Five Steps to Finding Your Life’s Purpose (Guaranteed!)

Purpose? Uh, I’m a little busy right now…

There seem to be a lot of people these days looking for their life’s purpose. I googled “How to find your life’s purpose” and came up with 94 million results. I searched a few of the 94 million results and found that most involved writing stuff down, going back to childhood, what brings you joy, etc. When I was looking for my life’s purpose, none of those things helped.

If you are like a lot of people looking through the 94 millions results looking for clues as to how to find their life’s purpose, look no more. Here are five easy steps to finding  your purpose, guaranteed. Now, you must follow these steps exactly to get this right.

Step #1. Stop reading this and take about a minute to look around you. Notice as much as you can about where you are. Do that now.

Step #2. Now close your eyes and take a moment to think about what you are doing. Not only in this very instant, (reading this) but today. Maybe you are working, hanging out at Starbucks, relaxing at home, etc. Do that now.

Step #3. Now think about your life in a larger context. Maybe you are single and in school. Maybe you are a parent raising kids, or a business person whose main focus is building a business. Perhaps you are a combination of these or others. Look and see what stage you are in your life currently.

Step #4. Think about any preconceived notions you may have about “your life’s purpose.” Maybe you read them in a book, saw a movie or maybe you got them from someone else. Now let those go…let them go. Drop them. Do it now. If you are having trouble, then just put them aside for a while.

Step #5. Get really present to life now. Where you are, what you are doing, the circumstances of “your life”, how it feels, what it looks like. Just make an observation without any kind of judgment.

Congratulations!! You now have your life’s purpose: whatever you are doing now. How easy was that?

Thank you for reading, if you liked this post then please share….what’s that? You don’t like this post? You don’t feel like you’ve found your purpose?

If that’s the case then you didn’t follow the directions. Allow me to repeat Step #4: “Think about any preconceived notions you may have about “your life’s purpose.” Maybe you read them in a book, saw a movie or maybe you got them from someone else. Now let those go…let them go. Drop them. Do it now. If you are having trouble, then just put them aside for a while.”

Yeah, that # 4 is a tough one.  You’ve been wondering and searching for so long!! You need to have a purpose! You need a purpose for your life to have meaning! How can you just let it go? (Amazing how attached we are to our beliefs…)

Well, first of all, you don’t have a life. You are life. There is only one life and you share in it in a human way until you don’t.  If you believe that then the next question you may ask is: what is the purpose of life?

How about this: Let’s take all the humans off of the planet for a minute and just leave the plants and animals. Let’s ask the tree over there: “Hey what is the purpose of life?” Hmmm…silence.

How about that monkey. “Hey! What is the purpose of life?” Your reply is that something smelly gets thrown at you.

 But wait! If we have taken all the humans off the planet, then there is no one to even ask  “What is the purpose of life.” Now, there is not even a question.

So let’s put ourselves back on earth and just observe. The only way it seems that we can tell what the purpose of life is, is to observe life and see what it does.

Hmmm, let’s see now. Well, I don’t know about you, but it appears to me that life is just being life, doing what it does, in it’s myriad of forms.

So what is the purpose of your life? This is it friend, right here, right now. What else can it be?

When you are parenting, your purpose is to parent. When you are sleeping, your purpose is to sleep. When you are saving the whales, your purpose is to save the whales. When you are wallowing in confusion and despair, well, I’ve got news for you…

Consider that you are not living life. Consider that life is living you. From that perspective, why do you need to have a purpose to give your life meaning? After all, life has no meaning other than what you give it. 

The purpose of a flower is to be flower: seed, sprout, flower, die, seed.  The purpose of the sky is to be the sky: rainy, sunny, cloudy, purple, red, blue, black. Your purpose is to be you, (until you are not), happy, sad, working, playing, sleeping, eating, loving, wondering, growing, dying.

Stop wasting your time and energy trying to find your life’s purpose. If you followed the 5 easy steps, then it has found you. Even if you haven’t, it has still found you.

(Disclaimer: Don’t believe  a word I’ve written because there is a strong possibility that I have no clue what I’m talking about. On the chance that I do, however, you might want to try it on and see for yourself.)

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 Ted