Let's talk about " Life Purpose "

Less than 3% of the world's population are living on purpose, yet to do so is easier then everyone seems to think. Human beings are capable of incredible things when the 'why' becomes big enough. Your purpose will allow you to bring a massive 'why' to every area of your life.

Like they say in the Matrix: "Your 'why' is your only true source of power."

The reason why having a purpose is so important is because it gives meaning to everything you do in life.

The funny thing about human beings is we are " meaning making creatures " and therefore we need to put meaning into the tasks that we are doing in order to remain motivated and enthusiastic about what we are creating.

The most famous lover of the world.. the one that goes by the name of Don Juan, once said :

"For me there is only the travelling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking breathlessly."

Whatever you are do in life make sure it has heart, and you can’t find something that has heart until you give it meaning. So we must seek to find something to give it meaning and this is where your purpose comes in.

The Simple 7 Step Process to discover your life purpose:

1.   Write down what you love doing or the ideal career you would do if money wasn't important

2.   Now ask yourself the following 4 questions relating to this activity or career and write the answers down in bullet point form:

a.   What does this activity/career mean to me?

b.   Why is this important to me?

c.   What are the consequences of not doing that?

d.   Why do I bother doing/becoming this activity/career?

3.   Read out loud all of the answers you have written to these questions

4.   Connect to your heart by placing your awareness into your chest and answer this question, "If I were the only person on planet earth and the planet needed nothing from me what would my purpose in life be?".

5.   Write down every word and phrase that comes up from your heart no matter how weird it sounds.

6.   Look over the answers to this question and circle the three that make you feel the most expansive, excited or just plain 'good'.

7.   With the words you have circled go ahead and create a simple sentence that sums up all the words/phrases starting with the word 'to'.

Here are some examples:

Circled Words Purpose created

Passion, freedom, living free = To live with passion and freedom

Play, have fun, life is a game =To enjoy playing the game of life

Transform, compassion, love myself = To transform with love and compassion

Inspire and empower, discover new things, excitement = To inspire and empower by discovering new learning's with excitement

Whether you are born with a purpose or believe you had a contract of some description set up before you came here, or whatever it is that you believe in, at the end of the day a purpose is best described as finding the ultimate sentence to sum up every action that you are going to take from this day forward. So that when you wake up in the morning you can say I’m divinely inspired by my purpose because I’m doing xyz. 

Then everything you do can be justified by, related to or infused with your purpose. Ask yourself:  "Does this next activity support my life purpose in any way, shape or form?" If the answer is 'no' for more then 3 days on a row then you focus on something else.

All of a sudden your time management becomes a lot more efficient because you can start to look at activities, proposals and other things that people are coming to you with through the eyes of someone who has a purpose.

You then respond to requests simply by saying,  "you know what, none of that aligns with my purpose!"

This will allow you to make decisions instantly, without any guilt, without even thinking about anything again, without any sense of needing to review anything – because straight away you will know whether it resonates with your purpose or not.

When I speak with people about their purpose they tend to think of the word purpose and say to themselves, "yeah, OK, my purpose is to help the world transform" or "heal the masses" or "feed the starving kids in Africa" and this is all very noble however the problem here is that if there are no starving kids in Africa left then you are unable to fulfill your life purpose. Seems to me a pretty major problem to have.

If your purpose solely depends on fulfilling someone else's desires, then your happiness therefore is at the mercy of other people because you need other people in order to be fulfilled.

When you’re looking for a purpose, you need to ensure that it relates to yourself first, because if it doesn’t then you’ll be like most of the other people out there who are completely unfulfilled. This leads to continually getting up in the morning looking for ways to help everyone else and wondering why you can’t manage to stay happy for extended periods of time.

This results in always looking for what is wrong in life and how to fix it which in turn creates more people who need help. In order to be fulfilled you must always be seeking to find other people in need of help.

So you therefore want to make sure that your purpose first and foremost can be fulfilled on your own and if it can be fulfilled on your own then chances are you are going to have a pretty good life. When you have a purpose that you are able to fulfill on your own then when you fulfill it with others it only adds to the enjoyment of the tasks you perform.

Once you have found your purpose then allow yourself the freedom to change it as you evolve. You may move through different values systems where the words you used no longer have the same feel as they used to.

You may hear about someone else's purpose and find that it resonates more with who you are now. In which case you can just adapt and evolve your purpose to suit.

Flexibility is the key to allowing yourself to change for good. Life is an always evolving adventure that requires us to adapt to new circumstances.

~ Elisabeth Botman