“Learn what you are, and be such.” Pindar
It’s Already Within You!
Your purpose will always be something that:
You feel passionate about
You are naturally good at
You already love to do
Is important to you
Remember earlier I mentioned that your fears about your life purpose being unpleasant are groundless? It’s absolutely true. Why would you be given a life purpose that doesn’t match the essence of who you are?
Would the universe expect a musical prodigy to spend his life crunching numbers in an accounting firm? Would the universe expect you to wait tables when your true passion is childhood education? How would these situations serve anyone? They wouldn’t!
Your life purpose will ALWAYS utilize your greatest passions, talents and interests. No exceptions. Does that inspire a little sigh of relief for you? It should.
Identifying Your Passions
Before you can discover your true life purpose, you need to uncover the clues that lead to it. Namely, things you are good at, feel passionate about, love to do, and are important to you. Take a look at the worksheets on the next few pages and start filling in a few ideas for each of them. You don’t have to completely fill them. In fact, you’re looking for the most obvious answers here - even there are only a handful of them in each category.
Focus on things that have been a major part of your life or occupied your thoughts a lot - and it’s okay to have the same answers on multiple sheets.
These would be topics or subjects you feel passionate about, like personal growth, education, arts and crafts, music, pets, spiritual development, business, poetry etc. Anything you think about and enjoy quite often.
Activities I Love To Do
These would be tangible activities like sports, working out, painting, singing, writing, reading, cooking and so on.
Things I Am Naturally Good At
On this sheet, list all of your best talents, skills and experience. Focus on actual activities that you do easily and well, either because you’re naturally good at them or because you have a lot of experience with them.
Things That Are Important to Me
World events, situations, groups, causes, people, animals and more that are important to you. Focus on things that impact the world in general, not just things that pertain to your own life, your own family, etc.
Putting the Pieces Together
Now that you’ve identified some of your strongest passions and interests, look again at the worksheets. Do you see any connections or patterns between the items you listed? You may not yet have a full picture but more like a handful of puzzle pieces - you see that they could fit together but you’re not sure how.
Here’s a good way to make the big picture clearer:
Imagine that you are preparing to take a journey. What do you need? First, you need to establish a clear destination. You need a map that shows you how to get to your destination. You need a method of transportation to travel there; and of course, all modes of transportation require fuel to power them.
Your life purpose is very much like a journey.
The things you love to do are the vehicle you travel in.
Your natural talents are the map that shows you how to get to your destination.
The things that are important to you ARE the destination.
Your passion is the FUEL that powers the whole operation.
With every purpose, you need:
1) A passion for it. (Your passions)
2) A commitment to it. (Important to you)
3) A tangible way to share it with the world. (Activities you love to do)
4) The ability to do it well. (Your natural talents)
When these things come together, you’ve got a virtual explosion of passion, meaning, fulfillment, empowerment – and purpose!
Do you see now why it’s important to get clear on the four worksheet categories? Every item you write on those lists offers a possibility and each of those possibilities contain still more possibilities!
Of course, you won’t be following all of them right away, but more likely choosing one to start with. You can always incorporate others later if you want to. For now, I strongly encourage you to start with the ONE that speaks most powerfully to you, the one that makes you feel excited and joyful.
Things I Love To Do I’m Passionate About I’m Naturally Good At Things of Importance
Cooking Health Giving advice and encouraging people Children
Working out Fitness Writing Women’s issues
Writing Alternative healing Problem solving Domestic violence solutions
Teaching Helping people Blogging and web design Environment preservation
This is just a partial collection, but you can see at a glance that there are obvious connections between the items here. Perhaps your lists won’t have such obvious connections, but the more you study them they’ll start to jump out at you.
What kind of life purpose could this person choose? Here are just a few possibilities:
Writing and publishing books on health and fitness
Empowering women through conscious living
Publishing a children’s health and fitness magazine
Establishing a “Mommy and Me” fitness/educational center
Speaking in schools about fitness for children
Writing cookbooks with healthful recipes
Becoming a licensed dietician
Becoming a personal trainer
There are truly endless possibilities here. In fact, every item on the list above could be narrowed down even further. For example, this person could become a personal trainer specializing in children’s fitness, and combine that with speaking engagements and demonstrations at schools, churches and other community events. He or she could also expand later by writing and selling cookbooks geared toward existing clients. Do you see how many directions this could go?
Your own lists are also ripe with limitless possibilities – you just need to narrow down the best choice for you. How do you know which is the best choice for you? You’ll feel your creative juices start to flow! Your heart rate will speed up, your mind will start racing with neat ideas and you’ll feel excitement bubbling up from within you. When that happens, you are on the right track!
But . . . what if you still don’t know what your purpose is? What if your worksheets are blank and you have no idea what to write on them?
by White Dove Books
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