The 3 Questions to Help You Find Your Purpose
My junior high school years were when I decided to get into ministry. The problem was, I wasn’t sure if it was my dream. In the past, or ever was.
Then I went on to get my master’s and doctorate degrees and taught several undergraduate courses. Teaching was something I enjoyed and excelled at – very well. As well as feeling guilty, I felt guilty for abandoning my “supposed” calling in ministry.
Through a journaling workshop, I learned how to relax, think, reflect, visualize and keep a journal to reveal my more profound thoughts. I felt a sense of peace, calm, and purpose after writing this in my journal. Teaching, speaking, and writing are all ways that I seek to serve God and others. This realization led me to recognize that I live and work for a greater purpose.
A job and a purpose were two different things to me for years. Yet, despite my life and work aligning with my purpose decades later, I continue to love the work I do and thankful that I have touched thousands of lives.
You start seeing results when you know that your work and life are primarily aligned with your purpose.
What are your options for discovering your purpose?
The three crucial questions, which are deceptively simple, are:
What do you enjoy doing??
What makes you excited?
What difference do you hope to make?
We all have many talents, capabilities, and abilities, regardless of our backgrounds, life experiences, or achievements. You will never be able to leverage your strengths if you don’t know what they are. Answer a few questions to determine your talent.
To find your purpose, answer these questions:
What is it that you are passionate about?
What are your strengths?
How would you describe your dominant gifts?
What is your most vital skill?
Do you possess any natural abilities?
How can you get the respect of others by doing something you do well?
Do you have a habit of not seeing work, regardless of how difficult it may be?
When you open doors with ease, what is it that you do?
Discover what others see as your talents, too. First, identify the ten skills you possess by asking ten people about them. Then, consider your list of 100 items and determine which ones are repeated most often. After you have completed this exercise, you will have a clear picture of what it is you’re good at.
The second question is: What excites you?
Check out how your brain is wired. Why do you feel energetic, and why do you feel lethargic?
“What excites you?” Many people find it essential to know. The answer to the “question” will not be complex for you to provide. However, the process may be complicated for other people. So let me break down this question into a series of more minor questions that could reveal several insights.
What are your dreams? As a youth or after you graduated from high school or college, consider what you dreamed of doing. Then, when you knew you wouldn’t fail, how would you behave today? Today, consider the dreams you have. Why would there be no answer if there was none?
Another question is: What makes you passionate? Consider what you believe in, what makes life worth living for you, and what you'd die for.
In your work or home environment, or when you are social, what activities do you enjoy the most?
How would you describe your passion?
When you have some free time, what’s your favourite activity?
Do you have any desires that keep tugging at your heart?
During your most productive times, what motivates you?
What makes you feel good on an emotional and spiritual level?
After answering the first two questions, let’s move on to the third: What troubles your spirit? It is essential to understand your purpose in life by understanding what upsets you. For example, how do you grieve your heart and infuriate your fury the most?
Answering these questions can help you identify problems you want to solve or parts of your purpose that you wish to solve.
Another factor to consider when asking what excites you is what you are passionate about and what you want to do?
The Good life has something to live on, but the Better life has something to live for. Imagine that you were not getting paid for what you do. What would you prefer to do?
The third question is: What difference do you hope to make?
Both of the first two questions focus on you – your talents and your feelings. Then, in the third question, we examine situations or people outside our own lives.
The executive coach and author Richard Leider interviewed scores of people over 65 to find out what were the most important lessons they had learned and what advice they would share with younger people to live more fulfilling, successful lives. The two of them said unhesitatingly: you need to live a life that matters, and you need to give back to society.
Dr Raymond Moody interviewed scores of people who had had near-death experiences, and he saw how important it was to make a difference.
Though his subjects had passed away, still their spirits and minds remained alive, and they continued to consider the difference they made in this world and how their actions affected others, as well as whether they had made any difference at all. After they were brought back to life through a medical miracle, they all had the same but new bottom line – contributing to serve others to some extent rather than being entirely self-serving.
You don’t have to wait until you die to learn how to live. Start living a life on purpose right now, and you can have a sense of the future. How can you make a difference? Take a moment to consider this. Could you take a few minutes to read it?
It may not be as important as rescuing the poor of Calcutta like Mother Teresa or garnering worldwide attention like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Okay, I understand. Your goal may be to make a difference in your immediate family, your extended family, your religious organization or charity, your community, your company or even the world in general.
Make a difference some of the time, but don’t just do it once a year. A good life, but not a great life, will never be possible without understanding this.
Did you know that the average person spends about 80,000 hours of their lifetime at work? If your job is a source of stress or frustration for you, it’s time to take control.
The three questions we’ve provided in this blog post can help you discover what makes you happy and find your purpose.
We hope these questions inspire you to pursue a career path that will bring more fulfillment into your life! And if you want some additional guidance on how to do just that, consider enrolling in our Emotional Intelligence Course today.
It will teach the principles of emotional intelligence and give you strategies for mastering it so that you can live a life with less stress, confusion and self-doubt.
Read More: The Most Important Trends in E-Learning Content Development
You must be logged in to post a comment.