Do you believe that you are here for a reason?
Do you know the value of your life?
Do you feel a clear and inspired a sense of purpose?
Do you feel it daily, sometimes, or rarely?
Do you feel it more in your personal life, or your work life, or both?
Do you feel it in your relationships?
Do you have a vague sense that there is a purpose to everything, but you’re not sure about it all?
YOUR PURPOSE A SEVEN-DAY JOURNEY TO DISCOVERING:
- What It Means
- What Yours Is
- How to Discover It
- How to Live It
- What It Does for You
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature
is that all of us put off living?
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon
instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
— Dale Carnegie
The oldest question in the known and unknown world is: “Why am I here, and what am I here to do in contribution to mankind?”
Keywords: Why. What. Contribution. Mankind.
To answer this question, we need to understand what purpose means and how to find it.
Purpose inspires us to get out of bed, instead of rolling over, pushing the sleep button, or going back to sleep. I’m not talking about our jobs. I’m talking about our inside motivation to live, focus, be happy, and get excited.
Some believe that the reason we get out of bed is to go to work, because our jobs need us. Some disillusion themselves by claiming that they Love their jobs, when they don’t. If their colleagues don’t like the way they dress, they change their outfits. If their words lack approval or praise, they change what they say. If the time they spend on any task is too long, they take shortcuts, secretly delegate, or lie. We expect and require them to do whatever we want. Even though it might feel uncomfortable, unfair, unjust, or unproductive. They do it.
Does any of this feel familiar?
Keeping our jobs to keep a guaranteed source of money is one of the top reasons we will settle, sacrifice, or do things we don’t want to do. We do them to please someone else, to benefit someone else. We do them to fit in. We do them for a paycheck. We do them for benefits. We do them for vacations. We may believe that our purpose for keeping our jobs is to pay the bills, to provide for our lives and our family. Providing for our living and material needs is vital. Taking care of our families is important, honorable, and often necessary. However, none of these is our deeper purpose for being here.
If you think our purpose is getting through life, making enough money to retire, being good enough, proving ourselves, being accepted and included into the various “cliques” of work and personal life, or sacrificing our values and desires to benefit someone else, you have signed up for a futile and heartless journey.
The Universe created you a unique individual. Like snowflakes, no two of us are alike. You have a purpose that is yours, and yours alone. It will benefit you and others, but first you must find it. Then you must make it become real.
Don’t look to others to tell you what your purpose is. If you don’t know what your purpose is, or if you think you might have an idea but you’re not sure, here are some suggestions to help you identify it in the next seven days to help you get clear on it.
Day One-teach yourself to be still
- For the next seven days, every morning, wake up one hour early, or a minimum of a half hour early.
Take a notepad or journal and pen to a quiet spot, with no external noise or movement, preferably except nature, where you can let your mind wander, connect with your intuition, and receive information. This means no cell phone, no computer, no headphones, no music, no TV in the background, no kids, no spouse, no friends, and no coworkers nearby who can interrupt you, distract you, be in your plain of sight, see you, or enter your space.
This needs to be just the three of you — your body, your inner wisdom, and your intelligence. Most of you will struggle with being still and quiet, with not checking your phone every two minutes for a text, email, or social media update. Let that go. None of that matters for that hour or half hour.
Choose a comfortable chair, sofa, cushion, or rug. Sit in a comfortable position. Relax with your hands in your lap. Close your eyes. Center yourself. Let all the tension you feel exit its way out of your body. In your mind, do a slow count of four as you take three or four deep breaths, breathing each breath in all the way through your nose, then holding for one second, and exhaling each breath all the way out through your mouth.
After you take the deep breaths, continue breathing normally, but focus your attention on your breath by listening to your breathing. Don’t quiet your breath. Listen only to your breathing. As you breathe in, think: In with the Good. As you breathe out, think: Out with the Bad. Focus your thoughts only on the feel and the sound of your breathing and those words. You will become very relaxed, quickly. In doing this repeatedly and regularly, you are training your mind to be still, quiet, undistracted, and unstressed.
