In my last post, I talked about importance of having a purpose in life. The reason why I wanted to write about it is because being a life coach, I know how individuals and organizations benefit tremendously by just having answer to this simple question. Simple, yes, but it could take a lot of time for some of us to get an answer to this.
Today, let’s try and take some steps closer to its discovery for your life.
Mostly, the life purpose is a culmination or the intersection point of these 4 questions:
- What is it that you love doing?
- What is it that you are good at?
- What can you be paid for?
- What problem of the world are you trying to solve?
For starters, make a bucket list for each of these questions, everything that comes to your mind. Don’t force yourself to have answers to all questions in one sitting, it may take multiple attempts to have this completed for your life.
When you are writing these answers, be careful of these things:
- Don’t write things which someone else is expecting you to do or be. If you are a housewife and a mother, your family may want you to manage the house, do the cooking, ensure a good upbringing for the child, but that may not be something you love doing. So the answer to the first question, don’t force fit-cooking, cleaning the house, because that’s not you.
What you love doing is primarily your passion, something which gets you so involved that you lose track of time. To help you answer this one, go back to your childhood, what is it that you loved doing which made you forget food or even your homework? Playing cricket with your friends? Try and reflect more on this, was it cricket that you enjoyed playing or was it being in a competitive environment? Or was it the after effects of the game in terms of how your body felt and you liked the adrenaline rush? Which part of cricket did you like the most- following the captain’s orders or channelizing/making strategies for your team? I hope you get the drift- If dancing is your passion, then what in it do you really crave for? Making new steps? Learning exactly how the performers originally did it (which could mean multiple things, one of them being you are passionate about being on stage just as that performer was).
- Most people I ask these 4 questions, tend to have the same answer to the first two questions. The underlying assumption in their mind is, if I love doing this, that means I am good at it. Which is not always the case. If you get a high by ensuring a good completion to the laid down plan, then execution may not be your passion, but working under clarity may be your passion, and hence you may not enjoy being in ambiguous roles/situations. Being good at something means whenever that situation comes, you will be able do that thing. Your passion could be creating solutions to problems and you could be good at managing kids; so, could your life purpose be revolving around working with toddlers? You would know by filling the next two questions.
- Money is important. No second thoughts about it. Other than your own needs, you may have dependents who expect you to bring some money home. Playing gully cricket and making strategies for your team to win will keep you occupied for some time but will help you live a successful life. Being a cricket coach/teacher could, or possibly playing for a cricket team, which pays you money. A lot of engagement surveys in organizations talk about increasing dis-engagement levels among employees, that’s because the work they are doing is not fulfilling either or both of the first two questions. Which leads to a lot of issues at both professional level and personal- stress, changing jobs, inefficiencies at job, health impact etc.
At first glance, the last question may look very global, I mean how could I, a housewife, solve a problem that the world has? So first, look at world, at anything that’s happening outside of your home which really concerns you. Among all the problems of the world, there’s always one or two issues that feel deeply about. Stray dogs, women safety, education system, raising stress level among people, lack of good governance; you wouldn’t need to think much on this, it could really be as simple as the residential society of yours is not working efficiently and that disturbs you. If you look at all start up mantras, they first answer the question, what gap in the society are we trying to fill? If something is being done in that space, then how could we create a different value? Coming back to the being around children example, your life purpose could be evolving innovative and meaningful alternate to books as a medium for learning for children.
Actions is the key to any life purpose. Being aware of everything and still not acting on it, means you have probably missed out on some crucial aspect of your life purpose. Even to get closer in pin pointing the life purpose, you may need to move around, meet people of similar interests, read internet, get into discussions, basically do action which takes you closer to either finding your purpose or living your purpose.
If you liked reading this, then do please share with people in your network, who could benefit from this.
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