Choosing a Life Purpose
I gave a lot of lip service to life purposes in my last post. Are they really all that they’re cracked up to be? Well, if you want as much motivation as possible with the least amount of work before-hand, they can be. Of course, once you have that motivation, it’s time to look forward to a lot of work afterwards, because a life purpose isn’t a decision to be made lightly.
What is a life purpose? Simply put, it’s something that you decide to focus your life on. If you believe in a deity, then maybe your deity of choice gave you that purpose. If you’re agnostic or atheistic, then your life purpose would be one of your own choosing. Everybody can have a life purpose if they set out to find one. Even if you don’t expect to follow a purpose, finding one is a greatly rewarding experience, that will help bring about motivation that you may never have known that you could have.
Best of all, the motivation is all focused. You aren’t running around doing several different things, feeling like you’re a hamster on a wheel. Rather, you know exactly what you want out of life, and how to get there.
Does it matter if you actually achieve your purpose? Not really. It certainly would be nice if I were able to single-handedly bring true and lasting peace to the world, but I don’t expect that, or even a fraction of that. My idea of success is bringing peace to one other person, and if I have time afterwards, then I’ll bring peace to someone else. Hopefully, along the way, I’ll also impress upon those others how to bring peace to still more people, who will in turn learn how to spread peace to even more people. Maybe I’m just an idealist, but at least peace is a worthy ideal.
Now that I have a life purpose, I’m motivated to stay alive and to gather and use the resources necessary for me to accomplish my goal. I’m not gathering money so that I can live in a comfortable house and drive an expensive car, though I know my wife certainly wouldn’t mind if I did. I’m gathering money so that I can have enough shelter to live, transportation when it is needed, and a place to put the web server that I’m hosting this site from. (Right now, the server is also my main computer sitting somewhere between my living room and kitchen, but that will be changing shortly to a more reliable server on a more reliable connection in my bedroom. 
) Food is also somewhat important to a person’s life purpose, since a person has to live to accomplish their goals, right?
One main thing that I’m motivated to do is to write in this blog. I’m running off the assumption that as more people pursue personal development, they become more peaceful, so when I help people to find peace in their own lives, I’m achieving my purpose. Don’t tell anyone this, but I’m also motivated to go over to Steve Pavlina’s site and give him some ad revenue, even though I don’t pay attention to his ads, since Steve’s purpose aligns very well with mine. If I can help him to write more articles by giving him a few pennies a day, and he continues to write about personal development, then I’m helping to spread peace. I also plan on being very active on his message board once it pops up, and will try to become a moderator. It doesn’t take direct action to work on your purpose, and often times, direct action is more limiting than using technology to the same means. Which is better, giving a speech to a dozen people every once in a while, or telling hundreds of people, potentially even thousands of people through the internet? If someone forgets part of my speech, it might be difficult for them to find me again so that I can refresh them, but through the internet, if someone forgets something, they can just come back to the site and refresh their memory themselves. I can’t help everybody directly, but people will spread the word, act nice to others by being a good example, and those who don’t have access to the internet will still be affected.
So the question is, how do we choose our life purpose? There are several methods, and it largely depends on the individual as to which method is faster. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that you will know that it is your life purpose if it brings tears to your eyes.
If you are ready for a life purpose right now, then you can find it in about twenty minutes. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, grab a paper and pencil, or bring up a blank document on your computer, and start writing a list of things that you think could be your purpose. At first, you probably won’t feel anything, but as you keep writing your list, you’ll notice that certain topics keep popping up, or certain things give you a tinge of teary-eyed-ness (is there an actual word for that concept?), but you won’t quite cry. If this happens, keep dancing around the concepts, writing variations to it, either listing it in a more global sense, or a more personal sense.
If you can’t get your life purpose in twenty minutes, don’t stress out; very few people actually get their life purpose in the first sitting. Just take a break for a few hours or a couple days and keep the question in the back of your mind. When you feel ready, start up another list and give it another go. Also, be aware that your purpose might come to you when you aren’t thinking about it, as was the case with me. This may be a quick and dirty explanation of one of the more common processes, but it really is as simple as that.
Another way is to meditate. Meditation isn’t a short cut, in this case; you still have to do a lot of searching, going down blind alleys, etc., before you find your life purpose, but you have the advantage of being able to talk to your sub-conscious self (see Anima over at DruidJournal) and you can have a visual, and sometimes full-sensory representation of your life purpose to fall back on if you ever need it. If you are already good at meditation, give this method a try, and you’ll be very pleased with the results. Again, if you don’t find your life purpose in the first session, don’t stress out about it.
Of course, I’m not saying to take my word for it… Turn it into a 30 day experiment. Find a purpose, and for the next month, follow it. If your life doesn’t improve, go ahead and drop it. Also remember, the point isn’t to achieve your purpose, it is to follow your purpose, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results on the outside.
The key point to remember is that when you identify your life purpose, it will make you cry.
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