One of the many books I read says “everything you need is already here”. That means that the answers to the questions you have you already know. In this fast-paced, and LOUD times we live in you can’t hear them. This practice will allow you to learn to be still so you can hear them.
After you have been doing this for as much time as it takes for you to become very relaxed, ask your inner self—your higher mind—what you are in this life to do. Ask your inner self to show you what you need to see. Focus on your breath but listen to your higher mind.
- Be open to what comes, whether it comes quickly, easily, slowly, in symbolism, or by physical message.
Allow yourself to believe that you are being guided. Remember, you came from spirit, and are part of all that is. Every answer you need is already within you. If you can be still enough and quiet enough to listen, you will receive ideas, glimpses, hints, hunches, feelings, images, or memories.
- Don’t pressure yourself to be productive, or fast, or perfect, or complete.
Let all your “shoulds” fall away. “I should have done this, or I should have done that”. Many times, answers and information will come later, when you’re not thinking about it, when you least expect it. After about five or ten minutes, gently guide yourself back into your surroundings and present time, and slowly open your eyes.
Afterward, write any thoughts, feelings, images, ideas, glimpses, hunches, or memories that came. If you don’t feel that you received anything, know that it is on its way to you. It will come. Remember, don’t think, just write.
Day Two-Let it Flow
Today you will be continue doing the teach yourself to be still exercise from yesterday and adding to it. Remember, this is a process so don’t take shortcuts. This is your destiny, what you will do for the rest of your life.
- After your season of quiet and stillness, write what excites you.
Don’t think too hard. Feel. Then write. You find that when you are open and, in the zone, ideas and desires will flow. Like a champagne bottle that has just opened, thoughts and ideas will bubble out. Don’t control the process. Don’t put it all in order. Don’t critique it. Don’t rationalize it. Don’t judge it. Just write. Your inner spirit will tell you what you need to hear. You can put some order to it later.
- Day Three-Ask Yourself The Deep Question
Answer this question after the teach yourself to be still exercise: “If I only had one year to live, am not afraid, know that nothing will hold me back, and am guaranteed that anything I want to do will not fail, what would I do?”
This may take multiple times to complete. Repeat this exercise as often as you need to. Let yourself be honest, direct, specific, and unchained. Have fun with it. See what comes out of you than write it down.
- Day Four-Find YOUR Talent
After the teach yourself to be still exercise, write your natural talents. They are naturally yours for a reason. There is no randomness involved. List all of them, from simple to silly, nerdy to foolish, honed to rough, and everything in between. Notice how you feel as you identify and write each one that comes to you, adding to them over time, and how you feel as you look at the list you have created.
- Day Five-Find What You Are GOOD At
After the teach yourself to be still exercise do this in order. Don’t cheat. You will defeat the glory of the surprise and delight if you cheat. Write what your friends would say you are good at? Write all thoughts that come into your mind.
Afterward, ask your friends or family the question. Then, write their responses.
Are you surprised by what you hear? How do you feel? Write it down.
- Day Six-Find YOUR Calling
After the teach yourself to be still exercise, write everything that you can’t shut up about or stop thinking about.
What is something you can’t stop thinking about, reading about, talking about, writing about, wanting to do, or wanting to experience? You need to be open on this.
Don’t hold back and don’t judge or critique yourself. No one will read this but you.
This will identify your calling. A calling is identified in the Merriam Webster dictionary as “a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction of divine influence’. Is it any wonder you can’t stop thinking about it?
- Day Seven-Identify your PASSION
After the teach yourself to be still exercise, write the things you most enjoy doing, feeling, working on, experiencing, and expanding on. What are your passions great and small?
This series of exercises is powerful, especially for discovering or clarifying your passions, but what does passion mean?
Passion is the difference between having a career and having a calling.
