I enjoy re-visiting posts from our Living Savvy archives. When I re-visit, I tend to connect to the information and stories shared in a new way, discovering something different depending on what is going on for me or people in my life.
When I am coaching someone, very often an issue will come up that will have me searching through the archives for a post best suited to help my client work through the process of Living Savvy, supporting them to ask, do, discover, commit & celebrate.
If you google ‘life purpose’ you will find everything from biblical references to a potion you rub into your temples to reveal your life goals. There are promises of creating the perfect luscious lifestyles, spiritual awakening, discovering of your universal plan, surfacing of inherent talents and more. A popular exercise in personal development circles is to write your own epitaph – that final, short statement etched on your gravestone that somehow is meant to sum up the contribution you have made to this world in your lifetime.
I’m not so sure about any of that.
I certainly don’t like the idea of writing my own epitaph – it seems too much like tempting fate! But I guess the real issue is that you can end up thinking of your life purpose as a lofty, sometimes distant, ideal.
Your life purpose is for right now…
My life purpose serves me in a very practical way. When the rain is pouring down, and the kids are wreaking havoc in the family room, and I’m worried about a looming presentation while also trying to deal with my own sadness about a recent loss… that’s when my life purpose is a life saver. It keeps me afloat and focussed on the next action, it pulls me from my bed and supports me through another day.
… and you’ll find your life purpose in your everyday.
That’s how I articulated my life purpose for myself, and how I’d invite you to begin exploring your life purpose. Start with where you are right now. What choices have you made in your life? Your career? Your relationships? What has captured and held your attention? What themes show up again and again in your daily actions and words and achievements? Perhaps not everything has been exactly as you would like – it’s valuable to notice that too. The point is, you’re already designing your dream life with your choices and if you observe these carefully a clearer picture will emerge of what is truly important to you.
Once you’ve found it, let it carry you forward!
Jack Canfield, in the best seller The Success Principles, writes that discovering his life purpose has injected passion, determination and sense of fulfilment into everything he does. I have discovered that my life purpose is to help others fine tune the ordinary to live extraordinary. At the heart of this purpose is the belief – I can never dream too big for myself or others. This carries me forward everyday. And if I am remembered as someone who dreamed too big? Well, that’s OK with me.
So, now I’d love to hear, what carries you forward everyday?
What life purpose is being revealed in your everyday choices?
How will you be remembered?
Image by RATAEDL
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I love the post Jo!
And the comments by Cat. I think sometime we put to much pressure on the pursuit of “purpose”, but we also need a reason to get up every day.
what carries me forward everyday …
Is making a positive difference to firstly my close family and friends and then those that I come in contact with. I realise that we sometimes treat family worse than our friends and I think that is a bit backward. So everyday I want to make positive difference to my family and they are also good to practice on and refine those positive techniques, that I can then use those techniques on those who I come in contact with.
What life purpose is being revealed in my everyday choices…
I am really good at connecting people and helping create more productivity in their life or business, just by introducing them to a person that can help them or a resource system.
How will I be remembered …
By making a positive difference to others lives.
I appreciate the attention to family first. This refelects true authenticity Katey. It is how we are behind “closed doors” that can truley define us.
Ditto, ditto and ditto. Being the Personal Develoment veteran I am, I have tried many of those ‘soul-searching’ exercises like writing my own obituary. My issue with such exercises is they seem to require weightly, lofty notions of grandeur … “my life purpose is to change the world” or something similar. Oprah also had a lot to do with this notion of ‘finding your life purpose’ … and so in that search I think many people tried to press ‘pause’ on their life whilst they contemplated their navel to discover ‘why there were here’.
The fact is your life purpose is to experience life … and experience the life you’ve created. As you say Jo, your purpose is demonstrated in your daily actions, thoughts and words … whether you conciously realise it or not. So for me the trick has been to spend more time doing what I want to do … and being more ‘purposeful’ in my life … and being totally OK with a simple notion of ‘purupose’ – raise contributing members of society, add value to my clients, have fun.
