Showing Purpose: What is Your Purpose?

What is your purpose in life? What’s your reason for getting out of bed in the morning?

Sometimes, in the hustle and bustle, it’s easy to lose sight of our purpose, if we even have one. What fuels you in your daily life? Money? Success? Or is it something deeper?

Part of being successful is being passionate.

If you’re not doing something you’re truly passionate about, you’re not likely to meet with real success. Needless to say, you’re not likely to be very happy. If you find your passion, you’ll regard work as a gift, not as a torture. What purpose will fuel you with passion until the very end of your career?

Many things in life are merely a means to an end. The end is our ultimate purpose in life. Do you live to work, or work to live? Is your paycheck your purpose in life?

Hardly—it’s just a piece of paper. But it can be a means to other ends—to pursuing your hobbies, to traveling to inspiring places, or to providing for your family. Adventure, enterprise, and the ones we love—these are the sorts of things that bring true purpose to our lives.

Recognizing our true purpose—what really drives us—can allow us to make dramatic changes in our lives. Determining what one’s purpose is and vowing to pursue it to the fullest can lead to a true renaissance in our personal and professional endeavors.

Are you sleepwalking through life? Is your first thought in the morning your dream of going back to bed that night—to get through the day as quickly and painlessly as possible, in order to escape back into the realm of dreams that night, and forget your life as much as possible? This is a living death. Going through the motions. This is a life that is void of purpose.

If this is you, and you’re ready for your own rebirth, retreat somewhere. Withdraw from the rat race for a couple of days and collect your thoughts. Relax. Exhale. Find yourself, and your purpose. Commit your thoughts and dreams to paper, to serve as a roadmap on your way to true fulfillment.

1. Strip away all the nonsense, all the distractions, until you pare your life down to a single purpose. What is the one thing that gives it meaning? What do you live for?

2. Once you’ve identified it, describe it in a few sentences. Give it a name. What does it mean to you? Why does it bring meaning to your life? How are you going to nurture it?

3. Think of some practical steps to take in pursuit of this purpose. Write them out. Be realistic, but be determined.

4. Break these steps down into things you can do on a daily basis. Often, purpose is all about the little things. If family is our purpose in life, we can demonstrate our commitment to the ones we love with very little—a kind word or gesture can make someone’s day. How can we do this, easily and practically?

5. Don’t let a single day go by without fulfilling at least one of these steps.

Take some time every year or so to reevaluate your purpose. Perhaps it will shift a bit, as you mature, or your interests develop. Perhaps it won’t change, but your definition of it will; your understanding of your purpose will become more profound as you live it out every day of your life.

Place a reminder somewhere, in your bedroom or office, or maybe near the mirror where you get ready for work each day. It can even be a sort of code word—anything that will get you to meditate on your purpose, and reaffirm your commitment to it as you begin your day.

Enjoy a new life with a clearly state purpose. A life worth living!

Photo by 3amfromkyoto, flickr.com