Key Questions for Identifying and Understanding the Purpose of Your Life

Finding the Meaning of Life. Discovering the Purpose of Your Life. 

We all have an innate need to find meaning and purpose in life, especially our own lives.

From a Project You perspective, this pursuit is best stated and comprehended as:

The meaning of life is to discover, grow, develop, and enhance 

your unique personal gift and individual talents.

The purpose of life is to use your unique personal gift and talents 

for the betterment of mankind, planet Earth and the Universe of Souls.

In our last blog post we promised to give you some key questions to ask yourself that will help you identify and understand your unique personal gift and the individual talents you bring to the world.

So here they are:

What are you passionate about?

What are you doing when you feel a flow of energy racing through you?

What drives you?

At what do you excel?

What are your greatest strengths?

What do you least like doing?

How can your talents be put to use serving others?

How would you define your skill sets?

In what ways are you different from others, either in what you do, how you do it, or the knowledge and experiences you bring to what you do?

How would you define your greatest purpose in life? Your second greatest purpose?

What are your core values?

How would you list and define your principles?

What brings you joy?

What brings you authentic happiness?

How can your gift and talents be put to use helping others achieve their dreams, hopes, desires, and passions?

How can your gift and talents be put to use helping others solve their problems and challenges?

After you die what is the one thing you want to be remembered for? By whom?

After you die, what are the next four things you want to be remembered for? By whom?

It is important to also remember that your true purpose in life is bigger than just your work (Your Professional Life), even though it may be included as a component of your life's purpose.

Your overall life's purpose will encompass every aspect of your life.

Hence, identifying and understanding your life's purpose is not an exercise regarding career paths, but rather a holistic approach to identifying and knowing who you are (and who you will become) at your very core.

These are questions worth reflecting on.

Go clear your calendar for 90 minutes to two hours, at a minimum. Get up two hours early if you need to.

Go find someplace very quiet and peaceful, preferably outdoors. Use the sounds of nature to help focus your thoughts. Take nothing with you but paper, a writing instrument, and your own thoughts. Leave your cell phone, tablet, and computer behind.

Isn’t the rest of your life worth a couple of hours of solitude and quiet contemplation? 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon. 

Planning Your Life Journey

What Are You Doing With Your Life? 

At this point in your journey, as you contemplate taking steps toward leading A Determined Life, do not let anyone else hold the pen or touch the keyboard. This is your story, to be written by you.

Your story is yours to write, edit, direct, and produce, in line with your personal values. If you haven't been doing so previously and continuously, now is the time for you to chart your path, set your personal goals and define the intended outcomes you seek. 

In the most recent Project You Life blog posts, we have written about the need to shift momentum, move forward, face your challenges, and define your life's purpose. The first step, of course, is self discovery.

This process starts (and ends) with you. The Project You Life Journey is about looking inward and asking two critical and illuminating questions of yourself:

What am I doing with the rest of my life?

What can I do to ensure the world will be better off after me?

 So, if someone asked you today "what are you doing with your life?" how would you respond?

These two questions will open an array of possibilities and surface an abundance of desires within you that may be currently hidden. 

Brainstorming a list of answers to these two questions is often like discovering an iceberg with your name blazoned across a flag flying atop it. You will rapidly record the top-of-mind things that your ego wants and wishes for, but through further contemplation and reflection you will slowly and steadily uncover the deeper, inner desires of your spirit.

It will be these deeper convictions that will help you define the Determined Life that is truly relevant to your life's purpose and resonates with both your spirit and ego. 

With answers to these two questions in hand, you are prepared to start charting your Determined Life Journey. 

Seriously working on these two questions will widen and deepen your relationship with yourself, which in turn will widen and deepen your relationships with everyone else. 

Similarly, this process will lead you to a deeper and greater understanding of yourself, and likewise will deepen and greatly improve your understanding of others. 

The end result is that you will have a clearer answer to the question what are you doing with the rest of your life? 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. 

Identifying a Path for Your Life Journey

The True Measure of Success in Life is Who We Are Becoming

It is said that if we could truly see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

For one thing, we would stop taking for granted all the miracles of life (the daily rising of the sun, the twittering of birds, the laughter of children at play, the colors of the leaves as they change, the beating of our own hearts, etc.). Instead, we would treat and respect these experiences for the miracles they are.

As we start to see the miracle of our own lives, our approach to life changes remarkably. This leads to greater respect for our own existence, and a deeper desire for improving the physical, emotional, and mental aspects of our human vessels.

 In doing so, we also come to the clear realization that the true measure of success in life is who we are becoming rather than what we are accumulating (either in terms of experiences or material possessions).

Billions of words have been written in hundreds of languages about understanding the meaning of life. Billions more have been uttered and written about the need to find purpose in one's life. From a Project You perspective, these two pursuits are best stated and comprehended as:

The meaning of life is to discover, grow, develop, and enhance your unique personal gift and individual talents.

The purpose of life is to use your unique personal gift and talents for the betterment of mankind, planet Earth, and the Universe of Souls.

How you go about accomplishing this is up to you.

Everything in your life (now and in the future) is a reflection of the choices you have made or will make. Just remember, when you start to change yourself, you start to change the world.

In our next blog post we will give you some key questions to ask yourself that will help you identify and understand your unique personal gift and the individual talents you bring to the world. 

This article is partially excerpted from the Amazon best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in Kindle and paperback formats. 

The Purpose of Life is to Find Your Gift

Live the Length and Width of Your Life. 

Plato said over 2300 years ago, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

The Project You Life Journey is not just an opportunity to examine your life at a particular point in time, but rather an on-going observation and examination that helps you build and journey on a path that aligns with your life's true purpose.

There are no set elements, rules, protocols or rituals involved. Rather, it is a holistic approach to understanding how your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual attributes work and function across the various components of your human experience (personal life, professional life, family life, etc.).

As you embark upon your own Project You Life Journey, here is a wonderful, motivating thought to keep in mind: some of the best days of your life have not yet happened. Now, isn't this a great reason to get your Project You Life Journey underway right away? 

From a universal sense, the purpose of life is to find your gift. Life has a rich meaning when you are able to find your gift and put it to use for a purpose bigger than yourself. The Project You Life Journey will help you accomplish both.

As Henry James wrote, "It is time to start living the life you've imagined." 

This is true for each and every one of us.

After all, wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to claim American author Diane Ackerman's words for ourselves: "I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well." 

A good question to ask yourself this weekend: what will be the length and width of your journey from now until the end of your life? 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.