How many of you ponder this question just about every day. If it comes to mind and I am sure it does, learn 5 ways to your life purpose, from someone who has studied this question for years.
Do you go to work knowing that what you are doing is not what you want to do? Are you coming home drained of the workday, because you gave your energy to other people and have none left for yourself? Do you want out of that job, but have no clue how? Through my own life experiences and after my mother passed away in 2019, I set out on a mission to discover my OWN purpose, to realize it had been staring me in the face for years.
The Flashback
Looking back on your life up to this point, what are you seeing? Success? Happiness? Satisfaction? Opportunities for growth? Stuck? Frustrated? Depressed? Be real and honest with yourself. If you like the way your life has gone up to this point, I applaud your focused efforts and intentions. For others, you may say to yourself, things just didn’t work out like I planned. Or maybe you’re saying to yourself, I really need to get focused?
Don’t beat yourself up if things didn’t go as planned or unplanned. Give yourself a hug and keep moving forward towards the life you want.
I’m not leaving anyone out here, but for some, I would say, we can’t just let life lead us; life needs a job to do, and life needs a leader. Your life needs YOU!
We have to look back through our lives, to help guide us through our present and future. As painful as it can be to do sometimes, it’s more painful to wake up and realize, you don’t know YOU anymore. Let’s don’t fall into that dark hole.
“As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being redirected to something better.” – Steve Maraboli
So, let’s look at the 5 ways to find your life purpose, by looking into the past and moving towards your future.
1. Remember What You Loved as a Child
I am a strong believer in nurturing your childhood dreams and remembering those things that brought you joy! It’s true that our childhood influences can shape our lives, but when we forget the positive things we did and enjoyed as a child, we have to find other ways and means to justify why we don’t. For example, “everything happens for a reason”? Maybe… or do we tell ourselves this to soften the blow of disappointment, it’s something to think about.
Let’s say you learned to paint in elementary school and continued it throughout your high school years. You graduated, maybe went to college, got a job as an accountant “life happens” and you stopped painting and now you’re 30. Painting never leaves your mind, yet you go to a job where you interact with numbers and not color or a paint brush.
Here’s another one, an early gift of singing, no formal training except through school choruses and church choirs. You sing every day. The talent just fell in your voice! You sing! Sing! Sing! Yet, you chase spreadsheets and not your joy of singing.
See where this is heading? Contrary to what you may think, your true talents may just lie in what you enjoyed as a child. You owe it to yourself to take a closer look.
2. Your Passions
What are you passionate about? This will become your purpose. Step outside yourself, be scared and do it anyway! Seriously! Write your passions down. In essence, writing down what “fires you up”, is letting the real you out!!
Explore your curiosity about whatever you enjoy now ad in your past.
No one can tell you what you’re passionate about, but we can probably read it on your face beaming of excitement as you tell us! Heck, it makes us smile and excited for you!
I’m not going to say any of this is easy, it has not been for me. In fact, I say the harder the better. Why? Because your passions exalt to purpose which is a lot more powerful. When you have purpose, that’s when you make a move.
As you read through the 5 ways to find your life purpose, I am sure you will begin to come up with a few of your own.
“Make your passion your paycheck.” — Anonymous
3. Using Your Talents and Skills
This one should be simple right? Well, no if you think you don’t do anything well. There is no room for self-doubt here. Listing them out is helpful don’t you think?
I recently went to a friend’s mothers funeral. Her love of art and painting showered the room. But none of the art was signed. When I asked my friend about it, he said, “mom just didn’t think they were that good”. Those paintings, in my opinion, would have been sold at high ticket prices. They were excellent works of art. After all, she did attend The Atlanta Art Institute.
Writing down your talents not only shows on paper what you are good at, you will be amazed at how good you feel by reading your talents and skills.
- Good Listener
- Detailed
- Empathic
- Strategic thinking
- Consistent
- Writer
- Photography
- Welder
- Makeup Artist
This is a short guide, nonetheless, a start. If you really want to take a deeper dive. I suggest taking the Gallop CliftonStrengths Finder Assessment. It’s amazing and you will learn more about yourself than you ever knew. There is a student price at $24.99, however I suggest going all in if you can and purchase the Cliftonstrengths 34 for $59.99 if you can. Check it out on Gallop.com.
4. Your Personality
The universe will work in our favor if we let it. However, whatever you put out there will come back to you. But sometimes, our personalities get in our own way. And we can’t, just flow, grow, and glow.
As we age and gain more life experiences we add more and more to our lives. Hopefully we keep the good stuff. But more times than not, we’ll hang on to the bad stuff just a little too long. I have always told my son to take inventory every year of what you value. If you don’t value it you must get rid of it. It’s served its purpose, keep moving forward.
Let stuff go… learn what your deal breakers and your deal makers are.
Learn who you are and accept who you thought you were, but not.
It’s so refreshing to learn about yourself, and sometimes when you do, you definitely feel understood and accepted from none other than yourself.
After all your opinions are the only ones that matter and reflect on others’ opinions that serve you well and rid yourself of those that don’t. (hard lesson, I know!).
Here are some really great resources to get you on your path of learning more about yourself. Trust me, you will learn more than you know,
- Myers Briggs Personality Indicator Assessment
- Enneagram Personality Assessment
- Myers Briggs 16 Personalities
- Emotional Intelligence Test
The list above should get you started on learning more about you and your motivations. Keep in mind motivation is not an action, it’s a feeling. So, let’s get you motivated to act and move towards your life purpose. There are more than 5 ways to find your life purpose, but knowing who you are makes it just a bit easier to navigate your journey.
5. Your Life Experiences
Life is a great teacher. It can teach us what we want, what we need, what we don’t want, and it can teach us that when left to its own devices without any direction, we can miss the things in life that were meant for us, because we ignored them.
It really doesn’t matter what stage in life you are, up to this point your life experiences have shaped you into someone you enjoy being around, or someone who is wanting a change.
Either way, we are always comparing ourselves to others.
My encouragement for you as you look at your life experiences, is use the method of “keep the treasure and take out the trash”. If what you have been through or going through doesn’t serve you for the good, find ways to let it go. Or arrive at the level of acceptance. Let imperfection be perfect.
Letting go of things that no longer serve you will open your heart and mind to the things you need to have in your life. A life of value and enrichments.
From this point forward, rewrite your life story. Read it over and over, until you believe every single word. Manifest it before you even have it, claim it! You so deserve it!
“We didn’t come this far just to come this far” -Matthew Reilly
Final Thoughts of Encouragement
All through our childhood we develop passions and interests, only to throw them to the wayside when we become adults.
And through the stages of our lives, we are still learning more about life and our own existence.
Our life experiences take us on journeys of joy and sadness. Some flourish, some stay stuck.
And our personality helps form our strength and resiliency. Your passions will grow as you do. And life will either be guided by you, or it will just happen.
I prefer to have a balance of both, I love surprises. But what I have learned is taking a risk on myself is better than living someone else’s dream. Therefore, is that not what we do when we abandon our own passions. Just something to ponder.
These 5 ways to find your life purpose, were gained the hard way, but yet I learned anyway. And so will you.
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We’ll chat soon,
