Finding Life Purpose For A Fulfilling Career

Finding life purpose has several aspects. There is knowing what is important to you, knowing the contexts in which you will express these things, and having a sense of direction to follow. These ingredients are then synthesising into a clear concise personal mission statement. The blend of these components expresses an inspiring vision that will guide you to your most fulfilling career.

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What is the point of finding life purpose?

It is nothing short of an answer to the age old question, ‘what is the meaning of life’. It may not be the answer but it is an answer!

It is the personal answer; that fulfils our desire to do something that matters. However, your mission is a path not a destination. It is not something that you achieve but something that you are, and something that you can experience moment to moment.

Who are you being?

Many of us only experience this clarity for brief glimpses. In sport or music it is often described as being in flow, or being in the zone. It’s that sensation of being completely aware of and connected to everything around you.

Finding life purpose has both an inner and an outer aspect. This connectedness is your inner purpose. The things you do and have are the context in which you choose to live your inner purpose. The context is your outer purpose.

Your values are the essence of what it means to be you. Becoming aware of core values is key when it comes to your mission. Your values are what are most important, and hence most meaningful to you. It is this meaning that will give you significance, inspiration and motivation in life.

What is it your life purpose to do?

The context of your vision is the arena in which you will do your values. It is possible to live out values in any vocation. The prison warden, musician and scientist can all be ‘Love’. However, if your passions and talents lie in being a musician then you will not be fulfilled by becoming a scientist.

‘Our true purpose and vocation lies where we find the intersection of our gifts and talents and the needs of the world and our fellow beings’
– Nick Williams

It is likely that you are already using your talents and gifts in some way. Look at where you are currently most passionate and talented and consider how you can express these more fully in a way that meets the needs of the world.

• What are you passionate about?
• What are you talented at?
• Would you still want to do what you are doing, if your salary was reduced by half?
• What have people always come to you for?
• How can you contribute the most?

Attempting to follow your life purpose in an unsuitable job will leave you frustrated, so identifying the correct context is crucial to finding life purpose.

What do you want to have?

The next ingredient is a sense of direction.

‘A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only as long as it is going forward towards something. Similarly, we are engineered as goal-seeking mechanisms…and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.’ – Maxwell Maltz

Career objectives are things to move towards and hence bring a sense of direction. These are the things you wish to have. An important element of goal setting is to ensure that you stay aligned with your values and talents.

You may like to run a mutli-national corporation but may not like the implications for your home-life. Finding life purpose needs a holistic focus. When your values and talents aligned the resulting goals will be inspiring and fulfilling.

Creative visualisation is great tool for designing careers. You can ‘try on’ your goals. If after a while they loose their allure, then they are not truly aligned with your values and talents.

Setting the right goals and then facilitating their achievement will give you a sense of direction. As these goals are reached and new ones set, according to the same criteria, a momentum will build behind your mission.

Bringing The Ingredients Together

There are three levels on which a person interacts with the world. What they are, what they do, and what they have. People ‘be, do and have’ all the time. Although often they are lazy, do nothing, and have a TV for entertainment!

Finding life purpose is the process of optimising and harmonising these different levels of life experience. The development of this is evolutionary rather than linear. Keep increasing your self-knowledge on each level until you reach a point of writing a mission statement.

This is the important final step. The process of taking your vision and committing it to paper is incredibly powerful. It requires the clarity, focus and commitment required to achieve a fulfilling career. As such finding life purpose is fundamental to the career search.

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