3 Steps to Finding Your Life Purpose

It’s a collective characteristic of the human mind to go on seeking. We are ultimately curious about our existence; some more than others. Discovering your life purpose can be ultimately rewarding, bringing about peace and authentic certainty in our life experience. Discovering it is of course only the first step. Living that life purpose can be an intimidating task as well; however, with the right intentions and guidance it can be a truly enlightening experience.

What Is Life Purpose

Though this has been Mankind’s greatest question, it’s been made more complicated than necessary. All of life’s purposes could be sourced back to one true purpose—infinite survival. When we seek to discover our own unique purpose it’s important to understand that each purpose is specific and yet driven by the common goal of survival.

It’s often easy to follow the tricks of the ego when looking for your life purpose. Many struggle finding their true purpose because they seek to create a purpose, which is ego-driven and therefore, a false purpose.

When we listen to the fear of our ego, we end up seeking endless pleasure, significance, and control. Rather, when we follow the guide of our heart, which has our own best interests, others, along with the entirety of humanity in mind, we become honest and able to find our true life purpose.

Discovering  your Unique Purpose

Some truths are infinite while others are timely. The true purpose of survival is infinite; our solutions to problems are timely.

For example, when you are 5 years old your life purpose—your route to survive—is much different than when you’re 30. Environments, skills, goals, desires and many life factors change the game and our purpose.

It’s fundamental to understand that each purpose is driven by survival; this makes it much easier to discover our true purpose. Because you are a unique spiritual being, you do not need to do anything of magnificence to be unique, you are infinitely unique without trying.

Purpose is simply the survival route chosen by an individual for the accomplishment of your goals. Now that you have a clearer understanding of what might have been a formerly esoteric topic—finding your life purpose —you can begin with a few steps.  This is how I discovered my purpose in life.

1. Get Honest With Yourself

Unless you’re willing to get honest with yourself, you can’t know what you truly need. One of the secrets to fulfillment is getting what you need, not what you want. Take out a piece of paper and try this exercise:

1. Write down on the paper a “current unwanted condition.” Then write beneath it “how you’ve handled it.” In other words, what is a current problem in your life, and how have you attempted to resolve it?

2. Next, write down a “desired condition not present” in your life. Then again, write how you have handled it.

Repeat this exercise until you begin to see a pattern in your solutions. When you notice the pattern that will bring you awareness to your true purpose for this moment in your life.

2. Determine Your Goals

A goal is nothing more than a solution to problem. Take this article for example; the goal of this article is to help solve the problem of you not knowing your life purpose. It’s that simple.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Tweet this)

Hopefully that takes the pressure off your shoulders that society and others may have placed on you to accomplish huge goals. If there isn’t a problem, why fix it? When choosing goals, it’s important you get honest with yourself; otherwise, you could very well end up in the rat race of solving imaginary problems you don’t have.

Now that you’ve hopefully narrowed in on one or two honest conditions in your life, you can begin to goal set more honestly. Take a few minutes and brainstorm or “brain vomit” a couple ideas or solutions for these problems; these will serve as honest goals.

3. Create a Present Moment Plan

The ultimately reality is that we are living in a series of constant present moments. The past is dissolved present moments, which are continually becoming the future. There is no past, there is no future, there is indeed only now. If we want to harness the power of our purpose then it’d only make sense that we were able to live that purpose now. It wouldn’t be much of a purpose if we weren’t able to live it until tomorrow or 4 years from now.

That being said, once you have found the pattern of your survival methods it’s time to turn that goal into something actionable.

To do this, simply jot down a few answers to this question; “What can I do NOW to accomplish my goal?” Keep going until you have run out of ideas.

You’ll likely get a compilation of good ideas and bad ideas; that is, some that don’t yield as immediate results. Once you’ve written all you can chose the solution that is the quickest for now. Sometimes the best solution is just a phone call to someone, shifting your attitude to gratitude or by simply not doing something.

Conclusion

Knowing yourself as a spiritual being helps in making life a much more expansive experience. Knowing your own existence as a microcosm of a much larger existence is even more beautiful. Many people pursuing a spiritual path can get so lost in themselves that they miss out on all the magic going on around them as well.

When we get honest with ourselves about our own existence it’s much easier to see the rest of the world as working in our favor. Living a life of purpose doesn’t have to be complicated, and even our “problems” become mere opportunities to expand our life purpose and the experience of life itself.