6 Keys to finding your purpose
Finding your purpose is a pursuit we as humans have striven for since the beginning of time. Since the days of our creation we have continually searched for meaning in life. From the early hunter-gatherer days of finding food and shelter to procreate, to our present day of high-technology and social complexities; the simplicity of life is that we all want to find meaning. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What is consciousness and what happens when we die?
These are all questions that have been contemplated throughout the ages from great philosophers to common people alike. In this article we’re going to look at things that are keeping you from finding your purpose and ways to get you on the right track.
1. Strive to keep a humble heart in finding purpose
Do you remember when you were young and thought you knew everything about life only to be smacked down to reality as you grew older? The prideful arrogance of youth can be very painful yet be some of our best learning experiences. So often young lives are stolen away before they even get a chance to become adults for a variety of reasons that take them down a path of no return.
Much of this can be attributed to degradation of morality and promotion of a prideful ideology in our culture. This arrogant way of thinking that “we know it all” is destructive and will always lead you astray from finding your purpose. Keeping a humble heart helps protect yourself from many of the things that are causing societal decay in our culture. Being humble also keeps your heart and mind malleable so you don’t develop the arrogant pridefulness that always comes before the fall.
How do we correct the pridefulness in our lives?
This is a very difficult yet necessary first step in your journey of finding your purpose. In the Bible, it talks about fearing God is the first step to finding wisdom. As a longtime student of the Bible, this is perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts people run into when they’re trying to find purpose in their lives.
This “fear of the Lord” is not what we think of in common terms. “Fear” as we know it in common parlance breeds negativity. However, “fear” as it is meant in biblical nomenclature is an understanding of a higher power that’s so awe-inspiring that it transcends our own prideful attempts to live in ways that tend to lead us down more selfish paths. Realizing that our lives are just a speck of time in an infinitely larger consciousness is the first step in correcting our prideful human nature.
If you continue to follow paths of pride, you will always fall. This has been the downfall of civilizations since the beginning of time. While the downfall may not occur immediately, you will find yourself going down paths that lead you astray more often than not. However, once you humble yourself and realize that you don’t know everything, you can start taking those first steps in finding your purpose in your life.
2. Follow a solid moral compass
Having a solid moral compass is crucial to finding your purpose. This is one of the reasons that we need to let go of our prideful human nature. More often than not, we as humans can debase our moral compass in search of wealth, power, and social gain. Consequently, this can lead you down paths of corruption, deception, and rebellion of the natural order.
Doing what’s right even when no one is watching is one of the most important things you can do in finding your purpose
Doing what’s right isn’t always easy. Sometimes it’s downright fun to get a cheap thrill. Most of the time it’s easy to tell a little white lie. You can throw trash on the ground if no one is watching instead of throwing it in the garbage. Gossiping about coworkers or family members can be like delicious little nuggets of intrigue. Flipping someone off in traffic as they are enraged can be exhilarating.
These are just small things but eventually they lead to bigger things. They also lead to normalization and a degradation of common decency in our culture. However, each time you break your moral compass you shift your conscience in a way that leads you further away from your purpose in life.
Not listening to our conscience is a slippery slope
This can set your life on a dangerous path. As your conscience degrades, what seems to you like an atrocity one day can become perfectly normal the more and more you fall away from your moral compass. It is a degradation of the soul that has unfortunately become a very big problem in our current state of society.
Through culture and media we have glamorized a life that glorifies rebellion. This has caused an immensely dangerous shift in our moral compass as a society as a whole. Often times, young people are taught that greed and selfishness are good and they should do what makes them “feel” good regardless of how that effects others including their friends, family, and society as a whole.
It’s never too late to change course on finding your purpose
Wherever you find yourself, that’s why it’s crucial to shift the narrative to find your purpose in life. If you want to change the world, you must start in your own life to be a beacon of hope to others. You can’t take the speck of dust out of your neighbor’s eye while you got a 2×4 plank hanging out of yours. Nowadays, everyone is critical of everyone else because they’ve become convinced they know what’s best for everyone else. People have lost the concept of minding their own business! Once they do some introspective soul-searching, often times they see how very wrong they’ve been.
