The only way to truly live and not just survive every day going through the motions, is to discover your true purpose in life. Living on purpose feels alive, clear, and authentic. You may also experience “flow,” which is a state of total absorption in which time seems to disappear and you feel content and fulfilled.
Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life—the reasons you get up in the morning.
Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. Purpose will be unique for everyone; what you identify as your path may be different from others. What’s more, your purpose can actually shift and change throughout life in response to the evolving priorities and fluctuations of your own experiences.
Questions to reflect on and answer to discover your life purpose are:
Who am I?
Where do I come from?
Where am I going?
Richard Leider, a nationally-ranked coach and purpose expert, says that “genuine purpose points to the end of a self-absorbed, self-serving relationship to life.” When your authentic purpose becomes clear, you will be able to share it with the whole world.
Our life can be seen as a nautilus that adds new chambers to its shell as it grows and needs more space. Likewise, as people grow into a different phase of life, their old chambers can feel cramped. They begin to ask what they can do to expand their space.
Moving into new chambers opens up the way for new possibilities to emerge, allowing our life purpose to evolve. But this can also prompt physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual transitions and even sometimes a chaotic period as we begin to ask new questions.
This is the secret to a fully alive life: to reframe our life questions over and over.
