This is part 2 of a 7-part series on how to find your life purpose.
- Part 1: How To Find Your Life Purpose: Introduction
- Part 2: 5 Reasons You Should Have a Life Purpose
- Part 3: Why Earning Money Is Not Your Real Purpose (And How To Know What Is)
- Part 4: Two Important Things that Led Me to Discover My Life Purpose
- Part 5: 6 Things To Consider Before Discovering Your Purpose
- Part 6: How To Discover Your Real Life Purpose in 30 Minutes
- Part 7: Living in Alignment with Your Purpose
(Image)
“When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” — Seneca
“Having a purpose is the difference between making a living and making a life.” — Tom Thiss
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” — John F. Kennedy
What is a “life purpose”? Is it some woo-woo thing that only people who meditate and chant in a cave get? Is it some religious term for holy saints? What exactly is it?
Well, there are multiple interpretations of what a “life purpose” is. For the spiritual folks, they may see it a higher calling. For the religious, they may see it as an instruction from God.
Beyond religious connotations, a life purpose is simply your life’s message. It is the message you wish to drive in the world during your time on Earth. An example of a life purpose is “To inspire everyone to greatness” or “To touch every human on Earth” or “To relieve every living being of suffering.” Having a life purpose applies to all of us, whether we are religious or atheists.
Other terms for life purpose are “life direction,” “purpose statement,” and “life mission.” They are all the same thing.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re 10 years old, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, or older. As long as you wish to live a more meaningful and conscious life, a life purpose is for you.
Why Have a Life Purpose?
Some of you may ask, why have a life purpose? Why not just live life as we know it and ignore everything else? Why not chill out and relax until we die?
Here are 5 reasons why you need to have a life purpose.
1. Life purpose is the starting point of life
(Image)
I assume you’re reading this blog not because you’re looking for shopping tips or gossip. Chances are, you’re reading this blog because you see the importance of personal growth — your personal growth. Deep inside, you are passionate about living your best life, and you feel that the content here may help you do that.
A life purpose is the first step to live your most conscious life. While you can be busy with a million tasks every day, when you don’t have a clear purpose, you may be heading down the wrong path. That’s because your goals may have nothing to do with your purpose, which means that you can pursue your current goals for the next 10, 20 years, only to realize that this isn’t what you wanted after all. As Stephen Covey once said, “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
On the other hand, when you have a life purpose, that’s when conscious living begins. While it doesn’t mean that all your problems disappear, at least you know what you want to drive in this world. With a clear purpose, you can then set the right goals and plans, and take the right daily steps to create your most meaningful life.
In short:
No purpose → Vague goals or no goals → Vague plans or no plans → Random daily actions, Procrastination, or Constantly busy with others’ agendas ✗
Clear purpose → Clear goals → Clear plans → Clear daily actions ✓
You want to make sure that your ladder is leaning against the right wall first, then climb up the ladder. Make sure you get the big picture right first, then perfect your goals/ plans/ daily actions. This big picture is your life purpose.
2. Clarity on what’s important vs. unimportant
When you know your purpose, it helps you differentiate between the important and unimportant. Most people today are so caught up in so many things that ultimately do not make a difference in their lives. Earn more money! Get a house! Get a second house! Get a car! Get a second car! Get a fleet of cars! When you have a purpose, you can immediately see which goals are important and which aren’t vs. your long-term life path. You can cut through the BS and get right to the things that matter.
For example, after I found my purpose, I realized that almost all the goals that I had been working towards previously were pointless in the grand scheme of things. Rather, the most important thing for me is the ability to raise the world’s consciousness and help others grow. I share more in my purpose story in part 4 of the series.
The great thing is that investing a few months of my life to discover my purpose allowed me to work on it right away. Rather than waste some 20, 30 years of my life pursuing things that I thought I wanted and needed, I could start paving the path towards my highest life — even if I couldn’t act on it right away. Two and a half years after I found my purpose, I started my blog, PersonalExcellence.co. Today (2017), it’s been a decade since I started the site and PE grows bigger than ever. We have a million pageviews at the blog every month, with readers from over 200 countries/territories. The great thing is, I feel like I’m just getting started and I can’t wait to see what the next few years will bring!
I often talk about the 80/20 principle, where you focus on the 20% big rocks to get maximum change. However, you can’t know what your 20% big rocks are unless you are clear about what’s truly important to you. This starts with knowing your life purpose. When you discover your purpose, you can direct your focus to the really important things. Instead of wasting your time on the inconsequential stuff, you can focus on your 20% big rocks. Big rocks that matter not to others, not to the society, but to you.
