Why Finding Your Purpose Is So Important and How to Find It When Your Not Sure

Finding Your Purpose

Everyone has a purpose in life. However, most people assume they do not have a specific purpose because they have not taken the time to sit down and think deeply about their lives. Some people are born with their purpose, such as certain writers.

Those writers begin to compose works, even simple ones, at a very early age and then hone their craft for many years until their first publication. This is different than the person who comes to the writing field when they are mature adults.

When a person says, “there is no meaning in my life, and I don’t know if life is even worth living,” they have a double problem. They are suffering from a form of depression and have not identified their role in the world.

Once they decide to find their purpose, often the depression will lift, and they begin working towards a much more fulfilling life. They may find that creativity is their purpose, or spending a significant amount of time helping others, gives them the joy and purpose to get up and take action every morning. This article will teach you why purpose is essential and how to find it for a longer, happier fulfilled life.

Why Finding Your Purpose Is So Important  

Finding your purpose in life is not a singular item such as, “I’m here on earth to be an amazing novelist.” If that were true, writers would not form relationships or doing any else besides writing. The purpose for your overall life impacts your health, relationships, and overall potential to excel.

It may be hard to believe, but very few people ever finish a book that they purchase. Many give up before the end of the first chapter. It is also true that very few people understand the purpose of their life and even what career they should be in.

This was evident back in 1970 when Richard Nelson Bolles wrote: “What Color Is My Parachute?” With that eye-catching title, the book was written to help people decide what their career should be, as many finished high school and ended up in university studying programs that weren’t in their best interest.

When you do not understand your purpose in life, it can lead to unhappiness, poor health, and terrible relationships. We can break down purpose into different areas and see what we should be doing.

– Knowing your purpose allows you to be not only part of your community but to contribute in many different ways. We all have some unique talent or gift, and when we use it to our full potential, we not only help ourselves but others.

– Knowing your purpose in life gives it meaning and allows you to expand your life. Following one of your parents in their chosen field because “that is what my parent did” is usually a recipe for disaster. One of your parents may have been an outstanding accountant, but that is not likely your true role in life.

When you are not fully aware of your life’s purpose, your confidence levels will not be as high as possible. Thriving at your work means you head off in the morning and cannot wait to get started. You are enthusiastic and brimming with confidence.

The opposite is constantly hitting the snooze button and saying, “another five minutes. I hate my commute and the job.”

– Without knowing your purpose, it is impossible to unlock your full potential. When you look at the most significant discoveries globally, the people who thrived were purpose-driven. Think of Tesla or Edison. Both men had a purpose in life, and nothing distracted them from reaching their true potential.

– Without purpose, there is no passion in life. With all the advances we have made in society, a person who has a passion even for something obscure will find a way to make a living while doing it.

Being passionate about your work means there is no effort to get out of bed and start the day early. There will an eagerness to not only get started but have a productive day every time you put on the work hat.

This makes the playtime you have in your life much more enjoyable because you are not flashing back to what you didn’t do in the workday or worrying about the need to arise and work tomorrow.

– The word abundance has significant meaning when you ask people about it. Many will say that they want to “attract abundance into their lives,” as they have read books or articles on the subject.

Asking the universe for abundance becomes much easier when you know your purpose. You must put in the work and align yourself with the correct values. Combine that with passion, and it signals to the universe that you are ready for abundance.

For a few years, many people were confused about how abundance works, and they had the idea that it was achieved just by thought. That was incorrect; there must be positive action taken, and knowing your purpose and living it, is a big part of the action plan.

9 Ways to Find Your Purpose in Life

Finding your purpose in life requires a plan and then taking action, adjusting, and retaking action. Here are nine ideas that you can try, starting today and work towards finding your purpose in life.

1. Stop reading fluff pieces. Many people who read, do it to pass the time or get a quick boost of energy from an action story. Many non-fiction books can help you discover your purpose in life. Reading biographies of people who took action and changed the world can help you find your passion and purpose.
2. Get off the couch. Traveling to other countries will open your eyes to new ways of living. If international travel is out of the question, don’t stop there. Get in as many local trips as you can. Visit interesting natural sites or go to larger cities and take in the arts and culture.
3. Meditation is highly recommended. Forget the idea that you think of nothing as that is difficult to do. Just avoid thinking about problems and let your mind go to a positive area if it wants to. When you have a thought, don’t put emotion into it, just see it and acknowledge it. Try meditating for 15 minutes in the same space and at the same time. Think of the space as your time machine, where you can transport yourself to the future and visit yourself as you live with purpose.
4. Don’t forget to write a journal. When you write down your deepest thoughts in a journal, you will find nuggets of gold. Your brain stores all your memories, and journaling is excellent for releasing thoughts that have become buried over time. In reviewing your journal entries, you come up with ideas for finding passion and purpose in your life.
5. Take a pause. Yes, life is hectic, and you need not only time with family but time alone. In your alone time, sit quietly and focus on your breathing. Start asking yourself questions about what you want in your life. When you do this, your brain starts working in the background and while you sleep, looking for the answers you seek.
6. What are your strengths? Write down the areas you are strong in and look to improve them. By knowing your strengths, you can discover and then focus on what you need to achieve your life purpose.
7. Understanding your needs in life will help you to design your life purpose. Write out your needs to gain clarity on who you are and where you stand in the world. For example, some people need a more human connection than others. They need a big social circle, fantastic relationships with family, friends, and even co-workers. On the other hand, some people thrive with much smaller circles of family and friendship. Their joy comes from giving and helping others who are struggling. After writing out your needs, perhaps your purpose may be starting a group that actively seeks single mothers with children who are struggling. Your purpose is fulfilled when you see success in finding those people proper housing, food, and clothing.
8. As we get older, we change in what we need to feel fulfilled. We can be more flexible in what we do, and it becomes easier to let go of ideas and beliefs that no longer serve us. Many will embrace a minimalist lifestyle after discovering they have an abundance of things that serve no purpose. Those people may give away many of their possessions and look to create a lifestyle that helps not only themselves but the community and the planet in general.
9. You probably already have what you need in your life. Focus on that and see that you are already living in abundance compared to millions of others in the world. Instead of wanting more and more, those who focus on what they already have will find their lives are more positive and what they need comes into their lives naturally.

