1. Your life purpose is bigger than any solvable problem or circumstance.
Your life purpose cannot be solving a particular problem or based on some circumstance that could potentially no longer exist. Otherwise, your purpose could end while you are alive and then your life will no longer have a purpose or meaning. For example, some may believe that finding the cure for cancer is their life purpose. Finding the cure for cancer may embody their life purpose and be a major accomplishment along their journey, but their life purpose is bigger and beyond cancer. The same is true of being a doctor or scientist. Nobody is “born to be” a doctor or scientist, but their life purpose may be fulfilled through that profession, at least for some time. Understanding the difference between your life purpose and opportunities that fulfill your life purpose is important because life circumstances and opportunities will change over time. That does not mean, however, that your purpose ceases to exist.
2. Your life purpose is a journey, not a destination.
Your life purpose is not something you can define today, nor is it something you will ever fully know or accomplish during your lifetime. Only in hindsight, once your life has ended, will we have the full picture to be able to look back and say, “This is what that person’s life meant.” If we are unable to know what our life purpose is in advance, however, how do we live in pursuit of fulfilling it? How do we design our lives and make the best choices that will lead to fulfilling our life purpose? The answer is that we work with the pieces of the puzzle that we have and follow life’s clues. The remaining lessons are pieces to the puzzle that we all possess and can use.
3. Play to your strengths.
We are not capable of being all things to all people. You were born with certain natural talents and abilities — use them. Develop your natural talents into skills by studying, exercising and practicing those talents. There is nothing wrong with trying to learn new things, but the likelihood is that you were born with the abilities needed to fulfill your life purpose.
4. Pursue your passions.
For whatever reason, we all feel passionate about certain things in life. In order to live your life purpose, you must become completely immersed in whatever it is, which means it must be something you are passionate about. Otherwise, you will be damned to doing something that
5. Do what makes you happy.
Living your life purpose will undoubtedly bring you joy and a sense of personal fulfillment. If you are unhappy in your life or if you feel a sense of incompleteness, then you are not living your purpose, plain and simple. Ask a room full of people what the meaning of life is and most answers will come back to happiness. Positive Psychology — the study of happiness or wellbeing — ascribes five elements to wellbeing: positive feelings, engagement, relationships, meaning (or purpose) and accomplishments (commonly referred to by the acronym “PERMA”). Each of these elements is naturally achieved and increased when you commit to living in pursuit of your life purpose.
6. Go where you are needed.
Opportunity is the most revealing clue to living your life purpose. A purpose, after all, must be served. There is a need for you to fill that you must discover. Unfortunately, you do not get to decide where you are most needed. The opportunities you have in life are how the world tells you where you are needed. The trick is making sure that you choose the opportunities that best align with your talents, skills and passions. Opportunity is tricky because often you must instigate opportunity. In other words, some doors require you to knock (and sometimes more than once) before you realize they are open. Nevertheless, whether that door ultimately opens requires someone letting you in — the final decision of which is always beyond your control.