Do you ever feel like you don't really know where your life is going? Perhaps you've pursued a few different projects, hobbies, and careers but quite felt you'd found your calling.
It's frustrating to live in this way, and it's hard to measure progress. You can easily feel burnt out and disillusioned, as well as like you're not really contributing anything to the world.
In contrast, when you live with purpose, you'll naturally find balance in life. This leads to long-term satisfaction and fulfillment. But how do you get there? How do you find your purpose, and what can you do to ensure you live in alignment with it?
In this guide, we'll explore why it's so important to live with purpose, and why those without purpose suffer as a result.
More importantly, we'll offer three concrete routes toward living with purpose, with an emphasis on practical changes you can make as soon as today.
Broadly speaking, having a sense of purpose means that you know what you're contributing to the world and to your own development. Your days have structure, you have concrete goals in mind.
While everyone has rough days and difficult times, if you have a life of purpose then your default state is one of happiness and satisfaction.
With this in mind, let's start to refine our ideas about why it's so important to have this sense of purpose and to explore the connection between a lack of purpose and deep distress.
We all feel the need to have a purpose in our lives. Without it, we start to think “I feel lost and out of place.”
But why? The crux of our search for meaning likely has a lot to do with our awareness of our own mortality. We know that we have a limited time to make an impact and leave a legacy.
So when we feel out of place, we can't help but wonder whether our life really matters. In addition, many of us are driven to make the world a better place, and when we lack purpose we're painfully aware we aren't creating positive change.
If you're feeling lost and have no sense of your life's purpose, you can feel hopeless and stuck.
You may begin to think that life is meaningless, creating a negative feedback loop of sadness and inertia.
In this circumstance, the most important thing you can do is consciously devote energy to changing your mindset.
This won't happen overnight, but if you take some time every day to work on shifting your perspective then you'll gradually begin to find meaning again.
And we'll explore below, there is concrete, reliable steps you can follow in order to recover a sense of purpose and empowerment.
If you've never felt like you're living with purpose, it's important to be aware of just how much this will have shaped your thoughts and feelings about yourself and your potential.
When you spend years feeling lost, you can start to see your time on earth as meaningless – and this is devastating to your self-esteem.
You may feel like you're simply sleepwalking through life, never really trying to push yourself or develop your talents. However, even if you feel like you're truly a lost soul, there are still things you can do to finally find a purpose and experience joy in your life.
Now that you have a rough sense of why we need a purpose in life and how it affects us when we lack such a purpose, let's look at how we can find meaning and joy by discovering your purpose. These four steps will help you learn how to find your purpose and passion in life.
Many people wrongly assume that living with purpose means devoting all your resources to one particular goal.
However, to be a happy, fulfilled person it's important to learn to start living with purpose in multiple areas of your life.
To this end, try to think about your life split into the following three elements: professional, social, and spiritual.
To be both purposeful and balanced, challenge yourself to set goals in each category every day.
For example, one day you might do part of an online course that improves your professional skills, reach out to a friend for a chat, and listen to some of your favorite songs.
Often, we lack purpose because of the way we think about ourselves. This means that if you want to find satisfaction, fulfillment, and purpose, you need to be willing to engage in ego work.
Ego work isn't necessarily about having a big ego – it's about reflecting on who you are and your place in the world.
Firstly, consider that many of us have a huge number of false beliefs about ourselves. Some of these come from negative figures in our past, others come from painful experiences, and yet more come from societal messages about success, value, and beauty.
To learn more about your purpose and what makes you happy, you need to silence those old voices. And to silence then, you need to give them airtime – albeit briefly.
An exercise that can help here is to write down negative beliefs you have about what you can achieve and consciously form replies to them.
For example, a belief like “I should just be happy with my lot” can stop you from pursuing growth or ambition. A replacement belief that's healthier and more growth-promoting might be “I can be grateful in my life while striving to be even better.”
Secondly, keeping a daily journal can help you live a more purposeful life and facilitate ego work at the same time.
Each day, try writing down what you want to achieve tomorrow, and reflect on how the past day made you feel. When did you feel most alive and most engaged? These are clues to your true purpose.
Creative visualization is a cornerstone of the Law of Attraction work, and for good reason. It helps you build a vivid image of what you want to create in the world, making it real.
You can tailor this technique to the aim of finding purpose in life, accessing your subconscious, and visualizing the best version of yourself.
Start by spending a few minutes engaged in deep breathing, inhaling through your nose, and exhaling through your mouth. Then, close your eyes and ask yourself “Who do I want to be?”.
Let the image develop slowly. Where would you be? What would you be doing? How would you be feeling, and who would you be around? You might be surprised by some of the details that emerge.
When you're in a meditative state, your defense mechanisms are down and you may realize long-suppressed dreams and desires.
You can perform this exercise multiple times, focusing on different areas of your life. Once you reach a stage where you feel like you're starting to know your true purpose, you can continue to use visualization to support this goal.
Every few days, simply take 10-15 minutes to inhabit your inner vision of what you're working toward.
Finally, no matter how you're living your life, make a habit of actively examining how you're feeling about it. When we're busy, it's easy to just keep pushing through our days without really stopping to think about whether we are happy and fulfilled.
Ask yourself: is this truly what I want in life? If I could change one thing, what would it be? Entertaining these questions on a weekly or monthly basis ensures that you never stagnate, and never return to that old place of lacking purpose.
Remember that questioning yourself and your choices doesn't have to mean criticizing yourself or taking a negative view of your worth.
Instead, it can be about nurturing and caring for yourself – a practice similar to asking a friend “Are you sure this is what you want?”. Allow yourself to get things wrong sometimes, to be imperfect.
And when you feel life is less than ideal or regrets a choice, try to draw a lesson from it. What can you do differently going forward in order to be happier? What is one step you can take today in order to move away from an outdated choice or habit?
You’re now armed with several techniques that can help you find purpose and stay focused on the things that bring you joy and fulfillment.
However, if you want to learn even more about your true purpose and grow into the very best version of yourself, the Law of Attraction can give you the resources to do so.
By offering you techniques similar to the visualization exercise above, the Law of Attraction teachings can show you how to better understand your desires and turn them into your reality.
Meanwhile, if you're still struggling to find a sense of purpose, simply developing a more positive mindset can go a long way toward helping you see who you want to be.
Law of Attraction teachings focuses on connecting you with gratitude, financial abundance, and growth. All of these things help to open your mind to your full potential, giving you the tools to create a life of joy and purpose.
