If You Know How To Find Your Purpose, You'll Never Wonder "What If?"

“I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw (shoot), he's up!” Steve Maraboli

"If I could do it over again, if I had another chance I would..." The lament of so many of us who wish we had another opportunity as we look at our lives. All of us in the editorial room have felt this and wondered? And we know of others who have the same thoughts. In this page we'll share some easy to initiate actions setting you on the path to understand how to find your purpose.

As with all of our pages, we're coming at this from personal experience all the while recognizing that some folks are satisfied with every part of their lives and wouldn't change a thing. For those who do wonder, we'll give you some ideas that have worked before and will work for you too.

We gave you a brief glimpse into part of our history in our introductory page about purpose in life, and as promised will share some ways to help you find your own purpose which could be something big or it could be a simple thing like peaceful moments enjoying life. No one can tell you what it is, but we can help you find it.

How To Find Your Purpose

The easiest first step in the process of how to find your purpose is to see yourself in that first sentence. Think of yourself as at that point in your life when you are looking back and wondering. "If I could do it over again, if I had another chance I would..." We'll get to more action type steps soon, but begin with the first and most important part in the process.

What is that you would do if you knew you couldn't fail? What is it that is most important to you, that stirs the deepest passion inside you? What is bigger than yourself?

Chances are whatever you see in your mind lines up with your core values. Here's the thing and there isn't any getting around it. If we don't have our own core values, we will be living someone else's core values. We've tried to write these pages in some sort of progression which is why one of our first pages was about our three core values. Those three values keep us aligned and on track. Without them, it's easy to wander through life, wasting time as the relentless clock ticks along at the same, consistent beat.

As you think of these goals, dreams, whatever causes you to feel inspired, ask yourself a couple more questions. Is this something you really enjoy? Do you have the skills to pull it off or are you willing to gain new skills to make it work? In our editorial room we are blessed to have different skills and personality types that allow us to utilize multiple abilities that none of us have solely to ourselves. But the core values line up and we are passionate about our purpose in life.

We had to ask ourselves a couple more questions. You will too as you work on how to find your purpose. Are you able to handle the tough days that will come up? There will be some. How much struggle will you be willing to tolerate? Depending on how big you see your purpose, you will probably also have to be willing to fail, to be criticized. Failure isn't so bad. It just tells you what didn't work so you can course correct.

Speaking, or writing in this case, about course correcting, here's one last question. What childhood dream or passion was lost as an adult? It happens to most of us. We develop habits that distract from our core values or at least sap time and energy away from acting on those core vales. And that is an important part about how to find your purpose. You will need intention and action.

The first part of this page was about intention. How to find your purpose starts with letting your mind work on solutions. The next part is about action. Passion doesn't cause action. Passion occurs because of action. And action always follows intention. An intention to match those vital core values.

In our case, and maybe in most of yours, habits need to be addressed. We wrote in our page about habits that it is a waste of time trying to break bad habits. Your valuable time is much better suited to changing habits. That might seem to just be a different word for the same thing, but it isn't.

All of us come into this process of how to find your purpose at different spots in our lives and with different visions of what that purpose will be and what it will take to make it happen. In the container block in the closing section you'll find some pages that will help you get started and stay motivated. If you still need to clarify your core values, we have something that will help.

If habits are holding you back, we have a page for that. If you will be working with people, we have a page about different personality types.

We can tell you from our own experience that when you understand how to find your purpose, when you take the time to really think through what excites you, what gives you the intention that leads to passion, your life will change.

The size and scope of your purpose is your decision. Whatever you decide, if your passion derived from your intention is allowed to work, action will result and you will live the life that gives you a different answer to a similar question from the first paragraph.

"If I could do it over again what would I change? Not a thing!" Even the really hard stuff along the way was just preparation for what was ahead.