At first glance ‘finding your life purpose’ seems like a bit of a woo-woo concept, an idea that sounds aspirational but isn’t really of any practical use. But consider this. Having an idea of your aim and an internal compass to navigate life’s terrain by enables you to measure your opportunities against a framework of clearly held values. It can be the difference between reaching satisfying goals which bring you happiness and meaning, or just freestyling life and hoping you end up where you want to be through sheer luck.

Discovering life purpose simply means to reflect on the events and the pathway of your life so far, take inventory of everything you have learned about yourself and note your unconscious or partly conscious behaviours. Then distil the prominent themes, qualities, values, passions and motivating drives which seem to recur, and decide to respect and understand them as a set of reliable signposts to orientate yourself with in the future. What to head towards and what to avoid. This audit should cover every aspect of your life from your career and where you live, to your choice of partners and friends, your habits, hobbies, interests and the areas of growth and learning you’re attracted to. Being connected to your purpose will affect the way you lead, the way you interact with the people closest to you, the quality of people you attract into your inner circle and the way you experience connection with family, friends and colleagues.

You can easily cast your mind back to recognise times in your life when you have felt at peace, excited, ‘on purpose’ and at one with yourself. When your experience resonated as truly aligned with your essential nature, like a feeling of being authentic and in flow. Once you’ve become more consciously aware of the unique ingredients of your happiness in your past, it becomes much easier to purposefully weave meaning into your future with more intentionality. When you live like this, you’re likely to spark the desire to strive for their best in others too, and generally have a good all round effect on the positivity of your teams at work and your friends at play.

-Russell Brand
Joe Rogan Experience, podcast no.812

Existential philosophy (namely Kierkegaard) and clinical psychology (notably Rogers, Jung) have converged on the idea that the goal of life is to ‘be the self that one truly is’. In other words, to actualise yourself, to become the best of your many potentialities by intentionally bringing what’s greatest in you into being in your own life. If we awaken to these siren songs in our own soul, and self direct in a way which manifests into action that which we already know somewhere deep in our unconscious, we can experience the joy of living congruently, in alignment with ourselves and in harmony with the things that are important to us. When we are not working at odds with ourselves, the stress of that dissonance falls away.

That sounds a lot like everyday, common or garden fulfilment. And while it seems so simple and ordinary, when it’s missing from your life you really feel it. Lack of meaning sucks the joy out of achievements, relationships and experiences. Lack of purpose builds as a sense of disconnection, a distance from yourself and others, and it can eventually manifest into a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. Even if you’re surrounded by other people, they’re just wallpaper. Contrast that with seeing the light and the potential in everyone you meet, and life feels like freedom and opportunity with a million possibilities for creativity and good things to happen.

Begin by visualising how it would feel to have the day you want, every day. What does your environment look like? What would you be doing? Who are you meeting and talking to, and what kinds of conversations are you having? They say we are the sum total of the five people we spend the most time with. Who are your people right now? Have you picked them on purpose with discernment and intention, or are they just there?

Are there themes and patterns in your life all pulling you towards some meta goal that you are trying to manifest in your life without really being aware of it? What obstacles do you continually cast in your own way? The process of self-reflection can help bring this into real focus, and it will start to spark in you ideas for doing things differently. The human brain is wired to be goal oriented, so it follows that crystallising that goal is really going to help out your brain in ensuring you get there. Smaller ‘next steps’ will start to emerge a block at a time. You only need to see enough pathway to take the next step, but the path won’t reveal itself to you until you know where you are going, and why.

-Jordan B Peterson
Jordan B Peterson/YouTube channel

You can use the same curiosity with yourself. What are you up to? Give it some thought.

The process of realising your life purpose might happen as a gradual awareness. Observations about yourself can come into greater clarity and higher definition especially in times of stress or upheaval. When some situation has created an interruption in your life, and awoken you out of your usual patterns, perhaps a profound realisation will click into place with an epiphany and you think “yes!” this is something deep at work in me that I haven’t seen until now or given voice to. Or, this is really something I don’t want. Working with a life coach at that junction when you’re experiencing or preparing for a big change or challenge can be particularly opportune and rich with discoveries. When you feel stretched or have hit an intolerable pain point, you’re jolted out of your habitual thinking and more open to finding solutions and strategies to grow just a little bit further outside the typical boundaries of your comfort zone.

Early in life we are gathering information and learning how to navigate the world. Imagine what happens if we never update the models we used to make sense of the world when we were a small child!

People reach a mid point, often around their thirties, or maybe as they hit 40, where there is some mastery of life, and they can begin directing their own course – but it’s also easy to miss this power shift if we keep mindlessly living by old habits and patterns that were inculcated whilst we were students in life. You can take your embodied wisdom, and use it to direct the remainder of your life in a purposeful way at any age – this is what you have been training for!

Everybody begins as a passenger, it has to be that way. But at some point, take the opportunity to slide over to the driver’s seat, check the rear-view mirror, open your eyes to the road ahead and look clearly at it, then take the wheel. Drive your own life so you’re going where YOU want to go.

– What are the favourite things you love to do, or have always done and loved?

– What have you consistently made part of your life, regardless of the circumstances?

– List the qualities of people you need and want to be around.

– What other resources are essential to you? Things like time in nature, being around creative people, peacefulness etc.

– List examples in your life, without critiquing them, where you have known you were ‘on purpose’.

– What most touches your emotions? Where do you find yourself laughing, crying, joyful, discouraged or inspired?

– What are some things in life you have a lot of energy for? What is it about them that energises you?

– What accomplishment or life legacy would be significant for you?

– If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

– What needs have you encountered in yourself or others that you could imagine feeling called and motivated to meet at scale?

– Imagine yourself at the end of your life. Is there something that would cause you deep regret if you left it undone and never risked a try?

– What do you know already about what you were made to do? What do other people say you were made for?

– If every experience of your life were just training you for your destiny, what would you say your whole life has prepared you to do?

– Where do you invest your time, money and energy? Why?

– If you could spend your life working to change one thing in the world that would make a real difference, what would that one thing be?

– In what areas do others consistently look to you to lead the way, or to offer support?

– What difficulties have you faced and overcome which became defining moments in your life?

– Can you use the lessons you have learned to ease the same path for others?

– What’s been most meaningful to you in life?