As an executive coach, one of the common questions asked by my clients is: ‘What is Life Purpose and how do I find mine”?
For me, Life Purpose is the outcome you want from your life, the impact you want to make in the world aligned with your values, passion and talents:
- Values: what you strongly stand for, believe and will fight for
- Passion: what activities do you love to do, that you enjoy in your spare time, and would invest time and money to pursue
- Natural talent: what skills and abilities can you perform to a high level with ease
Combine and find the sweet spot in the centre.
Clarity of Your Life Purpose is the first step to give you clarity and direction in life, be that personal or professional.
For a simple but powerful exercise to help you discover yours, follow these simple instructions
- Draw a 5 column table and label as follows:
- Activity, Passion, Talent, Opportunities, Total
- List all the activities you love to do and then score (10 is high) it in terms of how much passion you have and natural talent, then add them up
- Focus on the activities with 7+ passion score and 7+ talent score.
- Ask yourself “what is it about that particular activity that gives you so much passion?”
By understanding what exactly motivates you, you can then look at what else you can do to give you the same impact or fulfillment.
For an example, I love cooking and I’m pretty good at it. However, the reason why I love it is because I love to eat! For others, there reason could be because they like to create new dishes, perhaps they simply like to be of service and feed people.
Having high passion with talent means that you perform the activity with ease and delightful pleasure. Imagine your days being filled with such activities, how much more a fulfilled life you would have when utilizing these in your life goal aligned to your values.
The magic happens in this second part of the exercise; write a letter you would love to receive in 5 years’ time from someone whose life you impacted as a result of the actions you have taken towards your Life Purpose. Read it out loud with pride and see how that feels.
Usually, people will tear-up after the letter reading as it will evoke deep emotions that tell you that you have discovered your life purpose that resonate with your heart and soul.
Anna is a qualified NLP Master and Hypnotherapist, she specialises in cognitive behaviour coaching. She works with coachees to understand and breakthrough self-limiting beliefs so they can realise their ambitions. Check out her coach profile. I also run my EQ Change Management company, Barrage Vision.