8 Common Mistakes People Make When Trying Figuring Out Their Life’s Purpose

Knowledge is key to avoiding mistakes, and when you do have a blunder, learn from it and move on. There are things you should be aware of and avoid while finding your life’s purpose. Here are 8 common mistakes people make.

1. Never assume that learning and practicing your life purpose is all about you. Remember that you are surrounded by family and friends impacted by what you do in your life. Yes, you should live your own life as long as you are not harming anyone else. When you work on and discover your purpose, it becomes a blessing when it positively impacts the lives of those close to you and in the outer circle.
2. Modeling others who have had success in any endeavor will give you a much greater chance of success. Remember, however, that you want to model the person but not become a copy of them. As such, you are an individual and should take the good points you learn and work them in your particular life situation.
3. Avoid making your job the only thing that you work on in terms of your life purpose. Many people focus on their careers as doctors, teachers, or even artists and ignore the other aspects of life. You need a balance of purpose in all areas. For example, if you focus 100% on finding the true purpose of your career, you may suffer burnout. Look at your overall purpose of career, hobbies, and giving back to the community by volunteering in an area you are passionate about.
4. Keep an open mind and try new things and meet new people. Don’t close yourself off to the possibility of trying something new with someone you just met. You can expand your life purpose by letting things flow and not blocking them off. For example, if your self-esteem is not great, you need to work on that to find your true life purpose. Without great self-esteem, you will not venture out with an open mind and be ready to receive the abundance the universe has to provide.
5. You may have heard the term, “patience is a virtue, or good things come to he who waits.” Yes, patience is a good thing, but some people will take this to extremes. The act of patience becomes an act of being stuck and not moving forward. You can balance it out by taking action, then a pause to reflect, and then act again. Looking for your purpose should not take months and months of thinking and doing little else.
6. Not everyone likes to write, and many people find it hard to put together a great email or a blog post. That should not stop you from journaling and discovering your purpose in life. If you struggle to write in a journal, take baby steps and do one sentence per day. When doing a sentence a day becomes easy, then double it. In a short time, you will find yourself writing journal entries that inspire you.
7. Confidence is a wonderful thing. However, it is a mistake to be over-confident and tell yourself that this is going to easy. Finding your life purpose takes reflection and sometimes altering your belief system to align it with your passion and purpose. Getting overconfident is the gateway to making mistakes and misidentifying what your life purpose is.
8. As with self-confidence, positive thinking is a genuinely wonderful attribute. However, you need to guard against just using positive thinking to come up with your life purpose. Stop and imagine sitting in the lotus position and just thinking positively about purpose. It is not likely going to come to you. You need to combine positivity and action to get the results.

7 Powerful Exercises to Help You Discover Your Purpose

 The idea of doing exercises to help you discover your purpose in life should get you excited. The exercises are simple yet will provide you with clarity and focus. While “thinking” about your purpose in life, the best follow-up is to get it down on paper. Here are 7 exercises you can start with today.

