How to find your purpose. The Online Guide [2021]
The challenge of living a life with purpose is that you often have to believe two things that feel completely opposite at the same time.
You have to be unflinchingly realistic about your present circumstances, while at the same time being as impossibly optimistic about your future circumstances.
Those two ideas feel at war with each other, but you have to live both of them.
Nothing is more challenging than our relationship with expectations.
An expectation can either champion you or derail you based on how you interact with it.
When you run into situations where something didn’t live up to an expectation, your first response is to think, “Stupid expectations. I’ll solve this problem by never having expectations!”
But that doesn’t work.
It’s takes a very powerful mind to have no expectations.
Try as you might, you are going to carry at least a thread of expectation into every part of your life.
It can also lead to just protecting yourself.
Does this sound familiar “If I get my hopes up, and it doesn’t come true, I’ll be hurt.
So I’ll protect myself from being hurt by not having any hope or expectations.
I’ll hurt myself first before the situation can first.
If you have high expectations, they can blind you from enjoying your purpose right now.
If you have low expectations, they can just be a safety blanket you’re just hiding behind.
Expect the best.
Plan for things to unfold very differently than your expectations on occasion, and practice the powerful thought that the universe has your back, however things show up.
The process to creation will guide you to rely on a plan of action, and leave the negative consequences of expectation behind.
The Process to Creation
The process to develop life long motivation.
Identify and Write Down Exactly What You Want
Above all else you must identify your purpose. You must know why you were put on this earth.
When you know exactly where you want to go, it plants the seed for life long motivation.
Here’s a great exercise to start gaining clarity on where you want to go in your life:
Take out a piece of paper and get ready to write. Imagine 5 years have passed. Everything you have wanted to accomplish has happened.
What is your day like?
What activities do you do?
What relationships do you have?
How do you make money?
How much money do you make?
How do you feel?
What are your hobbies?
Write. Write. And write some more.
Write Down Why You Want It
Knowing what you want is the first step, but knowing why you want it feeds your motivation.
Basically you’re establishing a purpose for your purpose.
So look over your 5 year vision. Then write down your response to this question:
Why do you want to achieve this vision? What impact will it have on your life if you fulfill this vision?
Develop The Step by Step Plan
A killer of motivation is ambiguity, or a lack of knowledge.
Therefore to nurture motivation you need to gain knowledge and establish clarity.
A critical part of gaining clarity is to identify the specific steps you must take to fulfill your vision.
Look at your 5 year vision. Begin to write out the specific steps that you will need to take to fulfill that vision. Don’t make this difficult. You aren’t going to know all the steps. But you will know some of them.
Develop the plan. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it’s got to be something.
By creating this plan you have created a map to start working with.
Take Action
So you have put together the plan to fulfill your vision. Now is when the rubber hits the road.
You need to take action on step 1.
You have identified exactly where you want to go, why the vision matters, and the plan to fulfill the vision.
Now, take the first step to make it happen.
This brings an alignment between your daily actions and where you want to go over the longterm.
This brings meaning and purpose to each day… Which is fuel for lifelong motivation.
Reflect Then Adjust
After about 1 week take a look at the actions you have taken. Reflection allows you to learn from your experiences and to increase the rate at which you achieve what you want.
Basically, this allows you to constantly learn and grow as you move forward. As you learn and grow you will become the person you need to be to fulfill your vision.
Look at the actions you took over the course of the previous week and answer these 3 questions:
What actions are moving you towards your 5 year vision? Keep doing those.
What actions are preventing you from achieving your 5 year vision? Stop doing those.
What is 1 action you can start taking this week to accelerate you towards achieving your vision? Immediately implement this.
Remember: a huge killer of motivation is a lack of knowledge. When you feel like your just running on a treadmill it kills your motivation.
By taking the time to step back and assess your actions and plans you are providing fuel for your motivation.
Above All Else Take Action
Here’s the simple reality, you can spend a lifetime waiting for motivation to strike… and it might never happen.
But right now, this moment, you can take action.
As you can see with the steps above when you take action, you give yourself the opportunity to gain motivation.
I’ll end this with a quote:
“You are much more likely to act your way into feeling, rather than feel your way into acting”
Curious about David transformation process? Book time for a conversation about what’s next for you.