Why Knowing Your Life’s Purpose is Important
You might feel that holding down a job, getting ahead, and taking care of your family is enough, without worrying about your life’s purpose. But taking the time to work out your calling in life is not a luxury or escapism, it is important for helping you live a more meaningful and successful life.
Think about it. What do you want? Chances are you don’t want to be doing the same thing, facing the same issues, in twenty years’ time, right? Humans are hard-wired to find purpose in what they’re doing. They look for fulfillment in their lives. And finding your life purpose can help you define and achieve your life goals. Here are some good reasons to do the work and find your calling.
- You will unlock your potential
I suspect you want to be your best possible you. How will you know who that person is and what they’re capable of unless you know your life purpose?
Discovering and aligning with your calling means you identify and build on your talents. What is your passion? What do you love doing? Chances are you’re already good at it. Why not focus on your natural gifts and turn them into your greatest strengths?
- You will create opportunities
By working out your life purpose, you open yourself to more opportunities than you could have imagined. When you begin living intentionally, you’ll find that your whole mindset changes. You see the right direction to take, and you allow synchronicity to work its magic.
If you feel doubtful about this, think back to times in your life where things just seemed to ‘fall into place’ or you were in the right place at the right time. Practice saying yes to the things that feel good and see where that energy takes you.
- You will have an impact on the world
You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’ That starts with deciding to find and align with your life’s purpose. Choose to do what matters to you, what makes you feel good, and you will change things for the better.
In living a life aligned with your values and purpose, you can’t help but have a positive impact on the world whether it’s in your family, neighborhood, or your city. And in living your purpose you will be an inspiration to others, you will have started a chain of positive impacts!
Tips for Finding Your Purpose Later in Life
If you are retired, or even just past the first flush of your career, you might think you’ve missed the boat on finding purpose in your life. The truth is you’re probably in a better position than ever really to work out what matters, and what you want out of life. And even better, you’re likely to have all the skills you need to focus on your life’s purpose and go for it!
Here are tips to get you started.
- Set your mindset
The first thing to do is to declutter your mind of all the preconceptions others have put there about what is and isn’t possible. No matter what your age, you can always choose to make your life different.
Society tends to bundle anyone over a certain age into the beige cardigan, stay-at-home, cautious slot but you certainly don’t have to accept that. Warren Buffett is eighty-eight years old and still one of the most successful business people. Picasso didn’t retire into senescence but painted until he dropped aged ninety-two. Look around you and see that some of the most energetic, passionate people are older than the conventional retirement age.
- Work out your heart’s desire
Do some work really to find out what you want. Take the money and social expectations out of the equation and dream big. Do you want to sail around the world? Lead art tours of Europe? Branch out into art or writing or wellness? Become a yoga teacher. Learn an instrument or join a choir. Do some brainstorming and work out what makes your heart sing.
- Plan and strategize
Approach this as you have many times before as a project. That is good advice for anyone, but the advantage of age and experience is that you know what to do. Having worked out your big goal, sit down and work out what you need to get there.
What skills do you already have? What training or courses might you need? Whether it’s writing that novel or retraining for a new career, take the time to plot out a plan of action and a timeframe. Set some milestones and allocate resources and you’re off!
No matter what your age, taking the time to sit back and find your life’s purpose has been shown to have real benefits for people’s mental and physical health. Purposeful adults live longer and healthier lives and deal better with stress, whether it’s a career change, a new passion, or sharing your life skills through volunteering.
Three Easy Ways To Practice Perseverance Each Day
Perseverance is one of those life skills or traits that will serve you well throughout life. We all face challenges on a regular basis and have times in our lives when it’s important to be able to persevere. It’s not something you want to practice when the going gets tough. Instead, it’s something you want to work on regularly so you’re good at persevering when you hit a rough patch.
Establish A Routine
A great way to get in the habit of perseverance is to start with a few simple tasks and then practicing them daily. I am of course talking about a routine. Think about your day and your week and the tasks you have to do regularly. This could be at work or at home, or even better, both. Come up with a regular routine and get in the habit of following it without fail. Not only will it be great to practice perseverance, but it will also make your life easier and help you get more done.
Make A To-Do List
For anything that doesn’t fall into your daily and weekly routines, create to-do lists. Start the night before and list anything and everything you need to get done the next day. Add to your list throughout the day as needed and cross off the things you get done. Do what you can to get through your list each day.
While finishing each task on your list isn’t always an option, don’t get in the habit of putting things off just because you don’t feel like doing them. Get done what you can and transfer the rest to tomorrow’s list.
Exercise
You know you should exercise regularly. Here’s one more great reason to motivate you to get it done. Use the habit of getting some form of exercise each day as an “exercise” (pun intended) in perseverance. What a great way to multi-task and accomplish two important things at once. As an added bonus the exercise will help you stress less and increase your focus to get through your routine and your daily to-do list.
As with almost anything else in life, practice makes perfect. As mentioned earlier, you don’t want to find yourself in a position of needing to be good at perseverance. Instead, practice now, get good at it and you’ll be ready for whatever life throws at you. As an added bonus you’ll find yourself living a fuller and more satisfying life and of course all that daily exercise is good for your health too. If that’s not a win-win situation, I don’t know what is.
