The topic of finding purpose is one that’s often brought up in motivational speeches and self-help books. And while there are many great tips for people to seek out more meaning in their career and personal lives, they may be going about it all wrong.
Maybe you’ve been living your life as planned, when all of a sudden, you just know in your gut that there’s more to life than what you’ve been doing. You feel like the life you’re living isn’t the one you were meant to live.
If you’ve thought about it and realized something is missing, then it’s possible that you haven’t yet found your purpose – or at least, not the way it was meant to be applied by you.
Your purpose in life is something that can be difficult or easy to sort out. It’s more than just sitting with your feelings and having an aha moment. You have to dig deep and consider all possibilities before you may hit on a concept that will truly bring you personal satisfaction.
Are You Struggling to Find Your Purpose?
Having a purpose can help you live a life that you feel is worthwhile. When you don’t have a purpose, you may feel directionless, like you don’t really know what you’re doing or what’s truly important to you.
If you listen to all the advice available about finding your purpose, you’ll notice that a lot of people try to make finding your purpose sound so simple. You might be shocked to learn that and think there’s no way it could be true.
But it can be. For some people. There really are people that don’t struggle to find their purpose. Instead, they just know – and for them, it’s an easy thing and happens automatically.
They know what they want to do. They know how they want to live their life. Sometimes these people may even have this realization in their childhood and grow up to live out that purpose.
While that’s nice, finding a purpose doesn’t happen like that for everyone. Finding your purpose can be a time of confusion and even fear. This is because so much advice has made “finding your purpose” sound like once you find it, you’re locked in for life.
But that’s not what a purpose is. You might get some clues early in life about what your purpose may be. For example, there are some kids who love to write. Others love to design things.
These kids may carry that desire over into their teenage years and beyond. For them, their purpose will be found in a creative field, and they’ll feel like it’s what they were meant to do.
You might not know what your purpose is at the moment, but one thing you can do is look at what makes you feel positive emotions. If your creative endeavors bring happiness to others, which makes you feel fulfilled, then that’s a clue you can use toward your purpose in life.
It doesn’t have to be just one thing. You can have multiple interests that serve as your purpose. If you can spend hour upon hour doing something and it never feels like work, that’s a good indicator that this could be a fitting purpose for you.
You can also look at the things that make you angry. For example, if you can’t stand to see people struggling in life financially, this could be an avenue where you find your purpose.
You may feel strongly about helping those people get their lives back on track. A purpose for this could be as a crisis counselor for the homeless, an entrepreneurial leader or a debt counselor or author.
Your purpose doesn’t necessarily have to be a job. It can be whatever moves you to act, including volunteering. Some people just want to have a purpose for life in general. Others feel strongly about wanting to build a business around it.
That might be you, but you’re feeling frustrated because you don’t have any direction.
It’s purpose that fuels the decisions you need to make. Ask yourself why you want to build a business. Once you uncover your why, you can start to take steps to live out your purpose.