Find Your Purpose in a Few Minutes With a Few Questions

Toronto Mindful Solutions Clinic

It’s not easy to figure out how to spend the rest of your life. But, it doesn’t have to be extremely challenging either. By asking yourself a few, simple questions, you can learn enough about yourself to figure it all out. There may not be a 100% perfect answer, but you can figure out a great answer in a short amount of time.

 

What are you meant to do?

Consider these questions to help you determine your purpose:

1. What am I interested in? These can be things you like to do, learn about, and think about. What activities cause you to lose track of time? Make a list of your 10 favourite activities. Now, think of ways you can make a living in a related way. For example:

• If you love teaching, there are many ways to instruct others. You could be an actual teacher, a personal trainer, teach meditation classes, or be a sports coach.
• Do you love sports? Think coach, athletic trainer, gym teacher, and so on.

2. What do I want to learn more about? Is there a topic that fascinates you so much that you spend your free time learning more about it? You might be fascinated with astronomy or inventing a better mousetrap. What really piques your interest?

3. What am I naturally good at? Ideally, you can find something that you love that you also have a natural talent for. What are some things you do better than the average person? Make another list.

4. What did I want to do when I was a child? What did you dream about being when you were growing up? Sometimes your first ideas are the best ideas. Think about your childhood dreams and ask yourself why you chose that field. You might get a few clues.

5. What are my values? What is most important to you? Adventure? Helping others? Personal development? Overcoming challenges? Your purpose has to be aligned with your values.

6. What is my gut telling me? There’s a time for logic and reason. This might not be one of those times. Sometimes, the best choice doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense. What is your soul trying to tell you? Listen.

7. Why? Why does a particular field appeal to me? If you understand that, you can find other options that might be more suitable to you. Supposed you have an interest in being a physician. Make a list of why that appeals to you:

• Help people
• Intellectually challenging
• Avoid an office environment
• Get respect from family and the general public
• Financially rewarding: Have nice things and retire early

Now… Ask yourself what else you could do that would meet those needs of yours. For example, you could volunteer on the weekend, you could learn to speak Mandarin, and you could become a successful real estate investor.

8. Choose. Making a choice can be scary. But if you’ve narrowed down your options, it’s hard to make a poor choice. Making no choice at all ensures that your life stays stuck.

It can be unsettling if you don’t know what to do with your life. So, spend a little time with yourself and figure it out. It’s important to make a decision, because the cost of never deciding is significant. Look to your values and preferences and you’ll find a life path that appeals to you. All it takes is asking yourself a few pertinent questions.

Are You Following Your Own Path, or Someone Else’s?

It’s not easy to find your way through the world. You might have interests that don’t coincide with the values of your parents or with those of western society. It’s important to remember that everyone is different, and while the status quo might work for the majority of the population, it doesn’t work for everyone.

To have a truly fulfilling life, you must live it on your own terms. There are plenty of forces willing to tell you what your path should be:

1. Parents. Your parents want you to be happy and successful. They love you, and they want you to thrive and blossom. Many of them may also like to be able to brag to their friends about their children. 🙂  Most parents tend to be practical in their advice. Just remember that you’d have a similar life to them if you always followed their advice. That might be good or bad. Keep in mind that you are not the same as your parents. You also have your own life to live. You owe it to yourself to live a life that’s right for YOU.
2. Educational system. The educational system wants to turn out productive people into society that conform to their ways of thinking. This might be great for society, but it might not always be in your best interests. What if you want to be a rockstar, or take a few years to travel and write a book, own an alpaca farm, or become a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka? Your school guidance counsellor might be less than supportive of such pursuits!
3. Society as a whole. We, in the Western world, live in a society that places a strong value on achievement, financial resources, and personal possessions. We’re supposed to get married to a “perfect” partner, have a few kids, and own a house in the suburbs. It’s natural to want to play that game because we’ve all been so deeply indoctrinated to view these as measures of a “successful” life, even if it doesn’t quite suit our true nature. It’s nice to have the admiration of society, our ego minds crave this type of recognition. But the type of life dictated by society isn’t alwaysa good fit for everyone. There are plenty of people that are highly successful by society’s criteria that are profoundly unhappy with how their lives turned out. 

Toronto Mindful Solutions Clinic

 

As you can see, plenty of people are willing to influence your choice of lifestyle and career. But it’s unlikely that their advice will be optimal for you all the time. Be an individual and find the path that works best for you. Find and follow your own path with these strategies:

1. Ask yourself what you really want to do. Don’t say that you don’t know, because you do know. You’re just afraid to allow it to see the light of day. You might be concerned what others think, or you might be afraid that you’re not capable of doing it. Deep down, if you turned inward and listened to the whispers in your heart, you know what you want. Ask yourself what you would do if you could do anything, and then listen to the answer.
2. Decide that you’re going to follow your path. One of the biggest obstacles to success is failing to make a true decision. A decision only occurs when you shut yourself off to other possibilities. If you frequently change your mind, you’re not making true decisions.
3. Make a plan. Rome wasn’t built in a day. So set up a schedule of daily tasks that will bring you closer to living the life that you have chosen. In doing so, you’re practically guaranteed success provided you don’t give up.

Your life is your responsibility. If you find yourself stuck living someone else’s definition of success, you’ll find yourself unhappy. The people that influenced you to live this way will be off living their own best lives. Take control of your destiny and find your own path. Your life will be more interesting, more satisfying, and uniquely your own!