How do you find your life's work or life purpose?

Question

I believe that everybody is born to serve a purpose on this Earth. My question is: how do you find out your life's purpose? I have no direction and have been lost and bored with myself for years. I would really like to find out what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. If I were to die now I would have nothing to show for it! I need a higher calling. How do I find it?

Answer 1

What do you enjoy? There must be something that you love to do...something you're good at. Something that comes effortlessly. That's what you should be doing. We all have unique gifts. Mine are creative: painting, writing songs, singing etc. Some people are great cooks (I make Kraft dinner that's about it!) Some people are really good with money. Some have a great knack for fixing things. Some are really good with children. Whatever it is, that is your purpose. It doesn't have to be something earth-shattering. You can have a simple, quiet life & still live with purpose & be happy with your life. Search your soul. Maybe you're hiding the truth from yourself. Maybe it's right under your nose. What are your hobbies & interests? What do you enjoy? Do that! Life is pretty simple, it's too bad many of us make it so complicated. Just do what you love! That is your calling!

If you're still stuck, do some soul searching. Start writing ideas down. Take a walk in the woods. Listen to classical music. Open your mind. Maybe it will come to you. Ask yourself the question before you go to sleep & then maybe you will dream the answer. Or maybe you're just ignoring the answer that's already there because it doesn't seem "big" or "important" enough to you.

Good luck! Don't stress yourself out. Just enjoy your life. Maybe the purpose of life is just to live it, one day at a time. Just enjoy the journey...

Answer 2

Your life has grown stagnant. Time to make some changes, perhaps. Figure out what you're really interested in and seize the day, as they say. . . I went through a similar phase, until I finally decided to write books instead of just reading them. When you're bothered by a question such as this, it's a good indication that you've got too much time on your hands. And why is that? What else could you be doing? Surely "something more" as you put it.

Answer 3

According to my partner, when it comes to purpose in life all we are meant to do is be happy. He says there is no blackboard in the sky that says, 'You must do such-and-such and fulfill your destiny.' What this means is that you have a blank canvas and can do or be whatever you want.

Another train of thought is that you were born with a unique talent or gift. There are some things you enjoy, some things you hate. So if we are meant to be happy, perhaps we should be guided by our pleasure.

I looked into life purpose with my partner for years. We set up a web site about it called unstoppablelife.com . We wrote loads of articles. Perhaps these will help you.

My partner also now writes for communitysoul.co.uk . His writing is usually pretty inspirational. Maybe this will give you some ideas.

I think the best thing to say now is that you can be and do anything you wish to be. Let you guide be how much you enjoy something.

Answer 4

If you do not learn to love the moment, you will die never having lived. I think the noblest purposes are to live a good moral simple life full of fun and friends and family you really love. Why is that not a purpose?
Look at your priorities and you will find your purpose. Spend a few days in wild nature, it works for most cultures and "famous"artist writers, leaders etc
Good Luck

Answer 5

This is an exercise I read about written by Steve Pavilina:

"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 (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
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.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

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.

As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answer pops into your head as long as you just keep writing.

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.

You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry — they’re just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you’re getting warm. Keep going.

It’s important to do this alone and with no interruptions. If you’re a nihilist, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you’ll still eventually converge.

When I did this exercise, it took me about 25 minutes, and I reached my 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 my 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.

When you find your own unique answer to the question of why you’re here, you will feel it resonate with you deeply. The words will seem to have a special energy to you, and you will feel that energy whenever you read them.

Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose."

Give it a shot what you got to lose.

Answer 6

I believe that everyone's life has significance. No matter how old you are, you affect the people around you in one way or another. Just continue to be there for other people, and you'll see before your very eyes what it is you were meant to do.

Answer 7

Follow your heart. Get involved with the community. Volunteer. When you give you receive. Look for "heart-centered" work. It may not happen quickly, but live is here to experience and share.

Answer 8

If you can get paid doing what you love you will never have to work another day for the rest of your life.

Answer 9

I have no direction as of right now, im hopin the wind will take me to Italy where i live my life out

Answer 10

Simply this depends on personal interests and aptitude.