Discovering Your Purpose in Life
3 simple steps to help you clarify your purpose

Discovering your purpose in life can be one of the hardest questions that we as humans try to answer and wrongly, we think it comes with a job title.

It doesn’t. It is really important to understand that.

For example, take someone who is a nurse.  Their purpose is not about “being a nurse” because that is the job title and the vehicle, they use to undertake their purpose.

Their purpose is to care for others

In this article I want to go through a step-by-step process, exploring your feelings and options, and by the end, you will have a simple 3 step process you can immediately put to use in your life, to help give it a meaningful direction!

Here are the steps to the process of discovering your purpose in life:

1. Understanding the principle of choice
2. Creating your “underlying principle”
3. Aligning your life with your underlying principle

Understanding The Principle of Choice

Norman Vincent Peale has a very simple point of view with this quote

The greatest power we have is the power of choice

It is a fact, that if you have been grappling with unhappiness, you can choose to be happy instead. And, by putting in some effort, move the needle away from feeling sad or bad across to a better state of mind. If you tend to be fearful, you can overcome that misery by choosing to have courage.

The quality of anyone’s life is simply determined by the choices that are made

And discovering your purpose in life is dependent on your choices.

It is all about your subconscious mind. Something we don’t pay a lot of attention to because, well, it is subconscious, right?

Choosing is the most important activity of your mind, because by making a choice, you are proclaiming your desires to your subconscious mind.

Once the subconscious mind gets to know your desires, it is going to do anything to manifest them in your life.

The choices you make in your life become your goal. And, if you are sincere in pursuing them, there is no reason why you should not accomplish them.

Indecision, on the other hand, not only creates frustration and anxiety, but can also confuse the subconscious mind about what you want.

To try to go about discovering your purpose in life when confused will get you nowhere and really frustrate you.

It is important that the choices you make are made by you, in accordance with your true desires, purposes and aptitude.

A lot of us let others make choices for us or make our choices according to what we think is 'correct’, even if that means that we go against our wishes. What is right for someone else may not be right for you, and the way to know this is listening to what your heart says.

You have to feel what is right, you cannot use logic for this one

So, to begin with, make a list of things which interest you; now and in the past, things which you have always enjoyed but no longer do because life gets in the way, or you were discouraged from doing them.

A list of things which make you feel better, things which inspire you to be positive and look ahead, no matter what obstacles you face, things that make you happy and smile more and give you that feeling of a light heart. Things that bring you joy, to nearly quote a Japanese professional declutter specialist.

A tidy space and mind can go a long way to helping you begin.

• Do you like doing something creative, or something artistic?
• Do you enjoy helping others?
• Do you get pleasure out of making a difference in other people’s life?
• Do you love to build?
• Do you love to problem solve?
• Do you love to teach people?
• Do you love research?
• Do you love to cook?
• Do you love to write?
• Do you love to look after animals?
• Do you love to care for others?
• Do people come to you for advice and guidance?

And so on, ask yourself what you love to do on evenings and weekends, talk about often with anyone who will listen and would choose to do for free.

Whatever it is that interests you, write it down

Creating Your Underlying Principle

The next step is to examine the list you just made and find out if there is any recurring theme involved and answer this question for each thing:

●      What is it that you love in this thing and why?

It is not the thing you are interested in that is important, it is what you get from the thing you need to know.

And I guarantee there will be something and quite possibly you don’t really notice it because it is such a natural gift but it is the “thing” that runs through you and for your whole life.

It could be a theme or service, or learning, teaching, or building, offering comfort or advice, noticing small details, organising, collating and so on.

What is it people come to you for, seek you out for?  What is the thing that made you shine in school or makes you different from your friends?

Whatever your thing is, dig deep to identify the central theme of the things you love to do, and try to put it in a short and precise statement.

This will be your ‘Mission in Life Statement’. It may even be a quote by a famous person, or a philosophy that has influenced you. Of course, as you grow up or grow older, this statement could evolve, but its soul and essence will remain the same throughout your entire life.

Remember our nurse?

She spends her evenings and weekends helping people friends and family out who might be ill, she volunteers at the local hospice or does hospital visits, and she likes to mix with like-minded people and encourage them into her circle of friends.

Caring runs through her and seeps out of every pore. It is who she is.

Even if she currently has an office job, she will be the volunteer first aider or the person you go to if you are feeling a bit down, in pain or just need some physical or emotional help.

She is the one with empathy in the office.

Can you see the pattern? What runs through the middle of you?

What is going on within you in your life that is shouting out to you to be heard?

For me it is advice & guidance. I can’t help myself; I approach just about everything from this perspective.

Now, write down YOUR Mission in Life Statement but please, don’t put yourself under pressure to have the answer in an hour, it may take days, weeks, or months to get there.

I think all these “gurus” forget to mention that bit.

You can’t just do a brief exercise and expect for a long-term answer in 5 minutes.

But you might be lucky, your answer might be sitting right there waiting to jump out straightway because it was waiting for the right opportunity to open the door and bring it to your conscious thinking.

Some examples of what others may have as their statement:

• I love to educate employees about business ideas and self-employment and teach them how you can have more happiness and freedom in their working life (this is me)
• I love to teach children to cook because I want them to have a life skill they can use forever

Other examples

• I love to make pretty wedding jewellery because I want brides to feel special with something I made as a unique item for them.
• I love to help people feel better when life throws up a difficult situation for them.
• I love to help people declutter their lives so they can have a more peaceful existence.

And so on and so on.

Dig deep I promise the answers are in there, for everyone, especially if you find discovering your life purpose is an uphill battle.

Aligning Your LIFE With Your Underlying Principle

The final step in this journey is to map your path to your ultimate purpose and to begin implementing changes that help to align your daily life with your underlying purpose.

By making these little changes in your lifestyle, you will start to be able to begin living this principle out each and every day. As mentioned, It might take a few days, or weeks even but by becoming aware and intentional of this underlying principle of your life, you will certainly start to feel the difference in your enthusiasm for life.

Remember before I said you must feel this part, you cannot use logic. This feeling is how you know you are on the right track.

If you discover that you enjoy helping those in need, start to look for opportunities to volunteer in your community. If you love to write, then pick your subject and begin.

If you feel you want to start cooking for children, get going on some recipes and find some willing parents and children to try out your idea in principle.

Nothing is set in stone; it is all about taking the first few steps and you can change your mind at any time.

The key is to begin to explore options and alter your path as you go. There may be steps forward or backwards but there must always be movement.

As you progress on this journey you might even want to change your job or start a new full or part time business that is more in line with your mission.

By following along with the steps outlined above, you will be well on your way to discovering your purpose in life and living in line with it.

Buy a new notebook, get a shoe box to fill or download an app to start taking note of everything you see, hear, and feel on your unique journey to discovering your purpose in life.

I wish you all the very best with this trip because it is such a great one to take.

A Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote about Discovering Your Purpose in Life

It is essentially about you being here to add value to the world, you are here to offer something to others that is unique to you and needed by a particular group of individuals.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well

How are you going to make a difference in people’s lives?