Everyone wants to find a purpose, but it seems like most ofus do not fully understand what all that entails. Or that it takes effort and time to fully grasp what finding your purpose truly means. Finding your purpose involves many steps, that you overall will find beneficial to your life.
Although the term may sound cliché, finding your purpose in life is much more than finding your career path or building a family. It seems today that society has deemed the word “purpose” to brag or show your Facebook friends how successful you are. As nice as that may sound or look to others, that truly does not fulfill that satisfaction that we are looking for in life. But the thing is, that is okay, finding your purpose is a journey, and sometimes that journey might take a left turn that you were not planning on. That is expected. We are human.
Finding your purpose starts with yourself and is specific to you and your own life. Just like a fingerprint, it is different for each person. Now you may be wondering, okay this is great but please tell me where to begin, I feel stuck! Now I challenge you to ask yourself this question, “What am I here for, and why?” It is scary I know but take a second and really ponder that question.
There is no universal manual with steps telling you how to find your very own purpose in life, but I can surely provide you with building blocks. Take a second to declutter your brain. Sometimes our minds start to feel overwhelming. To help declutter I am going to challenge you to complete a few steps.
• Put the phone down! Try and create
space away from your device for at least
a week.
• During this time, I encourage you to
make a list every dayof the things that
you are unsatisfied with, no matter how
big or small they may be.
• Take some time away from your normal
routine to really process these issues
and understand the root cause of them.
Now I want you to focus on that little voice inside your head leading you through life. Listen to what it says and the decision it encourages you to make. You may see that this voice, leads you to a purpose you were cautious of following. We forget to trust our own intuition sometimes and that begins to lead us away from our true purpose that will end up making us content and fulfilled.
Next, I want you to think back to when you were a kid, when becoming an astronaut was something most of us did not even think twice about. Now pretend you are back in that mindset and listen to all the aspirations your mind craves. What YOU want in life, not what our parents recommend, not what the news says is best, but what you truly believe you can do.
The tricky part is our minds may go only to aspirations we see for our future selves but not the present. The present is something we never want to leave out, because quite frankly, in a lot of situations it is more important than our lives let’ssay, five years from now. Make a list each day of all the short-term goals you would like to accomplish that day and strive to complete them all. The same thing can be done for long-term goals as well, you would just space out your accomplishments and hard work in a longer time frame.
Lastly, get out of your primitive brain! Our primitive brainis the part of our brains that would help our ancestors survive the harsh conditions they faced. It helps with our decision-making. Nowadays, although it is still useful, there is less need for the primitive part of our brains, since clearly our lifestyles are much different. Now, it allows us to create a buffer quickly and easily procrastinate in life. I encourage you to follow what you want in life and those goals that may seem too big or scary to reach. Because a lot of the time those fears stem from our primitive brain telling us we cannot obtain them.
All in all, I want you all to practice working on your improving your self-esteem and creating short and long-termgoals for yourself. You set your own limits in life, not others. Look at the bigger picture and ask yourself what I can do now and in the future that will truly make me feel a sense of fulfillment and joy. Finding your purpose does not happen overnight, but you can start right now.