3 simple questions for you:
Are you living true to yourself?
Are you truly enjoying the life that you are leading?
Are you finishing everyday satisfied with what you have done and achieved that day?
If you couldn’t answer yes, you should continue reading this blog. If you couldn’t answer yes to the above questions, it’s likely that you haven’t found your purpose in life and living by it. If you couldn’t answer yes, it’s time to discover what your purpose is with the techniques that I’ll be talking about.
I can promise you that you won’t regret it afterwards.
As someone who made a career choice at the ripe old age of 15/16 and signed up for a contract of least 10 years, I know what it’s like to make a huge commitment early in life. Most people do this, though they may not actually sign a contract formally with an organisation but instead to themselves and their family. Typically, you make a decision at the age of 15/16 as to what subjects you are going to do and that’s usually influenced by a grand idea of a certain degree to get you into a certain career.
The question is though: are we mature enough and understand ourselves and the world around us to be able to make the right decision as to what career is truly aligned to us?
It can be these early decisions that we feel locked into, stopping us from changing what we truly want and staying unfulfilled. This could be due to one of or all the following reasons:
- not wanting to disappoint those around us
- bruised ego by appearing to “give up” on a certain career
- continuing because we need the money or another external factor
- feeling like we have wasted our time by going down one path and then deciding to change
This is only going to lead to issues in the long term, such as a mid life crisis or large regrets when when you get to the end of your time.
So that’s where this blog comes in. Starting with showing you how you ended up in the position that you’re in now through the influences you may have had. I will go on to tell you why you should make the effort to follow your true purpose in life before giving you the techniques that I have used to help me reconnect with my life purpose.
Common Mistakes
To firstly start you on the path to finding your true purpose in life, we have to start from a point of understanding as to why we aren’t on the right course and what brought about our diversion. It’s only from this point that we can tackle the fears and confusion around the external factors that influence us when they conflict with the internal voice. It’s very often heard from people that they would love to do a certain thing in life but can’t because it either doesn’t pay well enough, don’t know where to start or fearful of judgement from someone.
These are some of common mistakes that people make to lead themselves away from what they were destined to do but one thing underpins all of them: letting the external influences override what the internal wants. So let’s get into breaking down each one and understanding them better so that when you get into the techniques later, you don’t have this internal conflict.
Letting Family Decide
We look towards our family for so much guidance in life. From birth, we are imitating them, they are teaching us the basics of survival, how to walk, how to talk, how to eat; the list goes on. So it would only make sense that we would look towards them to see how they fit into the world, understand where we stand individually and seek guidance on what would be the best career path to take. This issue though is this advice is shaped from a parent’s perspective of life and the social conditioning they have gone through.
Now I admit, your parents could really know who you truly are, have an outlook on life and the world that’s more holistic, and give you the best advice, sending you down the right path. On the flip side, you run the risk of them advising you badly based on two things.
The first one is the conditioning that your parent(s) have gone through as they have gone through life. This will be the societal influence of what is the best jobs to do when it comes to status, the best jobs for you to do for the most amount of money and the best jobs for you do for having “power” within the system that we all live in. This will heavily influence what they tell you as a child and is often heard when growing up that you “should work hard in school”, “get good grades”, “you should try and be a doctor or a lawyer”, “you should be X, as it pays the most”. I’m sure some of these will resonate with you and form only part of the list of clichés used.
The second major influence to the advice that they give is them living vicariously through you. For whatever reason, they may have had a goal or career plan that for one reason or another, didn’t work out for them, instead settling on whatever it is they do now. But internally, there will be an acknowledgement of this thing they’ve not fulfilled. This is where you come in for them and the advice they give. The next closest thing to fulfilling the dream themselves, is you living the life that they always wanted and them vicariously living the dream through you. As an impressionable child, with the right phrases and methods, you could be none the wiser that this has imprinted on you.
However, our families aren’t the only people we take influence from when it comes to our inner circles.
