What is the ONE THING that provides the MOST profound sense of meaning and fulfillment?
Achieving your life purpose.
“But what IS my life purpose?” you may ask. “If I don’t know what it is, how can I go about achieving it?”
The Perfect Question is the Perfect Starting Point.
If you can ask the question, you are ready for the answer.
So… get ready to find out.
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Recently my live-in nephew told me, “I need purpose.”
“If you don’t know what your Purpose is, then your Purpose is to find your Purpose” is what I had told him a year ago. Just emerging from life situations, he wasn’t ready to hear that just then.
Pleasantly surprised by this sudden realization after having sat in a room for a year, save for daily chores and the odd project, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Of course! Everyone gets bored with the dullness of a life without Purpose, even a very easy one.
Though most of us start out in life getting caught up with school, college, family, jobs to pay the bills, etc.; at some point we all (hopefully) get to that very important inquiry: Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? What’s my contribution?
Everyone Has a Purpose
We do have outstanding examples of those who have found a definite Purpose in life: from Nelson Mandela, a revolutionary who helped liberate his country, to Debbi Fields whose passion for baking created a cookie empire.
Whether it’s a monumental achievement or a seemingly ordinary life of raising a family, Everyone has a Purpose, a Reason for being here.
From the World of Form perspective, we don’t remember the agenda we had planned for ourselves in this lifetime, but what we can know for sureis that anything that is Life-Giving, Life-Affirming, Loving, Helpful and Kind… counts.
Rosa Parks was a seamstress whose life purpose was to demonstrate Love by refusing to give up her seat on a bus. Her whole life led her to that one moment and the impact is still felt today.
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“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It could be to become a tech giant or a schoolteacher. The teacher may have positively influenced the tech giant to become all he could be; and by the same token, the tech giant may end up bringing new technologies to schools that help millions of kids, and teachers.
There is beauty, purpose and love in the common things that may not make national news but will make an indelible impression on someone who may go on to be one of those people who do become a president or a tech giant.
We just don’t know all the ways in which doing what we came here to do, regardless of how insignificant it may seem, ripples out to affect hundreds, thousands or even millions of people.
But God/Life/Love… does.
Be Sherlock
“Babies aren’t born with an instruction book attached to them” as they say, but they do come with a life agenda buried within their psyche.
Most of us spend a great portion of our lives just trying to figure out what exactly that agenda is.
Be Sherlock, look for the clues.
The “Clues” are your Set-Up: the time, place and circumstances of your birth.
Whether you were born with the proverbial “silver spoon” in your mouth or had a dresser drawer for a bassinette as I did, the parents you chose, (yes chose) as well as everything else, was carefully selected by You before you were born to set you up for the goals, experiences and achievements you had in mind for this particular lifetime.
From babyhood to childhood to teenhood, you encountered circumstances that pointed you in the direction of your Life Purpose.
Or…
Or you encountered circumstances that might have steered you away from something you knew in your heart you really wanted to do. In that case, it could very well have been by design that oppositional forces only cemented within you a burning desire to do it anyway, despite the obstacles.
Think about your life up to this point. When you look back can you tell that when you went to college (or not) was it because you wanted to, or because parents or other authoritative figures encouraged or coerced you to?
The subjects were either ones that you were excited about, or obligatory. You followed your heart, or you followed your parents well-meaning advice.
A Burning Desire
That is the Biggest Clue. When you have a burning desire to do something, even if it seems impossible, that is your Soul speaking to you.
Sure, you may go through phases of ‘thinking’ you have a burning desire but in actuality, it was a superficial pipe dream to build a roller coaster in the desert or open a MacDonald’s on the moon.
That’s okay. All those false starts still work towards getting you to where you know you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
I didn’t realize I was a writer, officially, until well into my 50’s. It just didn’t occur to me that I would be ‘good enough’. Have you ever felt that way? Yeah, it’s pretty common.
If you have a burning desire to do something, the first thing that may happen is you feel desperately inadequate. That’s okay, just go back to your Guiding Light, your passion.
The Pivot
If you find yourself taken off course by extenuating circumstances, (I completed two marriages and raised a family before I took my writing seriously), you can still get on track. And yes, raising a family is obviously a Purpose too.