3. Live a life of meaning
(Image)
When you pursue your purpose, your life becomes filled with direction and meaning. As opposed to wasting your time in a job you don’t love, now you can work towards a career that better fits your purpose. As opposed to being around toxic people who are incompatible with you, now you can find people who share the same values to build your highest life. As opposed to living a random existence, now you can create your life of the highest meaning. This in itself is magic.
This is what happened to one of my coaching clients, Anna. After she found her life purpose, she began to transit to her ideal life. Even though she started off in an unideal place (she was working in a job she didn’t like, IT security), we quickly identified her long-term plan to pursue her purpose. From there, she took a certification course to build the right skills, started her Facebook business page, built her blog, gained traffic, got her first clients, and found her tribe. Just recently, she submitted her resignation to pursue this full time.
In Anna’s words, “I feel like I was born a fish and for the first time in my life, I’ve jumped into the ocean to swim with my fish friends. :) ” This is a stark contrast from when I first met her at the beginning of our sessions, where she was very frustrated as she wasn’t doing what she loved.
Like I mentioned above, it doesn’t mean that life becomes peachy and filled with roses once you find your purpose. You still need to put in the hard work to make things happen. But now you have the right direction to set you forward. :)
4. Constant drive and passion
When you pursue your purpose, you gain an incredible burst of energy that keeps you going.
The ability to pursue my life purpose fills me up with so much energy and passion that I’m excited every day. :) Every morning, I get out of bed, excited at what I’m going to create. At night, I dread going to sleep because I would much rather be living my purpose than spend 6-8 hours asleep!
On the other hand, when you aren’t living your purpose, days become a drag. Weekdays come and you do what’s needed; weekends approach and you look forward to them. Then the week starts and you wake up to Mondays with resistance, waiting for weekends to come again.
This was what I experienced in my last months at my previous job, prior to pursuing my purpose. While I did everything with perfection, I didn’t go to work excited to get to my task list. In fact, my day job became increasingly painful as I didn’t feel that it was relevant to my life’s message.
If you look forward to weekends and vacations as opposed to what you do each day, it’s time to think about whether your work is something you really care about, or whether it is simply a means to an end. Pursue something of the highest meaning to you. To do this, you need to first start with, “What is my purpose?” (which we’ll get to later).
5. Achieve success (in your terms)
Many people look for success as an end in itself. However, I want to highlight that success is an effect of doing what you love (and having clear plans, goals, skills) vs. something you aim for as an end in itself.
What do I mean? If you’ve read my article 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent, you’ll know that “talent” isn’t inborn as much as it is something that’s cultivated through time. Whether it takes 10,000 or 20,000 hours of hard work, the point is that everyone starts from somewhere, and it’s through consistent work in honing our craft that we become “talented” in an area.
Now, clocking 10,000 or 20,000 hours in something is no easy feat. If you consider that we are productive for mostly 4-5 hours a day (not including admin work and distractions), that’s about 8.5 years to clock 10,000 hours. 8.5 years! That’s 8.5 years to develop talent, which may help you achieve success in your field. Who would have the energy to turn up for work every day and thrive in a field that he/she doesn’t care about for 8.5 years? Maybe a robot, but even robots need to recharge!
Rather than aim for success as an end in itself, wouldn’t it make more sense to first identify what you truly care about, and then direct your energy to make this a reality? This is where your purpose comes in. When you discover your true purpose,
- You will naturally want to devote your life to pursue it because it gives you the most fulfillment.
- You will naturally want to spend time doing it because you care.
- You will naturally get better at it, even if you are starting from ground zero, because the time you spend on it will give you the experience and skills to succeed.
Because of that, success is imminent. You will excel in whatever you set out to do.
Now that I have shared the 5 benefits of finding your life purpose, in the next part, I’ll talk about false purposes. It’s crucial to know this as we work on your purpose discovery later in the series. Read Part 3: Why Earning Money Is Not Your Real Purpose (And How To Know What Is)
This is part 2 of a 7-part series on how to find your life purpose.
- Part 1: How To Find Your Life Purpose: Introduction
- Part 2: 5 Reasons You Should Have a Life Purpose
- Part 3: Why Earning Money Is Not Your Real Purpose (And How To Know What Is)
- Part 4: Two Important Things that Led Me to Discover My Life Purpose
- Part 5: 6 Things To Consider Before Discovering Your Purpose
- Part 6: How To Discover Your Real Life Purpose in 30 Minutes
- Part 7: Living in Alignment with Your Purpose
Welcome to Personal Excellence. If you like my free articles, join my newsletter and get my latest updates and articles sent right to your inbox.