Peer Pressure From Friends
You may have broken through the barrier of what your parents think is the best thing for you but the next line circle of influence will be the friends that you have around you. Peer pressure is a big influence within our lives and the want to fit in socially is strong. You could be the rebellious child, thinking that whatever mum and dad say is wrong, or have benefitted from your parents guiding you down the right way, only to find yours friends are going another way to you. For wanting to not feel left out and go it alone in comparison, you may second guess yourself, leading you to ditch your purpose to stick with the crowd.
That’s the more passive method of peer pressure. The other type could be plainly and simply you being judged by friends for your decision in which route you are taking in life if it’s out of the ordinary. Whether done “politely” or aggressively, this judgement from those that you deem to me your nearest and dearest friends could be enough to sway your thinking about what’s right for you.
It could be that they are looking out for you with your best interests in mind so that you too make it in life but you have to remember that their position could be heavily influenced by their parents, society and the like, giving them the perception of what’s right and wrong within their system of understanding.
Money
In a world where unfortunately money is what gets you by and allows you access to the very basics to survive then thrive, what job pays the most is often a huge contributing factor to influencing people to follow the careers they do. When you see influences all around us of people chasing material things, whether it be a nice car, watches, houses or holidays, many are left feeling, be it mistakenly, that these are the key to happiness. Of course, they all come at a cost and what is one way that one raises the money for these costs? Chasing a job that is seen to pay well such as say a doctor or lawyer.
Rather than considering what they would actually enjoy and will give them fulfilment in life, they simply chase what could give them the highest figure in terms of earnings to purchase these material objects. Now, you may be lucky enough that what you really enjoy in life matches something that has a high salary like the two jobs highlighted above, in which case you’re fortunate that’s the case. However, for many, this is not the case and there are no end of people that I knew who were studying something like law at university but weren’t actually enjoying it and even more so once they were actually practicing.
Most Important - Not Listening To Our Souls
With all the noise that is going on around us, with us typically listening to everything else but ourselves, we miss the most important voice: the one that is inside of us. How many times have you been doing a task, speaking to someone or partaking in an activity and something inside you just tells you that it’s not quite right? Something just feels off but you carry on anyway as on a physical level you feel the pleasure or pressure of needing to do it so survive and/or because of what I’ve already spoken about. Only for you to feel terrible afterwards.
That feeling afterwards is your soul telling you something. It’s telling you that you aren’t living in alignment with your soul and should be listened to. There’s a lesson there for you to learn not ignore. However, we either ignore it as we “need” to do it for one reason or another, and/or we cover up this feeling with a coping mechanism.
We need to be listening to those lessons as there’s value in it and will allow you to be directed onto a more fulfilling and happier path in life.
Why You Need To Find Your Purpose
As you’re reading this, you may be sat wondering, ” What does my purpose have to do with the job that I do? It’s just a job to allow me to survive”. Well, what job you do is your purpose. Whatever job you are doing for a significant section of your day becomes your purpose. It’s a major contributing factor as to where you fit into society, how you’re valued within the hierarchy, even if subconsciously, and what most of your effort each day goes into, whether it be doing the actual job or preparing to go to/from it.
If your job and purpose are misaligned, you’re going to eventually run into problems, whether you notice them soon or later. The following reasons are what I see to be the most important as why you need to find your true purpose in life and follow it with all your effort.
Fulfilment
When doing something that you are aligned with, you will feel a lot more fulfilled both in what you’re doing day to day, and in life overall. When finishing a day doing something you love, you will be able to come home and know that you have done something that you feel is worthwhile in life.
Imagine that! Rather than coming home feeling agitated, not satisfied and hating your job, you can sit down in an evening and know that you’ve nourished your soul by doing the thing you were meant to do.
Giving Back In A Positive Way
Whether it be from personal experience of witnessing this in myself or from others, or learning about it from podcasts and books, it seems that the most fulfilling things in life are when we are in service to others around us in a positive way. There are several examples in the book I read recently called Ikigai where one of the guys spoken about just loved drawing and creating comics for other people’s enjoyment, whereas others love being a physical trainer to help people gain the health they have been wanting.
