Imagine this.
You wake up at 7:00 AM on a Monday morning to get ready to go office after enjoying the weekend, wishing it to be a bit longer and cursing the day.
You take your usual commute and reach the office making it through the traffic. Then you spend grueling 8-9 hours, surviving your boss, meeting deadlines, and unwillingly welcoming new tasks.
And upon leaving, you experience a sigh of relief for a short time before you start to think of your next day at the office – all the grind all over again. But you have one thing to cheer about – you are one day closer to the next Friday!
You wish you could directly skip over to the Friday night and be able to stretch the weekend as long as you please.
Finally at your home, having your dinner with your family. But you are only half present over there, missing to cherish the time with your beloved ones.
The next four days aren’t much different. Just crossing off a day in your mental calendar for the number of days remaining for Friday.
Life continues just like this for the next few decades, probably having a few promotions in between along with added responsibility on your aging shoulders. And one day you find the eternal peace we all are moving towards.
Just as you were breathing your last, your whole life flashes in your mind’s eye, and a chain of thoughts come around, maybe the final ones you will ever have – Was this I here for? What if…? Had I…? And suddenly the ECG shows a flat line.
Your family shed some tears. Your colleagues and company mourn your death. But after a few days, life gets back to normal just as if you didn’t exist here in the first place!
Did you realize that I have just written the biography of millions of people in less than 300 words!
But the important question here is do you want this to be your biography? You don’t and that’s why you are here – to find your life purpose and live a more meaningful life.
I sometimes wonder how unique we all are but still live almost similar lives! Why? Because many people lack having a life purpose and are living the life as it comes.
If you are one of them, then this article is for you. But first, let’s clarify the term “Life Purpose.”
What do I mean by life purpose?
Life purpose is the direction you set your life towards. A direction towards something you really care for.
You can live your life in endless ways. There is more stuff than you can do, more things than you can experience, more places than you can cover in your entire lifetime.
So how do you know which stuff to do, which things to experience, which places to go so that you extract the most meaning out of your life?
Having a life purpose helps you do that.
In other words, having a life purpose is like having a filter. It helps you to pick one out of endless options your life has, at every moment of your life so you live a life that you are satisfied with.
Let’s say that your life purpose is to fight global warming. In that case, you are more likely to pick commuting through bicycle, public transport, or electric vehicle and encourage your kids to so do as well. You may choose to plant more trees than others.
Now, life’s purpose doesn’t always need to be earth-shattering like saving the world or starting human colonization on Jupiter.
It can also be as simple as being a great family man or living a healthy life. But there is an essence to it that makes it fulfilling.
The essence of life purpose
We are social animals. We care for how many likes our social media post gets. We want recognition in the society. We love to be appreciated publicly and hate to be humiliated. It feels gratifying to be positively talked about after we leave a party or an event.
We love to make a difference, leave a mark in this world, and create a legacy that will be remembered after we are gone. Something that we can point a finger to and say, “This is the dent I have made in this world.”
Thus, the “social” factor also plays a huge role in your life purpose. Here is what I mean by that.
Due to the social inclination we all have, the bigger your life purpose is from self, the more worthy and soul-satisfying it becomes to you.
Even if you choose to be a better father to your kids, you have made a difference in the lives of your kids. The happier they become, the happier you get.
Even if your life purpose is to live a healthy life for yourself, you are inclined to encourage your further generations and others in your social circle to live the same way.
How to find your life purpose?
Finding your life purpose is about asking the right questions and knowing yourself better. The deeper you dive within yourself, the more clarity you have on your life purpose.
Let’s live the life backward for a moment and do some reverse engineering to find out what would make your life meaningful.
Imagine the last day of your life. You are happy with the life you have lived. Completely satisfied and have no regrets. You find your eternal peace to be actually peaceful as you move closer to it.
Now think, what would have been the reason for this? What would have led to this happy ending? What difference would you have made in your life so that you can die with peace and satisfaction?
That is what you are here for.
To help you find the answers to these questions, here is a diagram from Mark Winn, as seen in the book Ikigai which translates to “the reason of your being.”
You need to reach the center where all these circles merge and that is what your life purpose is. Write it. Meditate on it. And align everything you do to match your life purpose.
Conclusion
Finding your life purpose isn’t like just doing one simple exercise and bamm! There it is. It is a relentless process of knowing yourself better and refining your life purpose to see it more clearly.
So relax, breathe, and give yourself time to look into the dark valley inside you.
What do you think your life purpose maybe?
Let’s Connect Beyond
Hey buddy, I hope you found this post valuable. But Make in Yourself isn’t limited to this blog. It goes beyond this where I provide you with bite-sized digestible insights so that you can grow on the go.
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