Hi Yan! Thanks a lot for your kind comment! :) I love the quotes as well – they definitely help set the right tone and stage for the message of the post!
Wow, this is one of the best and insightful article on personal development I’ve came across recently. Couldn’t have written such an insightful article myself.
Indeed, without purpose, we are losing the right direction and that will eventually bring us nowhere, in life or in business. Certainly, I wouldn’t want to live out on other people’s purpose.
Oh, those quotes are superbly awesome. Thanks for sharing with us.
To our success
Yan
Having a defined purpose in my life makes a difference in every area in which I consciously pursue it. Here’s an example:
A few days ago after work I was fueling my car up at a gas station I normally avoid because it tends to have “bums” around it. It was the most convenient place to fill my tank though, so I stopped there.
Sure enough, not a minute after I pulled up, a homeless man approaches and starts talking to me. Ordinarily in these situations I’d avoid or ignore this man, or try to weasel my way out of talking to him somehow. Prior to the past two years of my life, I’d think nothing of just plain lying to him to get rid of him. He’d be a pebble in my shoe.
For me, my purpose is to bring these 4 words into the world in my every action; love acceptance, freedom, and enlightenment. Those words are what I choose as “my way of being.” When my actions are not aligned with that way of being, I know that I am not living my purpose and that I am not being the person I wish to be. So when this man started talking to me, my auto-pilot kicked in and I was repulsed and started to think of how I would get out of talking to him. Then I became conscious of my reaction and purposefully asked myself “am I being love, acceptance, freedom, and enlightenment?” The answer was no, and so in that instant I made another conscious action; I chose to be love, acceptance, freedom, and enlightenment and acted in accordance with being those things.
I looked this man in the eye and said “Hi!” as I would with an old friend or loved one. I allowed myself to be present to my automatic feelings and reactions to my interactions with this man, and chose not to act upon those things and instead act according to those 4 words. We ended up talking for about 5 minutes, all the while with me speaking to him as if he were an old friend instead of a bum, stranger, or lesser being.
His name was Bill. He’d been in prison and was released recently. He started writing poems in prison and kept doing it after being released, instead of going back to his life of drugs and petty crime. He said his poetry wasn’t very good but that he was still working on it. He wanted to write things that made people happy and brightened their day. He wanted to set an example to young people who were tending toward the darker side of life that they can choose not to make the mistakes he’d made. Bill was a very nice man, really polite, and very uneducated. He was putting his best foot forward, maybe as a ruse to get money from the people he approached, or maybe because he was sincere. It isn’t my place to judge his motives. He seemed pretty genuine to me but had obviously been hurt a lot and had been bitten in the past. It seemed that he felt the need to appear a certain way to the people he approached as a kind of survival mechanism. In those moments, he didn’t seem comfortable or happy, but in the moments when he seemed genuine, his face lit up and you could see inside his eyes there was a human being inside desperate to get out and show itself to the world. I think we all feel this way at times.
By stopping and consciously choosing to live my purpose, I saw humanity in a man I’d ignore without that purpose. I saw beauty that the vast majority ignore every day.
I let Bill share a couple of his poems with me and he was right, they weren’t very good poems. But they were beautiful because they were the truest expressions of who he was that he could create at that time in his life. I bought the poems he shared with me for $1 each, and thanked him for sharing them with me and wished him luck in the future, happy holidays, and told him not to give up with his poetry if it’s what helped him cope with his circumstances. I told him to keep making people’s day better and trying to make them feel happy.
He smiled as he walked away. If his purpose was to make others happy, he had done so by living his purpose and if my purpose is to bring love, acceptance, freedom and enlightenment into the world, I had done so by returning the favor and making his day.
That is what purpose gives to your life and the lives of all whom you touch. If Bill’s poor poetry makes me feel happy, that will carry on to my friends and family when I return home from work, and so on and so forth. It’s a great thing!
If you do not choose the purpose of you own life then somebody else will choose it for you.
” If life really has no meaning for you, isn’t it logically better to end it than to wait for your time to end?” – did you really said that in a public article!? Wow…there are people that are in bad moments in their life questioning the meaning of life and they can be very easy to convince taking wrong steps and what you said in that paragraph it can be misread. Think about it…not trying to offend. I do think you have some good points in your writings. Thanks.
