THE HIGHER PURPOSE OF LIFE

“Don’t worry about trying to find your life purpose. Instead, start by acting on the small things that excite you each day. These are the threads that will connect you to your path, passion and purpose in life.”- Ruben Chavez

Part of happiness is having a Higher Purpose. Something to strive for that is bigger than you.  We all want to matter and to make a difference in the world, at work, or in someone else’s life. Our Higher Purpose is how we find deep meaning and fulfillment in our lives by contributing to someone or something that is bigger than ourselves.

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller

Based on research by the Center for Disease Control only 21% of adults strongly agree that their life has a clear sense of purpose. In two other studies, 90% of alcoholics and 100% of drug addicts thought their life was meaningless. In several polls over several time periods and countries when asked what was very important, “having a purpose or meaning in life” was chosen by 80% to 90% of the respondents while money was chosen by around 16%. Having purpose and meaning in your life has been connected to happiness, life satisfaction, physical health, and self-esteem. According to recent research by Fredrick-son and Cole, having purpose and meaning actually increases our health at the cellular level providing us with a better immune response profile. Purpose and meaning are important and better for us emotionally and physically, but for many of us they are also illusive.

The 3 Higher Purposes:

1. To Heal
2. To Deliver a Message
3. To Bring Revolution

These higher purposes do not dictate the type of career or lifestyle that you will have (that is your inner purpose).

A criminal can be a healer, a musician can deliver a message and a bank manager can bring revolution. There are no rules with how your higher purpose can be delivered into the world.

Your higher purpose is what your soul has come here to achieve and your inner purpose dictates how that higher purpose is presented to the world.

Those who have come to heal are here to spread compassion, peace, health, nourishment and care for all living things, including the planet.

Those who have to deliver a message are here to unlock the wisdom of their heart in order to teach, guide or bring information into the world.

Those who have come to bring revolution are here to change things, uproot things and bring about a new idea or a new way of doing things.

All these higher purposes may be interrelated in some way, as we are all here to work together as humans on this planet. Ultimately, our souls are here to spread love and our higher purpose is how we achieve that.

Your higher purpose is often revealed to you when you start following your bliss and tune into who you really are. In fact, all it takes for you to realise your higher purpose is to be your true, authentic self.

It is that nagging feeling that you are not on the right course or that something just isn’t right. You get a sense that your hard work and effort may be directed in the wrong places. Does your work give you energy so you feel excited and pumped or suck your energy so you feel worn down and depleted? Is it possible that you believe

 that being unhappy today is the sacrifice you need to make to be happy tomorrow? These are all signs that you are going through the motions, but don’t have a good understanding of why. Without a Higher Purpose, your daily trudge can often feel mundane and pointless. In the Greek story of Sisyphus, King Sisyphus is forced by the gods to roll a boulder up a mountain every day, only to watch it roll back down at the end of the day. No matter how hard he works, the rock never stays at the top of the mountain and his work is pointless. Our lives often fall into the trap of becoming like Sisyphus. We do the same thing every day with very little progress.

 The majority of people are naturally self-critical and tend to think about what is wrong with them rather than appreciating what is right with them. We often try to silence those thoughts and bury those feelings with more and more pleasurable experiences, but that voice always comes back and attempts to fill us with self-doubt and sometimes even self-loathing. If we choose to spend our time focused on helping someone else, we have an answer for those doubts. It is a like a proof point for our own internal conversation.  When we naturally criticize ourselves we can counter those negative thoughts by internally referencing our good deeds related to our Higher 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