3. Set proactive goals that help others seek their purpose
Once you’ve begun building a solid foundation, it’s important to start setting proactive goals that help other people. Your intentions must be set on helping others without asking anything in return. Now I don’t mean you just work for free and let people walk all over you. After all, a worker is worth their wages. However, I mean that to find your purpose, the trajectory of your life path must follow in accordance with helping others.
- How do you treat other people?
- Do you just expect everyone to service you while you treat others with contempt?
- Are you more concerned with what you can get from people rather then what you can give?
- Do you hold the door for people?
- Does the world revolve around you?
- How do you treat service staff at restaurants?
- Can you give a compliment without an ulterior motive?
- Are you a person of your word?
- How are you helping the world be a better place even when nobody is looking?
- Are you generous?
- These are just little things you can do to make the world a better place to live, but little things build up into big things.
The Generosity Principle and the Law of Attraction
The more you give, the more you get back. I don’t know why this happens, but the more you adopt a generous heart, the more you receive in return. This does not mean simply giving monetary value to charity but is more in how you live your life. One example can simply be giving your full attention to your spouse instead of looking through emails on your phone. Another example can be giving your time to a charity to feed people in need.
By adopting the generosity principle you will set in motion a paradigm shift in how you view the world. Consequently, once you are aware of this you will want to be more proactive in a positive manner in how you set goals in your life. The paradigm shifts from wanting inherently selfish things like money, fame, power for the sake of personal gain, but rather towards a servant’s attitude because you realize your life becomes more fulfilling. Extraordinarily, this will guide you on the right path to finding your purpose in life.
4. Expect the unexpected and don’t get distracted from finding your purpose
Expect that finding your purpose is a lifelong process. It’s inevitable that life will throw you curveballs that you need to deal with on a situational basis. This is why it’s so important to build yourself on a solid foundation so when the storms of life come your way you’ve built your house on solid bedrock instead of sand that washes away with the rising tides.
Sometimes these storms are out of your control and other times they are self-inflicted. It’s important to be able to be introspective in how you may have contributed to the problems in your live. More importantly, you need to be able to lick your wounds, regroup, find your baseline, learn from your mistakes, and grow into an elevated version of your former self.
Don’t give up on finding your purpose!
The one thing you cannot do is to allow yourself to spiral into into a mental health crisis of depression, despair, regret, and a falling away from your baseline purpose. It’s incredibly important to not give up when you’re hit with adversity. Recognize that adversity is part of the process, and henceforth, you can now use adversity to your advantage when it eventually occurs in your life.
Like seed growing on shallow soil, so many people start shifting their worldview in a positive direction, but get hit by their first challenge, so they just give up. When this happens it creates a cascading effect of problems as they backslide into their old way of life that was unfulfilling and steeped with dissatisfaction. This creates fearful, angry, bitter, and hateful people. They have given up on finding their purpose and have devoted themselves to spreading their unhappiness to others. As they say, “misery loves company”, and that’s 100% true.
Beware of social media, cultural, and political shifts
Unfortunately, with the advent of social media, more and more people today find themselves in this predicament. They see everyone’s highlight reel and inadvertently wind up seeing their own lives as failures. This perpetuates a rabbit hole of jealousy, envy, desperation, fear and eventual destruction. The wailing and gnashing of teeth becomes their everyday reality as they become obsessed with causing pain in all aspects of their life.
How to correct yourself if you find ourselves in this predicament
Break the cycle! If this happens to you, it’s imperative to take personal inventory immediately! Lay it out on paper what’s causing you to devolve and stray away from finding your purpose in life. Most of the times these things have overtaken our true purpose in life and have become detrimental addictions. Whether it be quitting a substance (i.e. drugs, alcohol), deleting social media, not watching the news, staying away from certain people; you must take action. As you fall deeper and deeper in this hole, the harder it will be to climb out of it and correct yourself.