Awesome Article Celetine! You couldn’t have said it better! Everything resonates and to shining our lights and illuminating the world! Keep up the great work!
Thank you for sharing Keith! That is an endearing story, and I’m really glad I got the opportunity to read it tonight, it makes me feel very warm and humbled to know that wonderful people like you are adding to people’s day. Thanks for sharing
I love the opening picture you have here – how beautiful!
I really can’t wait to read the rest of the revisited series (hopefully this time, I’m not responding too quickly haha!)! I’ve been trying, in general, to focus on that “20% of tasks” as best I can without a solid life purpose, but I find myself deeming a lot of things “important.” I recognize that everything important to me isn’t necessarily that 20% I should focus on, but it’s really hard to tell what truly belongs! And sometimes I feel such resistance to do what I think may actually be within that top percent, that I can’t help but think I may be wrong and forcing something on myself that I don’t actually want. Eep!
Thanks for writing this article again, I can’t wait to see the series continue! =D
PS: Very unrelated, but you mentioned not wanting to sleep in order to continue pursuing your life purpose, and it reminded me of another article of yours. In one of your posts about your water-fast I believe, you said one of the benefits you obtained was that you needed much less sleep…only a few hours, if I recall correctly. I was just curious if this was still the case, especially since you maintain a vegan lifestyle? I would have asked on the article where you said it, but the comments were closed due to the age of the article. =)
Hi Calae! I’m more on a vegetarian than vegan diet atm — it’s difficult to sustain on a vegan diet in Singapore, only because of food options societally than anything. Most foods here have dairy, even if in trace amounts. So I try not to have milk/egg/etc. if I can, but my diet at the moment is really vegetarian not vegan.
I haven’t been clocking my sleeping hours but if I were to put a number to it, it’s anywhere from 6-8 hours. I definitely sleep less when I have time-bound stuff to get to (like 2-4 hours or even no sleep if I have a workshop or course etc.) and not feel tired because I’m running on excitement/adrenaline, but this is not a norm so 6-8 will be the better reference. I believe if I move to a raw food diet next time, it’ll probably reduce. But not in the near term though.
I believe defining your life purpose will definitely help in identifying your 20% big rocks. I’ll be adding additional pointers in the later parts to assist in finding one’s purpose, especially with regards to your point about not being able to hit full emotional resonance.
Touching story Keith. Living without judgement is a rare and beautiful trait and clearly alive within you.
Thanks Celes for your inspiring article! a quote comes to my mind ‘I think, therefore I am.’
Outcomes are preceded by actions/inactions and actions are preceded by thoughts. It is when we start to control and direct our thoughts that we start to have any chance of shaping our destinies to the outcomes we desired
In the same fashion, the passion in our hearts and our values precede our thoughts. We all have a choice what values system to adopt, the ability to choose is more than what many will think they can, and that people are all products of the current society.
Hi..this is very timely Ms.Celes, i am in a situation right now where i am questioning again what this life means. And i am not young. I am 33.and have a five year old kid. I am ashame to admit it to others,and to my wife,but i have lost a sense of purpose.or meaning to life. And the funny thing is,it is on and off, i sometimes like the life i am living. But then all of a sudden, i question again myself why am i here.
I have anger issues, i am irritable, and its bad when im angry, i get violent..emotionally and physically, i know it is bad. And i dont want to scar my kid for life,that is why i am here. Seeking for answers. Why am i like that. Why do i feel my sense of meaning in life is gone.or slowly disappearing.
I am work from home since November Last year. I decided to be like that because the work that i love before,feels not that fun anymore. And i travel a total of 3 to 4 hour to work,and get home. I use to love to sculpt, digitally and in clay,but it seems like it has died down. I question myself,why do i sculpt? For what? Well one is it is still my job.but the fun and love for it,i dont know where it went.. I work and take care of our son, and its hard to focus to concentrate. I also look after at our house construction. I sometimes feel like,i just want to stop it all,and turn to the other direction.
I feel deep inside that i want to continue doing art. Sculpting. I want to learn more. But my time this days. Are not for me anymore. Its for my son, i need to do work.even it is hard for me to focus. So no time for me to do it like i use to do,or am i just lazy, i dont know. i am lost, angry, frustrated. And i sometimes pour it out to my beloved son, i love him and my wife. i want to heal myself. I want to be like when i was younger. Worry free. Happy. I want to be that again for my family. sorry for the long comment.