But if you feel you have gone years down the wrong road, not to worry, it all counts in the long run. Sometimes it works to get “other stuff” out of the way so that you can now focus on your Purpose, with the added bonus of wisdom, experience and skill accumulated along the way.
Purpose doesn’t necessarily mean it’s what you needed to be doing from the time you were on your own, or graduated college, or celebrated your first divorce. Sometimes it does, but we’re all different and our journeys are unique.
Still, many find that an act of Courage is what it takes to finally stop shuffling papers for a major corp and start teaching dance or art or open a travel agency or a monkey farm (ha). It may ruffle some family feathers, you may have to take a cut in pay or even relocate but you will feel SOOO much better and even relief, to finally be doing what you love.
“Believe in your heart that you are meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles.”
Roy T. Bennett
What Happens When You Leap
Whether you have been doing what you love since you were 5 or are still only dreaming of it, you Know what it is.
What determines success is Faith, Determination and Courage which attracts Divine Assistance.
When you Know what you’re supposed to be doing, even if you must rearrange your whole life to accommodate following your passion, Life will help you.
When you make a Decision, set an Intention and act on that Decision and Intention, God/Life/Love has your back.
When you bring your life into Alignment with your Soul’s agenda, you find lovely coincidences called “synchronicities”, showing up at just the right time and place. A chance meeting, phone call, unexpected help mysteriously fills in the blank of your journey.
Consider this: Your Soul is One with Infinite Intelligence which has the ability to shift circumstances to your benefit.
This is why it is so important to pay attention to your hunches and nudges. The “still small voice” is your Soul whispering to you to do this, go there, attend that meeting of abduction survivors or retired tree huggers. It may be just the piece of the puzzle that points you in the direction of the next step.
Finding and doing your Purpose is a magical experience of living life as you were meant to live it. This is what Fulfillment is. A deep sense of belonging, contributing, spreading Happiness in the world beginning with yourself.
Helping the world be happier and healthier, in whatever way, is deeply rewarding and fulfilling.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Frederick Nietzsche
Your Calling is Calling
My mother used to say, “That person ‘missed their calling’, they should have been a comedian or singer or …” whatever they were doing so well that it seemed that should have been their career rather than the one they had.
If you still haven’t a clue what you’re supposed to be doing, here are some ways to help you find out:
- What do you enjoy doing? Your Purpose will always be something you love, enjoy or are passionate about. That’s why finding it will give you the most fulfillment, regardless of pay.
- What do you find interesting? What fascinates you, would love to learn more about?
- Consider the categories: animals, technology, food, health, boats, helping people/animals, woodworking, history, teaching, chemistry, geography, fixing things, etc.
- What have you done in the past that you really liked doing?
- If you could do anything, what would it be?
- What could you do all day without getting tired?
- How would you like to “serve” others?
- How would you like to make money?
Loving Service
Purpose is about things you came here to do and usually that means your Loving Service, the way to give back to the Circle of Life. Your job, profession, avocation is (should be) your Loving Service, the way in which you serve either directly or indirectly through your work.
You either perform your job or profession with an attitude and consciousness of wanting to provide for others in a way that is win/win by honoring the one being served; or it is transactional get-for-give where win/lose is acceptable, or even status quo. Loving Service is the former.
Loving Service is where true fulfillment lies. It’s where others are honored as equal Divine Beings deserving of Dignity and Respect. It’s where you experience Joy, at least at times, in the offering of your time and energy.
It’s the place where you find Determination and Perseverance when you need it, as well as Patience and Cooperation. Hard work becomes “doing the doing” of that which you Love, Loving Service.
Earn, Learn, Volunteer
In the meantime, see what’s right in front of you. Get a job and see if you like it. Take classes to see if you resonate with the subject. Volunteer to see if you enjoy the work.
LISTEN to your Guidance. That part of you that KNOWS has been telling you all along which direction to go in. And if you stop to think about it, you have an inkling of what that is.
At the very least, if you can be Loving, Helpful and Kind THAT will be enough. Notice those three things are all separate principles. “Loving” is not the same as “Kind” (topic for another day:)
YOU are an invaluable part of ALL of us here on planet Earth, and we ALL need you to find your gift… and give it!
Aloha!