The goal of this post is to introduce you to the concept of “life purpose”. One of the most impactful things you can understand in this life is your purpose, which is the essence of this blog. Once you truly understand your purpose miraculous things start to happen within your life. Enjoy the journey and feel free to comment below. Stay prosperous.
What is a life purpose?
Life purpose is a driving force for all of your behaviors, beliefs, actions and accomplishments in life. A life purpose is something that fuels you. It drives you. It shows you everything you need and brings to you everything you want — whether you realize this or not. A life purpose is the epicenter of all that you are, were, or ever will be. It is true to your core and is what drives your very being.
Why should I define my life purpose?
This is almost like asking, why do the best musicians seem to be “one with their instruments?” Why do the best athletes seem to be inseparable from their sport? Why do the best writers seem to channel a unique creative energy that cannot be replicated by anyone else? Simply stated. Defining your purpose is defining who you truly are. Who are you at your core? What are you destined to do in this life? What exactly is your impact going to be on society?
You must define your purpose in life if you want to experience all that life has to offer. Knowing your purpose will put you in direct connection with the guidance necessary to share your gifts with the world.
What will happen when I define my purpose?
Defining your purpose and truly understanding why you are here is almost like a divine awakening. All of the sudden you have an immense amount of clarity in your life. You are able to truly understand what it is you are here for and what exactly you need to accomplish during this lifetime. With a defined purpose you can expect, but are not limited to, the following benefits and results:
- An extreme sense of clarity in life
- Unshakable focus toward your mission
- A powerful surge of self-confidence
- The ability to live a life based on your values
- Immense trust in yourself and the decisions you make
- Unwavering passion towards your life goals
Once purpose is found, your entire essence will completely transform into the person you were born to be. From personal experience working with many clients, the number one benefit this has allowed them to do is to live a life based on their own terms. To live a life doing exactly what it is they want to do and generate an abundance of wealth and prosperity at the same time.
How do you find your life purpose?
Finding your purpose is not something that just happens instantaneously. Finding your purpose happens over time with deep self-reflection and experience. However, when you make a conscious effort to discover your purpose, it will dramatically increase the speed in which you figure it out.
Self-Reflection
Ever hear of meditation? A somewhat elusive topic in the West but is gaining more and more traction in the US, UK, etc. Meditation is a very common practice in the East. Meditation is powerful. Especially when you are working to discover yourself. Since this isn’t a post specifically about meditation, I’m not going to dig deep into the “how to meditate” — we can touch on that in another post.
To begin, you need to get into a deep meditative state and ask yourself the following questions over-and-over again:
- Who am I?
- Why am I here?
Ruminate on these questions for at least 20 minutes and have a journal near by to take down notes when you are done.
The “Whiteboard Exercise”
This is a powerful exercise which will bring out every aspect of “you”. Grab a whiteboard and a dry erase marker and label the top of the whiteboard, “who am I?”
For 20-minutes (eventually work your way up to 45-minutes) write every-single thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself who you are. The first time you may only come up with 15-20 different descriptors. However, after you’ve done this exercise dozens of times (which I highly recommend) you should have a list of at least a hundred or more descriptors of who you are as a person.
Once you have this entire list baked out, you need to start drawing connections between all of your attributes and build “your story”. The essence of your story will help you define who you truly are and what your true purpose is.
This exercise not only helps you think critically about who you truly are, it allows you to break the molds and stereotypes that you’ve defined yourself as in the past. Again, you must do this multiple times because you will continue to get clearer and clearer on the essence of all that is “you”.
Build Out Your Core Values
Values are an incredibly important component as to who you are and tie into your purpose as the underlying vehicle to drive change. Think of your purpose as your foundation or the “earth” and your values as the “roads” or path in which you operate to get things done. The most effective way to determine your values is to leverage the information from the previous exercises and grab a sheet of paper or your journal and build out the following:
- Identify the the key pieces of information from the last two exercises that really “matter” to you
- Classify all similar information into buckets
- Identify each bucket with a core “overarching value” they relate to
You will probably have no more than 3 to 4 buckets when you are fully done, which will then in turn become your core values.
To see an example of my values and the values this brand is built on, go ahead and take a look at our about page and scroll down to the bottom: www.prosperityjournal.com/about.
Build Your Personal Mission Statement
Now that you are starting to get a better understanding of who you are as a person, you need to take this self-reflection, the story you built, and your values, to create a personal mission statement. Your personal mission statement should incorporate who you want to be, what you want to do, and the values underlying your character (all in present tense). This will give you a mission statement to live by and embody on a daily basis.
Example Mission Statements:
Be careful with this section as I do not want you to confuse someone else’s mission statement for your own. However, it’s important you see the extent of what a mission statement truly is from people who have embodied it:
- “To serve as a leader, live a balanced life, and apply ethical principles to make a significant difference.” -Denise Morrison, CEO of Campbell Soup Company
- “I define personal success as being consistent to my own personal mission statement: to love God and love others.” -Joel Manby, CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment
- “To be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.” -Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Network
- “To have fun in [my] journey through life and learn from [my] mistakes.” -Sir Richard Branson, Founder of The Virgin Group
- “To use my gifts of intelligence, charisma, and serial optimism to cultivate the self-worth and net-worth of women around the world.” Amanda Steinberg, Founder of Dailyworth.com
In Conclusion
There you have it. The road to discovering your true purpose in life and building a mission statement to be able to live by it. I encourage my readers to read through this several times and complete the exercises until your purpose is very clear. Once you discover your purpose, you will know and have a strong sense of clarity in your life. As time permits, my goal is to build out a comprehensive course to take this many, many layers deeper. For now, let me know your thoughts in the comments! Stay prosperous.
