What’s Your Purpose?

For years everyone has talked about passion. What gets you going? What stokes your fire? What moves you?

But passion is only part of the picture. Passion is your drive. Pair passion with what you’re good at (vocation), your dream job (profession), and calling (mission), and you’ve found your purpose.

What is purpose?

Purpose is your reason for existing. It’s the accumulation of all the parts of yourself – all the things that make you who you are – put together in the form of something that impacts not just yourself, but others around you, your community, and the world.

How Do I Find Mine?

It is too easy to get caught up with us, to think about how the actions of others impact only ourselves, to do things solely for our own benefit. Finding your purpose requires you to step outside of yourself, to look at those around you and to think about the impact you truly wish to leave. What will your footprint be?

Ask yourself these questions:

• What talents do I possess that I can share with others?
• What kind of person am I right now?
• What kind of person do I want to become?
• What am I doing to make the world a better place?

I know these aren’t easy questions. Take your time. Truly explore yourself as a person. What is your niche? Where do you fit in to the bigger picture?  It is okay for your goals and desires may change over time. You should, ultimately, be able to express your purpose in a short sentence.

What Do I Do With It?

Once you’ve determined your purpose, you need to take action. What you are you doing in your life to provide meaningfulness? Are you doing anything that contradicts your purpose? Are you in a job that doesn’t align with what you’ve determined to be your life’s work? Do you need to learn a new skill to enhance the impact you wish to leave on the world?

To put your purpose into action you need to be with the right people in the right setting using your life’s work to make an impact.

Looking inside yourself to find your purpose and then taking the steps to make your purpose the work you do to impact the world is not simply one and done. Revisit the questions asked here. Think about who you used to be, who you are now, and who you want to be. How are you influencing the world?

In the words of Michael Jackson: Heal the world.