Replace the addictions that are causing you harm with the things you know are beneficial to your life. When you feel yourself becoming triggered, remove them from your life to find introspection and clarity. Personally, vigorously exercising is my all-time favorite way to clear my mind. The endorphins and dopamine release are an excellent release and have an incredibly positive effect on helping anxiety, depression, and despair. Other ways to change course are:
- Exercise is my favorite
- prayer/meditation
- talking with a trusted friend or loved one (not someone who will be a detriment in fueling your issues)
- getting out in nature and feeling the sun on your face
- cooking a good meal
- reading an uplifting book
- speaking with a professional to guide you out of your malaise
These tactics are all well and good, but the most important step is to identify what’s causing your problems and stopping the cause immediately.
5. Realize that everything happens for a reason
Now that you’ve gotten back on track and dealt with any issues that were causing you problems, it’s important to realize that that specific problem happened to you because that’s where you need to grow in your life. Often times we go through specific hardships so we can help others on our life path. It may not be immediately, and you need time to heal and work out the issues, but identifying the tides of life are crucial in finding our purpose in life.
Situational Alchemy and turning a negative into a positive
There are countless ways people perceive problems in their lives. What is absolutely devastating to one person can be no big deal to another. We are all created with such a diverse range of emotions, thoughts, and experiences. It’s incredibly important to recognize and develop situational awareness in ourselves as well as in other people.
Take a minute and write down some of things you thought were absolutely devastating at the time. Do you still feel that way or do they seem trivial now? How did you evolve and grow from that experience? Perhaps you’re going through something incredibly difficult at the moment. What are some ways you can use this difficult experience to transform it into a good experience?
Be patient in weathering the storm
Perhaps you’re going through a crisis and it seems like the world is falling all around you. Here’s some examples of some common very difficult life situations:
- someone close to you has passed away
- lost all your money in the stock market or crypto
- found yourself in a dead-end job you hate
- the bank is foreclosing on your home or business
- separation with a spouse
- unresolved ideological and political differences with your spouse and loved ones
- children you can’t connect with however hard you try
- loss of a job and panic of the future
I can go on and on with different examples. However, the point I’m trying to make is you must be patient and steadfast knowing this too shall pass.
Will you backslide or continue finding your purpose?
Life-changing issues such as these make the trivial problems of your life seem infinitely smaller by comparison. It doesn’t matter who’s President, the annoying coworker you can’t stand, or the squabbling with family; these issues fall by the wayside and just aren’t important anymore . Undoubtedly, your life will change for better or worse depending on how you handle them. Will you spiral into negative thought and action, or grow and build a stronger character? This is why it’s important to mentally and spiritually prepare for potentialities because these are common in this day of turmoil and social upheaval.
Be patient and allow yourself to be fully present. This will allow you to navigate the storm and come out the other side to solidify an even stronger foundation and character.
6. Do all things with love
Love is patient and kind. Love embodies all the fruits of living a good life. If you can understand the concept of embracing the world with love in all that you do, then you have found the secret to life. Alternatively, living without love is not living at all. We must embody love to the fullest with all of our mind, body, and soul!
I’m not necessarily speaking about romantic love, but more of an abundance of a loving spirit. Peacefulness, tranquility, compassion, honor, happiness, joy, kindness, and self-control are all born out of love. If you exude these qualities in your character you will attract an abundance more. However, if you embody a spiteful, fearful, angry, jealous, bitter, isolating, rebellious, and hateful heart; you will be given more of that. This is a spiritual truth that whoever has will be given more of what you create in the world.
In conclusion
Stay steadfast as you continue to find your purpose in life. Like I said before, this is a lifelong process. It’s inevitable you will backslide and you will make gains. You will feel the waxing and waning of grief and joy, so embrace it because that’s the human experience. Recognize the events in your life for what they are and always try to learn and grow from whatever life throws at you.
Don’t be lukewarm and be passionate about your purpose in life. Stay vigilant and don’t get distracted by trivialities that are meaningless in helping you grow into the person you were meant to be. By following these six keys you embody a zest for life that shines a light in the darkness for everyone to see. You will be a beacon of hope that we all need, so go on out there and follow the narrow path. Peace!
Thanks for this article all to often we forget the most important things in life! I try to remember all we need to know to live a good life we learned in kindergarten. Be kind, share and do your best 😊