Can’t find your purpose in life? Here are the 6 tricks to help you find your purpose.
1. Make your motivations intrinsic.
Realize This: When it comes up finding purpose in life, society sets us up for failure because it motivates us with extrinsic incentives like fame, wealth, and beauty. Chasing these things are flashy and fun for a short time but ultimately unfulfilling. They’re like drinking salt-water when you’re thirsty.
Take This Action: To remove those “low low” feelings, focus on intrinsic incentives like relationships, contribution, and personal growth. Create a life around them and you’ll be super On Purpose.
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.” – Barack Obama
2. Live in integrity with your values.
Untold Truth: If you want to stop asking yourself “what is the purpose of life”, you’re gonna need to know what you stand for. I’ve found that the best way to know what you stand for is to get clarity on what it is that you value. What’s important to you? What do you give about? If you were running for the toilet and had no time to think, could you tell me what your top five values are without stopping and soiling yourself?
Take This Action: To help find your values, question things. Try stuff out. Experiment. Do the opposite of what you were told. Step outside of the box. CRACK YOUR COMFORT ZONE! And then *reflect on what’s important to you.* Once you know what’s important to you and the more that you act in accordance with those values, the better you’re gonna feel about yourself.
If you want to be faithful to others, start by being faithful to God and to yourself.” – Freelionaire
3. Become comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.
Realize This: Our lives are limited within the confines of our “comfort zone.” When we get out of our comfort zone and become uncomfortable, WE WIN LIFE! The cool thing about comfort zones is that when we step outta them, they grow! That’s right — by being momentarily uncomfortable, we own our fear, and in the future, the things that scared us aren’t so intimidating anymore. If you want to find your purpose, you’re probably going to have to do things that you’ve never done before — and in order to do them, you’re going to need to get outside of your comfort zone.
Take This Action: Feel that discomfort, and despite its presence, go do what you need to do. The more you do that, the less uncomfortable you’ll feel in the future. Make it a game to become comfortable being uncomfortable and you’ll be finding meaning in life much sooner.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” – Nelson Mandela
4. Embark on the Hero’s Journey.
Realize This: This “Hero’s Journey” is the common thread amongst all great characters (and stories) in life. Your soul is calling to you. It’s trying to tell you that you have a unique path that only you can take. Your mind can rationalize all sorts of award-winning reasons why you shouldn’t take the untraveled trail. But to deny that call from your soul is to deny yourself the life that you deserve to live. It’s the difference between being fully ALIVE and cruising aimlessly on auto-pilot all your life.
Take This Action: In order to create an extraordinary life, you’re going to need to walk away from what you know. You’re going to have to face your fears, improve your conditioning, and create your own unique path. You’re going to feel scared, excited, and alive!
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it to blossom.” – Anais Nin
5. Combine your strengths with your passions.
Realize This: People who are Living On Purpose are continuously using their strengths while doing work that matters to them on a daily basis.
Take This Action: It’s vital that our minds be renewed through scripture, giving us an understanding of God’s perspective of our weakness. But victory through weakness doesn’t occur by mere head knowledge. Scripture is alive! It possesses power! This power comes through the Spirit of Christ—the Holy Spirit. The Scripture says, “Greater is He that is in you than he who is in the world.”
“I do not believe that you should devote overly much effort to correcting your weaknesses. Rather, I believe that the highest success in living and the deepest emotional satisfaction comes from building and using the signature strengths that God has given to me.”
6. Avoid the trap of validation.
Realize This: As a baby, we need love. So from a young age, we create images of ourselves, pretending to be what we think other people want us to be. Then we project these images onto our relationships and try our best to actually be the images. But of course, we can’t ever completely conform to someone else’s vision. And this is how inner conflict originates. When people start to feel a discrepancy between the image they’re projecting, and their authentic selves, MAJOR conflict arises within them.
Take This Action: In order to find and live your purpose, you’re gonna need to become indifferent to other people’s opinions of you. This goes for both the good and the bad opinions of other people — they can both be used as forms of validation if unchecked. Here’s a counter-intuitive tidbit of wisdom: The less you look for other people’s approval, the more of it they’ll give to you.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
