New Ideas for Discovering Your Life's Purpose

New Ideas for Discovering Your Life’s Purpose

Life purpose is not only about life’s meaning in some abstract, cosmic sense.

It’s also about the meaning of *your* life. And, it’s not about reaching your preferred destination because life purpose is about feeling your purpose in each step of your journey.

If you’re looking to transition into a new path of your life, knowing your purpose in life can help you. Understanding and knowing your life purpose, and incorporating that purpose in all the things that you do, is key to having a meaningful compass and direction in your life.

Whether you feel lost or you want to make changes in your life, you have to keep in mind that life purpose is not really about what you do, it revolves around who you are when doing it.

Life purpose is not about your activities. It’s not about the doing. It’s about the being. It’s the “you” that appears in everything that you accomplish or do in life.

New Ideas for Discovering Your Life's Purpose
Photo by Bryan Minear on Unsplash

It’s possible to find your life’s purpose and earn a living from it. Even if you don’t want to build a business around your purpose, simply living your life’s purpose allows your life to be filled with more excitement and happiness.

If you’re still trying to discover your purpose, try these ideas:

1. Write down “my life’s purpose” and brain dump.

This method is very effective. Take out a notebook and a pen. Write “my life’s purpose” at the top of the page and start writing whatever pops into your mind.

Don’t filter your thoughts. Just do a brain dump and get it all down on the page. 

* If you think, “This is a dumb idea,” write it down. Did you think about how mad you are that the Knicks blew it last night? Write that down, too.

* There will be a lot of mental garbage until you get to the good stuff. Just keep writing until you’re done.

* How will you know you’ve found it? You’ll cry. When a simple idea can make you cry, you’ve stumbled on something meaningful

2. How would you spend the last year of your life?

You probably wouldn’t watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island or sit around and pout. You’d live!

* What would you do? It would be a mix of fun and meaningful activities. What are the meaningful activities that you’d do during your last year alive?

3. What did you dream about doing as a child?

Did you want to be a doctor? An animal trainer? Have you ever heard a child state that she wanted to sit in a cubicle all day and underwrite insurance? Probably not. 

Get in touch with your inner child and think about the things that excited you as a youngster. You might be able to put that information to good use.

4. Volunteer to discover your purpose.

But don’t just go out and randomly volunteer down the street. Look at all the volunteer opportunities in your area and choose the one that appeals to you the most.

Contributing to others gives you a mental break from your own problems. In the process of helping others, your life’s purpose might reveal itself to you.

5. If you were given the mission of saving the world, how would you do it?

What world problem is most meaningful to you? How could you contribute to solving it? Start small, but get started. You might find a lot of meaning in doing something that benefits everyone else.

6. Ask yourself about your purpose.

Find a nice, quiet spot, preferably outdoors. Ask yourself, “What is my life’s purpose?” Listen to the answer you receive. Continue asking until you get an answer that resonates with you.

7. What are you good at doing?

What are your natural talents? Ask others for their opinion. At the end of the day, you must make your own choices. But ask your friends and family what they think. You may get some insight from hearing how others view you.

8. What are you willing to do without getting paid?

How do you spend your free time? Do you love to restore cars or play the piano? Imagine if you could earn a living from something you’d do for free!

9. If you were locked out of your house on a Saturday from 8 AM to 8 PM, how would you spend your day?

You might be stuck in a routine of hanging around the house all day. What would you do if that weren’t an option? What activities would appeal to you? Maybe you could start doing some of them now.

Make today the day you determine the direction of the rest of your life. It’s totally possible to live your life with passion and excited expectation.

Take the time to do the work required to discover your purpose. You’ll be glad you did.

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Comments 18

  1. I guess I am really lucky – I worked my a** off , saved and invested smartly and retired at 46. I really don’t need a “purpose” other than to make sure I am always doing something for someone else, every day!

  2. Great Ideas, I need to start a list and write down everything so I can really see my purpose. You think one thing and then realize that you really should be doing something else. Thank you so much for your blog, I love it!

  3. Thank you for sharing. I help out at our local food pantry. I enjoy it and I think that is my purpose in life is to help out at the pantry.

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