Tenacity & Perseverance Are Vital Virtues
Let’s talk about tenacity and perseverance. In this day and age, they are quickly becoming virtues that are being more and more neglected. Whereas hard work and sticking to your guns were viewed as something desirable in days gone by, today anything demanding and strenuous is frowned upon. We whine and complain when things get hard. We’re looking for the easy button and are usually able to find it. More often than not, the easy way out is simply to give up and do something else.
As we’re losing our ability to be tenacious and persevere we’re losing out on a lot of good that comes from these vital virtues. We don’t feel the pride that comes with hard-earned success. We aren’t as productive and have gotten much better at distracting ourselves. We don’t get the huge boost in self-confidence one gets from accomplishing a seemingly insurmountable task. Could this be part of the reason we’re seeing more cases of depression? It’s possible. Feeling self-worth is an important part of being happy and fulfilled in life.
The big question then is what can we, as individuals, do to bring back these vital virtues of tenacity and perseverance? Start by practicing tenacity yourself on a daily basis. Get better at it and stop being distracted or giving up as much. Start small and keep working at it and getting better at it. Learn to persevere when things get hard and do them anyway. Set an example for those around you. Trust me, they will start to notice.
In addition to setting a good example, share perseverance and tenacity with those around you. If you’re a parent, make it a point to teach your children. Make seeing tasks through to the end a requirement in your house. You’re teaching your kids important life skills that will serve them well throughout school and adulthood.
Influence those around you. Require tenacity and perseverance when you work with others, teach them, or have them work for you. Practice tenacity and perseverance and expect the same from those around you. As they start to notice the many benefits that come from this, they will hopefully start to practice it more and ideally pass it on to others as well.
Don’t be afraid to speak out when you see someone giving up too soon or getting distracted too easily. Tenacity and Perseverance are vital virtues that are worth bringing back. Do your part and watch your own life and that of those around you change for the better. You may not be able to change the popular culture all by yourself, but you can change the culture of your family, your business, your workplace, and your own small community for the better.
Easy Steps for Finding Your Passion
Are you trying to find your passion in your life? If so, you are not alone, many people are attempting to this every day. So why is it so difficult to recognize what your true passion is?
It really isn’t that difficult to identify your passion, one easy way to do this is to ask yourself some questions. Let’s take a look at a few examples here.
What do you do outside of work? This should give you a good insight into what your hobbies and interests are.
What one thing do you do whenever you get the chance? This will identify those things that you feel more passionate about.
What makes you feel excited? This is normally associated with those things that you are good at. Mainly your talents and your gifts.
What makes you feel more confident? You may find that talking, writing, singing, or art makes you feel this way. Again these are things that you know you are good at, therefore you feel confident. You don’t have to think twice about doing them.
What would you do if you weren’t earning money from it? Again this signifies your passions. You aren’t in it for the money, you truly love doing it and just want to spend your spare time enjoying yourself with this task.
What one thing or item would you like to change in the world? Your answer here could be a multitude of things including providing better drinking water. Helping underprivileged children or helping stop an animal from becoming extinct.
What do you do in your spare time? You probably spend time developing one of your hobbies or talents. You may spend this time writing, creating music, or exercising.
What makes you smile? All those things that make you smile are things that you love and enjoy doing. Of course, it doesn’t have to be an item. Spending time with your grandchildren or visiting a senior’s home can be other things that put a smile on your face.
Go through this list and start writing down your answers. From here you want to see if there is one thing that gets repeated again and again. If so, chances are that this is your passion. That one thing that you love to do, or want to do whenever you can.
Your next step is to simply start making time for it, and yes you can if you truly want to.
Find a Passion That Makes You Happy
Finding a passion in life is one of the most important links in the circle of happiness. If you’ve ever felt passion for something, you know how it put a smile on your face and a skip in your steps. It’s a feeling that lifts your spirits and increases your energy level tenfold.
While finding passion doesn’t tick off all the boxes of things that will make you happy, it can add hours of satisfaction and joy to your day. Your passion may not be another person’s passion, but when it satisfies your needs and lifts your mood, it’s worth pursuing no matter how others view it.
Whether your passion is dancing or reading, finding time to pursue it each day, or whenever you can bring stellar moments of happiness to your life and widen and satisfy the other areas of happiness such as self-esteem and socialization.
It may not have occurred to you that having a passion would bring you happiness because you’ve always thought of it as having “things.” A new car, home, lots of money, and other luxuries are what come to mind when people think of “having it all” for complete happiness.
You may be surprised to learn that happiness also includes other areas in your life such as good relationships, a great career path, humor, and love. Happiness is actually composed of links in a circle – each must be satisfied to complete the circle and bring you the happiness you’re searching for.
Your passion won’t suddenly appear or be clear to you in a moment. You may have already brought a passion into your life and don’t realize it yet. It could be a hobby that makes you happy when you spend time enjoying it.
Maybe you volunteered at a clinic, animal rescue center, or soup kitchen and felt such a sense of happiness with what you were doing – but it didn’t occur to you to see it as a passion.
A passion can truly transform your life and help you realize who you are and what you were meant to do. But, do it for yourself and not an eventual payoff. You can get much satisfaction in learning to play the piano in your 80s, but may never see yourself as becoming a concert pianist. Just sitting and play some favorite tunes for yourself can boost your happiness and your self-confidence.
Your passion doesn’t have to be something you’re certified for or good at. You can be happy with a passion that’s for your pleasure – and yours only. No one else has to understand it. As long as it makes you happy.
GO DO IT!
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