Summary
Do you have a bigger purpose for your life? Life is better when you have a purpose that goes beyond your own material needs. Living for a higher purpose goes beyond a relationship or a career. It is a reason to be passionate about life, a reason to get up in the morning. It is something to contribute to the world and something that gives you immense satisfaction. It is the kind of thing you want to be remembered for when you die. This does not have to be something massive or earth changing or even particularly charitable. It just has to be something that you are living for beyond your immediate circumstances.
Objective
Anybody can live for a greater cause. We are all great in our own way. It makes you passionate and inspiring. It makes you interesting. Most of all it makes life more fun and worth living. Living a purpose driven and goal driven life is more exciting that sleep walking through life. You can shape the direction and shape the purpose rather than living on someone else’s whim.
How do you discover your real purpose? I’m not talking about your job, your daily responsibilities, or even your long-term goals. I mean the real reason why you’re here at all — the very reason you exist. If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false purposes you’ve been taught (including the idea that you may have no purpose at all).
So how to discover your purpose in life?
While there are many ways to do this, some of them fairly involved, here is one of the simplest that anyone can do. The more open you are to this process and the more you expect it to work, the faster it will work for you. But not being open to it or having doubts about it or thinking it’s an entirely idiotic and meaningless waste of time won’t prevent it from working as long as you stick with it — again, it will just take longer to converge.
Here’s what to do:
1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type.
2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.
For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.
At some point during the process (typically after about 50-100 answers), you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel the urge to get up and make an excuse to do something else. That’s normal. Push past this resistance, and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass.
When the author did this exercise, it took about 25 minutes; and reached his final answer at step 106. Partial pieces of the answer (mini-surges) appeared at steps 17, 39, and 53, and then the bulk of it fell into place and was refined through steps 100-106. I felt the feeling of resistance (wanting to get up and do something else, expecting the process to fail, feeling very impatient and even irritated) around steps 55-60. At step 80 I took a 2-minute break to close my eyes, relax, clear my mind, and to focus on the intention for the answer to come to me — this was helpful as the answers I received after this break began to have greater clarity. Here was the author’s final answer: to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace.
One alternative thought associated with purpose was even simpler:
In response to the question, What should I do with my life? There might be only one thing you can do with it, since you came into this life with nothing and you’ll leave with nothing: You can give it away. You’ll feel most on purpose when you’re giving your life away by serving others. When you’re giving to others, to your planet, and to your God, you’re being purposeful. Whatever it is that you choose to do, if you’re motivated to be of service to others while being authentically detached from the outcome, you’ll feel on purpose, regardless of how much abundance flows back to you.
Bible Readings
Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
2. Matthew 6:25-33
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Catechism Readings
1. Paragraph 303
The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history. The sacred books powerfully affirm God’s absolute sovereignty over the course of events: “Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.”162 And so it is with Christ, “who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens.”163 As the book of Proverbs states: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.”164
Small Group Questions
1. Have you thought about your ‘Bigger Purpose’ in life?
2. Where does God and the Church fit into your Purpose?
3. Have you talked about this with your wife?
4. How are you being ‘of service’ to others?
Recommended Resources
1. How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/
2. Live For A Purpose Bigger Than Yourself
http://www.thechangeblog.com/live-for-a-purpose-bigger-than-yourself/
3. 5 Steps That Reveal Your Life’s Purpose
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/douglas-labier/life-purpose_b_1830154.html
4. How to find your life’s purpose
http://www.wikihow.com/Find-Your-Life’s-Purpose
Accountability
1. Can you consider doing this purpose exercise this week?
2. Can you partner up with a member of your small group to share the results of the exercise?
Author
Rich DelCore Aug – 2013