you choose to have, the more you bring your purpose to life.

How to discover your life purpose!:

I spent a long time trying to find a life purpose that fits me. I also spent a lot of time trying to think of ways to make the process of finding out what your purpose is as simple as possible for people who are curious. I figure that the less time we need to spend finding out what our purpose is – the more time we will have left to actually live it!

1. Think of the TOP 3 words you would use to describe yourself.

And I mean your TOP three, so I don’t mean things like “cool, nice and awesome” (even though I am sure you are ;)). You could even rephrase and ask yourself if someone was to describe you to their friend in three words – what words would you most want for them to pick?

Take your time to think of your words. They really need to represent you or at least who you know you are capable of being and committed to becoming.

This may take some time till you find your three. You will have to consider the options carefully, like for example, is being seen as  “kind” more important to you than being seen as a “hard worker”. It’s personal.

2. Brainstorm three things you could do in your life to represent each attribute

Once you have your top three words, I want you to brainstorm 3 things that you could do in your life in order to represent each attribute.

Some might be a bit “obvious”. For example, if one of your words is “Joyful” – you have to brainstorm what kind of things would you have to do for you to feel as though you lived a joyful life? Of course everybody will have a different response for this. For one person joy might mean raising a family, for another it may mean to share their writing with the world.

Get brainstorming. You might not use all these ideas, but there are all very real opportunities that you can use in order to express your life purpose. There isn’t any point having a purpose that you are not ready to express.

 3. What is your legacy?

A slightly more difficult suggestion is think about what kind of legacy you want to leave the world. When you die, what do you want people to remember about you and what you did? This is a big question, so I don’t blame you if you can’t find your answer right away. I am still searching for mine. Sometimes you know, sometimes you don’t. And when you don’t, that’s okay, because your life will show you as you grow.

 Good luck 🙂

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When I started thinking about all this “life purpose” stuff, I thought that maybe my life purpose was something to do with my spiritual and psychic work. That my life purpose is to give other people readings or live and breathe the culture of “spirituality”. I thought that my purpose was to help people be more connected to their spiritual nature, and while I love to do that, I also realize I was wrong to limit myself in this way. There are periods of my life when I don’t do readings, or when I am musing over the latest MAC make-up collection instead of meditation – and even then, I’m still happy. My emotional compass is telling me – hey this feels good too! Also, am I truly dedicated to putting this kind of label on myself?  No. And because I decided I want to help people be more connected to their spiritual nature, does that mean I don’t want to associate’s with people who are just simply “not into it”? No. This does not resonate with me at all. I want to connect with anybody regardless of their spiritual orientation.

I finally realized that my true life’s purpose is to experience myself completely and inspire people to do the same.

I know that the only success in life is to be able to spend your life in your own way and to like what you do, how you do it and of course to like yourself. I can only live my life in my own way when I come to know myself through experiencing myself.

And I would wish this for you, too.

2 Comments

  1. I just blogged about the same thing a while ago. I just came to realize that when I was a child I used to dream that I will live eternally but has come to a point on my adult life that I haven’t thought about it for a long time. Do I want to embrace God’s gift of Eternal Life? What is my life’s purpose? In Philippians 1:21 it says, “To Live is Christ and to die is gain.”

    For the weekend, I will restart reading My Purpose Driven Life which I left in my closet when I begun an oh-so-complicated relationship with a man. Sigh… I lose my way when I fall for a man and this is where God is disciplining me.

    God bless. 🙂

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