A passion is something you can’t imagine not being in your life. It’s worth all the time, energy, and detail you go through to have it in your life. You live it, dream it, and breathe it, even if we have kept it hidden. It’s part of what makes you YOU, and if you don’t pay attention to it, you are not living your life to its full potential. You lose where it starts and you end, and vice versa.
Your passions have levels of importance to you and you categorize them into two or three highest core passions.
I’ll bet most of you would say that you have a passion or two, when, it is really a wish or desire—not a passion. A wish has a return boat, in case the going gets tough or another bright shiny object catches your attention, and you can exchange your wish, or quit.
You can discern whether someone’s passions are real when something else replaces them, or they die. Your passions will consume you, become bigger than life to you, bigger than you, and inspire your vision.
When you have identified what your highest passion is, you are ready to create the vision for what it will look like, what you will do with it, and where it will take you.
A vision is a long-range view of what you would like to do with your passion.
The vision is intentional and helps you execute your plan. This will require some work, inspired work, not willed or efforted or forced work.
Here is an example:
My Identified Passion: Helping people suffering in third world countries
My Vision: Supply sustainable wheelchairs and/or water supplies to those in need in third world countries
My 1st Attainable Goal: Supply 100 wheelchairs or water stations within 2 years
My Action Plan: Design them. Fund them. Distribute them. Etc.
When your passions meet your talents and your imagination, you will find your path to your purpose.
When you have identified your path and have a clear, written vision, a first attainable goal, and a plan, you are on your path. Your passion and vision don’t have to be worldly or grandiose, only powerfully connected to your heart, so they move you, inspire you, motivate you, and make you ready to start your day with focus, energy, and anticipation. Do whatever it takes to walk your path and create your reality.
A word of caution:
When your passion meets purpose and ignites a desire for a goal, plan, or idea, keep it to yourself in the beginning.
Life has taught most people to look for validation, support, or cheers for their passion (s) from external sources. If my friends will support me, or my family, or my pastor, or my partner, or my mentor… then I’m set; I’m fortified; I’m on the right track; I’m secure; I’m good!
When the friend, spouse, parent, child, minister, counselor, colleague, or sibling doesn’t see the vision, or share the passion, or believe in your ability, they become the naysayers, the persons who prepare for your fall and want to protect you from disappointment or failure.
After placing your excitement and dependence on their responses, your balloon deflates. You may even quit your path. When you quit, you quit on yourself. You quit on your self-belief, your ability to be self-directed and inspired.
Don’t ask for others to collaborate or support your vision. Wait until you have begun your path and manifested something that empowers you and fills you with confidence. Your passion and path are yours to follow and believe in. Do the work that your inner calling guides you to do. When you do, you are living on purpose—your PURPOSE, your vision—not anyone else’s.
Find your PURPOSE. You may not realize your PURPOSE until later in life. The age you are when you identify it has no consequence. It will come to you when you are ready, and when you discover it, you’ll know without a doubt. You’ll feel more deeply passionate about it than anything or anyone in your life.
We are at the end of our Seven-Day Journey to discovering your Passion in life. The reason you were born. Your Destiny.
During this journey you have learned:
- To Be Still and Listen to the inner voice inside of you that you might not have known you had.
- Discovered what Excites you.
- Identified what you could do if you could not fail.
- Discovered your Natural Talents.
- Identified what you are good at.
- Discovered your Calling in life.
- Found your Passion.
Don’t go to your grave with regrets. Go with a brave heart, connection with your purpose, commitment to yourself, and for appreciation for what you have been and done. This life isn’t a dress rehearsal. Your purpose is what you’re here for.
Find your purpose!
Make the rest of your life be the Best of your Life.
Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, “if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”.
Change starts with us. Like ripples in water that has a rock thrown into it. Its not the big splash that has the effect, it’s the waves it creates that makes things happen.
Thank you for allowing me to guide you on this journey. Now Go Change the World, One Person at a Time, starting with YOU.
-Joseph Binning
You ARE Enough