The common theme here is they are giving back in a positive way. They aren’t just chasing a single goal for ourselves like earning substantial sums of money, which can lead to us exploiting people, such as certain areas of the financial sectors.
Yes, they may be financially rewarded for the service they provide but that’s just a by product.
A perfect example of this for me was moving from the military to natural medicine. It was during my time in the military that I noticed that I got a lot of fulfilment from helping other people to better themselves. Since moving to natural medicine, this is a profession that is fully in service of other people and allowing them to be the best version of themselves in the most vivid of ways. Since starting this career path, I’ve realised that this is more aligned to my purpose.
Happiness/Being Content
When you are able to combine the above two feelings into a vocation for yourself, this will bring about a lot more happiness and contentment with the life that you lead. This in turn will give you a lot better outlook on life and if you are to use the example of the communities seen in places like Okinawa, you will have a longer life too. How good would that be? Being able to live your life how you were meant to, enjoying everyday that you’re alive and being able to do this for longer.
When you compare this to living unhappily, where you don’t enjoy what you’re doing everyday and actually reducing your time on earth, I know which of these two deals I would want!
Methods To Help You
It’s all well and good me talking about why you need to find your purpose and how great your life will be when you know it and follow it. But how does someone go about finding their purpose? Unfortunately, it will rarely just jump out at you and slap you in the face, introducing itself as “Your Purpose”. It usually comes in the form of subtle hints and you having to recognise when you’re feeling fully aligned with yourself. You know those moments when things seem to click and they “just feel right”? Those are the moments where your purpose is trying to talk to you.
Luckily, there are ways for you to tease out that voice and turn up the volume on it so that it speaks a lot more clearly to you. It’s these various methods that I know and have used myself that I’m going to share with you.
Listen To The Internal
I mentioned earlier listening to our internal voice. This can help guide us towards what we want to do whilst trying to guide us away from what we shouldn’t be doing. When we do things that are aligned with the soul, it brings us that feeling of fulfilment. A feeling we get that is felt more deeply. Some would describe it as the “warm, fuzzy” feeling inside that we get. It’s being present and aware during our day to day life to these feelings to recognise what our soul wants.
Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between this and a more instant form of gratification, though I’ve found the latter is felt more on a surface level. We have to be careful and recognise the difference between the two.
As for guiding us away from the path that doesn’t serve us, when we do something that isn’t in alignment with our soul, we have that empty feeling inside. We feel terrible for some reason and we can’t seem to shake it. Instead of covering it up with another activity to try and feel better, we should sit in this feeling. Firstly recognising that it’s there and secondly, acknowledging what it is that we’ve just done to bring on this feeling.
The answer is always inside us if we listen close enough.
Meditation
Meditation has a lot of benefits when it comes to your mental and physical health that are often spoken about. Another benefit that you may not be aware of though is that it gives time and space for that internal voice to talk to you. All day, every day, we have thoughts and voices talking over each other in our head about what we need to get during the food shop, projects and deadlines you need to meet, how much engagement did my last post get, did you leave the hob on at home, or did I pay this month’s bills?
In amongst all that chatter will be your subconscious telling you if you are living true to yourself or not. Usually, it’s hidden amongst everything else, unable to be heard or considered. However, when you meditate and remove all the other noise, this voice has a chance to be properly heard. When meditating, you don’t attach yourself to nor judge the thoughts that come up, instead only observing them. Part of this observation is noticing what keeps coming up for you and reflecting upon it.
When this reflection is done through what I’m going to discuss next, it will really bring to light everything for you.
Journalling
This can either be done on its own or in conjunction with meditation. Journalling gives us the ability to get out of our own heads by putting our thoughts on to paper. When we keep everything in our heads, it is usually hard to process the individual thoughts one by one as they all push for our attention. However, when we get these thoughts on to paper and bring our attention to them individually, it can allow us to fully explore that thought.