1. Just like a sports game, there is only so much time on the clock. We are the only animals on the planet that know our time here will run out. Even with this knowledge, many of us waste our precious resource of time. To complete this exercise, you need to think about what you would do if you only had 6 to 12 months left to live. What would you do? Would you just lay in bed and wait, or would you do something that had great meaning and purpose? You can even take it a step further if you are willing to have a bit of emotional pain while writing. Write out your obituary. What would it say about you? Many people find this very helpful because it forces them to look very hard at what they aren’t doing rather than what they are. Take the time to explore who you are and what you mean to this planet.
2. After you complete the first exercise, have a bit of fun and get yourself laughing at the same time. Write out what you would be doing for a living, even if you were not paid for it. This is a great way to discover your purpose. You may write down a career that at this moment isn’t possible for you due to other commitments. However, you can drill it down and find something related, that if you made that your new career, you would be living much closer to your real purpose in life. For example, a person may be in the trades, providing them with a good life and paycheck. Yet by doing this exercise, they realize that they are highly creative and want to build items that bring joy to others. By doing this exercise, they can find their purpose and live a more joyful life.
3. It’s time to make a simple list. Write down everything you do that just comes naturally to you. These items require no thought on your part, while others around you might find the same thing more difficult. Once you get a list down, check it over to find one that may be your true purpose in life because it comes to you so easily.
4. Alright, another list. Who do you trust, and who can you talk to that will listen, think, and give you a straight answer? Write those names down right now. It might be a family member or the older person who lives next door and always seems to have some pearls of wisdom. They do have to know your history because you are going to quiz them. It is time to ask someone else about what your best qualities are. Find out from that person what seems to light a fire under you? Sometimes, we cannot see our hands in front of our faces due to the fog. When you have a lot going on, you may not be clear about what you are passionate about or really should be doing. You might find out that the person you trust has an answer and has held onto it because they didn’t want to intrude and tell you what they think your real purpose in life is.
5. Now you will hop into a time machine and go back to when you were a child. Write out the things you did the made you the happiest. It may be something like painting, swimming in the ocean, looking at fish or camping for two weeks with your parents, and enjoying the wildlife. As we move through school, things change for us, and we head in a different direction. For those of us who have children, we tend to get our children interested in the things we loved as a child in hopes that they will become what we could not. For example, the hockey parents who are up at 5 am, likely played hockey and dreamed of being a professional. Consider the parent who is constantly buying books and models on dinosaurs for their children. They may have taken a wrong turn, and instead became a paleontologist, ended up as an accountant. Your childhood can give you clues as to your true purpose.
6. Another time machine idea is thinking back to what you used to do, that was so exciting, you lost track of time. Did you sit down with a novel and forget to eat, or one of your parents had to tell you to go to sleep? That is a hint that your true purpose may be in words, either as a writer, a teacher, or librarian, for starters. What were you so passionate about that people had to shake your shoulder to get your attention? Write those ideas down.
7. Speaking of being a teacher, here is a great exercise. Think about what you would teach others if you had the opportunity and aren’t doing it now. Would you teach adults how to do more than basic computer work, or would you be teaching music to children? What are you passionate about that would give you the joy to teach others? 

Ikigai: The Japanese Way of Finding Your Purpose 

 There are different countries globally where the population tends to live well beyond the 80-year mark. Many of these people live to be over the age of 100. Much of the focus on this subject is given to the Island of Japan and the surrounding area.

The food that the Japanese harvest from the sea, include fish, shellfish, and different forms of kelp, which all contribute to a longer life. However, research has shown that many of those who live to age 100 have followed the idea of Ikigai.

Approximately 1,200 years ago in the Heian period, people began to look at doing valuable work that gave their life its true purpose. This may have been specialized pottery, sword making, or even a specific type of fishing. The modern-day has many Japanese people doing very similar work. It may be a career for them or, in the case of the elderly, a purpose that helps them live a longer, more joyful life.

Many research studies have been done on the people of the Okinawa islands, close to Japan. The islands are comprised of about 150 small islands in total, with a population that has incredible longevity. The islanders are known for things such as their form of karate, their craftwork, and their diet. Researchers concluded that diet alone was not responsible for longevity and that Ikigai plays a role.

The human body produces many different types of hormones, and some are called “happy hormones.” These hormones get released into the body as a person does something that gives them great pleasure and a sense of purpose. It is thought that the Japanese people who follow the idea of Ikigai benefit more than others who use just diet and exercise to maintain the body. There is less stress and disease, as the happy hormones assist with this daily when a person works or plays with purpose.

The Japanese population in the workforce uses the idea of Ikigai to fulfill a meaningful life full of purpose, and they break it down into these elements, with Ikigai being at the center. Think of it as a mind map for purpose with branches such as:

– Profession

– Vocation

– How will you earn money?

– What do you excel at?

– What do you love to do?

– What are you great at doing?

– How can you use your gift to help the world?

– What is your mission in life?

As you consider the questions above, experts on the concept of Ikigai suggest that you expand on the questions to find your life’s purpose. Take each question and write out your answer. After doing this for each point, you will identify what you should be doing in life

For example, using the question about what you love to do, you could use writing.

Start by writing out why you love to write. What is it about crafting fiction stories that makes you feel so good? If fiction is not what you like, why is non-fiction so pleasing to you? Go through each question and be sure to write out how your gift of writing would help the world. Would your fiction bring happiness or inspire others in some form? Would your non-fiction help people to change physically or mentally for the better?

Finding your Ikigai takes time and thought. Remember that it may not be permanent as your situation changes or as you age. You may end up shifting it slightly. There are a number of questions to ask yourself, and it is always a good idea to ask trusted friends and family for input.

As an example, you may have considered writing, but you are not positive that it is your true calling. You ask a friend for their opinion, and they tell you, “I’ve seen you writing, and your face lights up. You look positively joyful as you craft words. I think writing is in your blood.” Gathering information from others will help you to discover your true Ikigai.

I hope this post and or the resources within it have helped shed a little light on why finding our life’s purpose is so important and how to figure it out when we don’t know where to begin.

May the light always be bright filling your mind body and soul with true love and happiness!!!