Thanks for the message Celes…what you said in this article is so true. In my job, im always looking forward to weekends when it’s still monday and sometimes i felt bored and sometimes heavy, leading me to procrastinate everytime i wake up because i can’t see what my purpose is in my job…This article is really a big help…Thanks again…
Hi Celes!
And what if your life purposes were always completely different at different stages of your life?
Say, when i was at school i was dreaming to become a diplomat and was very intetested in politics, in uni my views and vallue changed completely and i was very interested in spiritual research, then photography, then family life, now writing and phylosophy..
And each time my heart was shaking and soul singing.. But after some time i felt like im done with this purpose im not interested anymore..
May be they all were not global enough… Or why is it happening?
Hi Dana, this is similar to a question raised by reader Andreas in part 1. I’ll be talking about this at a later part of the series. Stay tuned! :)
Excited to read the next parts
Thank you for your awesome articles as usual. They inspire me so much.
I somehow don’t know how to explain that I feel my life purpose is simply ‘being in control’ and ‘art/creating’. This can translate to building a microbusiness, to building a blog, baking my cakes or simply writing and drawing graphic novels.
And to be 100% honest with myself, yes , it does root from negative past emotions. I’m a person who’s been uderestimated her ENTIRE-LIFE.
At school, at College, even during job interviews and as much as I hate to admit it, the day came that I just said F* you to everyone in my past who treated me like I don’t know anything and changed my definition of self-worth from ‘what others thought of me to what ‘I thought of me’ and… it’s so weird. I feel confident and happy as I am. I really do. Much more than before at least.
But at the same time I am conscious that even if my actions make me happy I still take pleasure in proving people wrong not by words but by actions. So in a way my actions are still based on others approvals. (In the sense that I have so much negative emotions built up over the years to how I feel underestimated that the only way I feel I can deal with it is mopping around all day or do something on my own and proove people wrong.)
Not sure if that makes sense… I know it’s not the most positive way… but I still find pleasure in it. Silent revenge maybe. I don’t know. :/
Do you know how much purpose I realized I had when I became a mother? It’s like all else I thought I wanted or had to push for came to a screeching and immediate halt as I gazed at a face who would always and forever be the moon and stars in my sky. Purpose can be something so simple, just by telling yourself that you’re going to be the person whose legacy is that you never harmed a single person your life touched (by your best efforts) simply by smiling at strangers as they pass, or by giving a genuine compliment to another stranger, by paying it forward and surprising someone out of a dull routine, there’s so many purposes to aim for and some take nothing at all to adopt.
You are so right Celes. I thought my purpose was in a high end advertising firm, which is just a bigger and worse version of high paid sales people, and with far more politics. I didn’t even like who I was at the end of the day, and my life was really just a sham, fake friends, fake faces, it was all just a bunch of grown people wearing masks, and pretending to be something someone else wanted to see. When nothing is real anymore, what is? It took a ton of soul searching before I found what my purpose was, a calling to help others who may have gone through some of the hardest things I’ve been put through, and by speaking to them about it, found a place that I could be myself, find acceptance, and help others do the same. I have to admit that like many other sites I have stalked in the shadows, I’ve been content to watch yours grow, watch you get married (congratulations by the way!!! I’m sorry I didn’t have the nerve to post sooner) and have only just now had the courage to thank the people who encouraged me without ever having spoken directly to me, to follow my heart. It felt personal enough to me, and I can’t express enough sincere gratitude.
Hi James, it’s so great to see you “coming out of the shadows” to post this comment. I’m so glad that you’ve found your purpose, and may I say that that’s a beautiful calling! It does seem that there are particular industries that seem to promote false images and false facades, and what you shared reminds me of the financial/banking industry too actually. I’m happy for you – it sounds like you’ve gone through a rebirth and you’re now finally creating and living the conscious life of your creation!
Hi Celes, thanks for an awesome post!
I see purpose as what God created you for, your God-given assignment. It is the answer to the question, “What on earth am I doing here?” I believe that God created us and only in Him can we find our purpose. In other words you can never determine your purpose. Instead, you discover it.
Want to discover your purpose? Well, here are some clues.
*What are you most passionate about?
*How have past lessons and experiences (including past failures) prepared you to pursue your passion?
*What do you want to accomplish and why?
*Is it bigger than you? It must be so big that you need faith and a team of people to help you accomplish it.
Thanks again for provoking our thoughts, and I can’t wait for apart 3!
Commenting for this post is closed.