Where the power in this process is, is that there will likely be recurring thoughts that come up for you and if you are out of alignment with your purpose, your subconscious will tell you in your thoughts. It will either tell you about what you shouldn’t be doing, what you should be doing, or a combination of the two, allowing you to easily understand where you need to go to and where you need to leave.
As part of you delving into this, the answers to how to move on may come to you and allow you to set out the plan required to successfully move to living in alignment.
Inspiration, Hobbies & Interests
Paying attention to who and what inspires, or what you enjoy doing in your past time, could hold the secret to what you want to do.
- You could love creating items of clothing for people on a small scale but never followed through with it.
- You may absolutely love photography but never thought about turning it into a way of earning your money.
- You could love going to the gym and exercising, wanting to bring people along with you on the journey to better health.
- You could be an artist in your spare time and never taken it onto a larger stage, such as making bespoke art for people.
There are so many ways that you could turn a passion into making money and turning that passion into your income thus doing what you love everyday.
There are always going to be others who have done the same and love what they do, who may set the example and even have tips, tricks or a course to complete, teaching you to follow in their footsteps.
One of the things to really be careful of is that turning a hobby into a job may cause it to no longer be enjoyable, really turning you away from something that you once loved.
Reframing What Resonates Into A Job
You may be wondering what I actually mean by this but hear me out. For some, when they go through these stages, they may be fortunate that they come across a job that fits perfectly for them. They may come back to wanting to be a doctor over and over again, which is great for them.
For others, they may get a theme instead. Taking me for example, the thing that I find joy in is helping others to become the greatest version of themselves. That’s not a job on its own but can be framed into a variety of jobs:
- Physical Trainer – I could train people to be the healthiest and strongest version of themselves.
- Coach – I could become a coach, helping and guiding people to overcome the obstacles that they face in life and achieve the thing they have always been wanting across all areas of life.
- Medicine – I could go into a medical role, bringing health back to people and empowering them in ways they never knew about.
So for you, you may need to do something similar like I did whereas for others, the exact role may come through straight through.
Do Your Best Not To Compromise
I know it’s easier said than done but you have to try and make sure that you don’t compromise yourself in this process. What I mean by this is allowing the internal voice to come through loud and clear, without letting the thoughts of all the external factors to hinder it. It can be very easy to say “I would love to do X but reason Y is stopping me so I’ll do Z instead”.
When you allow this process to happen as pure as possible, you should have a very clear direction for to go in, lead by your soul. There won’t be much thinking to do, you’ll just know that it is the right thing for you.
What To Do Next
By this point, you have the knowledge on how you may have ended up in the career that you are in, why you may not be totally satisfied with where you are, what finding your true purpose will bring to you and finally, how you find your true calling in life.
Where do you go next with this information?
It’s time for you to reflect on where you are and if you’re truly happy. It’s time for you to consider if you’re living in alignment with yourself with the life you lead. It’s time for you implement the methods that are detailed above to listen to your subconscious, bringing you the knowledge you need about yourself to know if things are right for you.
It’s time to find your true purpose that your soul wants you to follow and not the one that’s been conditioned into you.
If you already feel like you are aligned with your purpose, great! But by the fact that you clicked on and read this blog this far, it’s likely that something isn’t sitting right for you.
Feel free to drop a comment down below on other ways someone can find their purpose and any progress you make on your journey!
And what about once you’ve found your purpose and you’ve come to realise that it doesn’t align with what you’re doing now but don’t know where to start in changing paths? Well, you’ll have to come up with a plan to make the transition. This is a topic that I will be writing about in the future so be sure to follow me on your preferred social media platform so that you know when I publish that blog.
If this article was something you enjoyed, you should consider sticking around and and checking out one or two of the other pieces I’ve written. You can do that by clicking one of the pages recommended or going back to the top and choosing the category you may want some help and advice in. The other thing I would suggest is heading down to the social media links below. Here, you can find insights into my life, thoughts on life from day to day or other types of content to help you help yourself to thrive more.
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