Most people have no idea what they’d like to pursue or do with their lives. And this is not just high school graduates full of aspiring, wonderful dreams. In fact, it’s most adults; even after finishing school, getting a job and making steady money. There’s still room for clearly defining what their life purpose is.
In fact, it’s a conflict that often begins in adult life. Seemingly simple questions like “What do I want to do with my life?”, “What am I passionate about?” and “How can I make my life better?” are all questions that pop into adult minds looking for ways to identify what they would like to do with their lives.
In other words, they still haven’t been able to identify their life purpose. But is this really as complicated as it seems? Well, yes and no.
To put it simply, everyone exists on earth for an unspecified duration of time. People do different things during that time with some being important and others not so much. Among these things, it’s the important things which give life its meaning and a sense of fulfillment. The unimportant ones are just a way to kill time.
To make matters a little more complicated, ignorance towards their true selves is something that most people live with for a long time. They set up their lives based on others’ expectations and norms, and in doing so may never be able to discover their true selves.
Others who set out on the path to self-discovery find out that the journey is neither easy nor pleasant. In fact, there are plenty of hurdles along the way. When you set out to find your life purpose, it means that you hold yourself, your set of beliefs and values and your likes and interests as top priority.
You look for things that make you truly happy, or rather fulfilled. This also means that on the way, you are going to displease others since you no longer want to live your life by their dictates.
Yes, this journey can include confusion, conflict, some fear, quite a bit of misunderstanding and a lot of doubt along the way. And last but not least, it’ll also involve re-visiting many choices that you have made in life earlier. Think of it as spring cleaning of the mind that will ultimately lead you to your life’s true purpose.
So What Is Life Purpose Really?
Life purpose is a lot of things, but foremost, it’s the first step to living your life the most conscious way.
Here’s one way to look at it- you may be very busy with a lot of chores and tasks every day. But if you don’t have a purpose intended for those tasks, then every effort you make will mean very little in the end. So basically, the end goal may have nothing to do with your purpose.
This means that you could pursue you current goals for the next so many years and then come to realize that this wasn’t what you wanted in the first place.
On the contrary, if you have a life purpose, then that’s how you learn to lead a conscious life. Your efforts get directed towards something and you enjoy every minute of it. And although this doesn’t imply that your problems disappear, at least now you know why you’re trying to find a way around those problems.
You also know that you’ve discovered your life purpose when you feel energized in all your endeavors. You no longer dread the daily grind, but are eager to get your day started and get as much done as you possibly can.
How Do You Measure Life Purpose?
There can be a few determinants in this regard. For starters, there’s making sacrifices.
Achieving anything that’s worth achieving involves sacrifices. Everything comes at a cost and very few things are uplifting or pleasurable all the time.
The question that arises here is what sacrifice or struggle are you ready to make or tolerate? If you find yourself giving in at the slightest chance of pressure, then obviously this choice isn’t your life purpose.
But if you’re willing to ride through the rough patches and stick with it no matter what, then you may be on to something. This is because what ultimately determines your ability to commit to something shows how much you care about that thing and how much it means to you.
For instance, if you wish to become a successful entrepreneur, but aren’t good at handling failure, you won’t get far. Or, say your dream is to become a professional artist, but don’t like to see your work criticized or rejected, then there’s not much scope for you out there.
But if the same purposes keep you going despite unpleasant experiences, staying awake long nights, or riding out the bad days, then you may just have discovered what you’re really cut out for.
You can also determine if you’ve found your life purpose if you find sheer joy in doing something now that you also enjoyed doing as a child. Say you enjoyed writing as a child and only rediscovered the same joy of writing later on in life.
A lot of times people tend to lose touch with what they loved when they were younger. Oftentimes, it has a lot to do with the social pressure of adolescence or the professional pressure of young adulthood, which wrings the passion right out of them.
Instead what remains behind is the lesson that the only reason to do anything is if there’s a tangible reward for it. But if you can look beyond the physical reward for something and learn to enjoy the experience instead, it could be your true calling.
Interestingly enough, vulnerability can also often point you in the direction of your real passion. If you’re passionate about something, then you risk making mistakes to improve yourself.
Making mistakes leads to embarrassment and if becoming embarrassed stops you from doing something that you really want to do, then you should re-think your life purpose.
Your real life purpose won’t let you care about getting embarrassed. It won’t concern itself with what others think of you but urge you to pursue it instead.
When people feel like they’ve got no sense of direction or any purpose in life, it’s because they don’t know what’s important to them. And when you don’t know what’s important to you, then you’re just taking on other people’s values and following their priorities instead of your own.
And this is exactly what this book aims to correct so that you can live your own life based on what’s important to you, not what others think is good for you.
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