Do You Believe You Have A Purpose In Life?

Do you believe you have a purpose in life?

I have to admit that I didn’t use to think I did.

I was pretty much a confirmed atheist and believed life and circumstances were just random meaningless events.

But I’ve always loved studying philosophy, the human mind, spirituality and more recently quantum physics, not that I can understand much of it! I've been studying them in more depth than ever before for the past few years and I’ve moved from being a devotee of the Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens school of atheism, to knowing that there is definitely a divine intelligence or universal power that is governing the universe and that everything in it does happen for a reason.

It doesn't matter whether you call this power energy, spirit, the FORCE (if you’re a Jedi) or God, it amounts to the same thing and I definitely now believe that there is a purpose to everything, and if that's so, then everything plays a part in the divine plan.

Everything and everyone has a purpose in this world, including you and me.

I've also come to realise that the only way you can be happy in life is to divine what your particular purpose is and devote your energies to following it.

Over the past decade or so there has been lots of research into what makes people happy including much research into Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. One undeniable conclusion from that research is that people are happiest when they have a purpose, and their life has meaning.

There are 7 billion people on this planet. No one else is quite like you. You’re unique.

Have you ever stopped to think about what your purpose is? Or as Simon Sinek might ask, have you discovered your ‘why’, the thing that gives your life meaning?

For some, their purpose will be obvious for others perhaps not, and it may take some soul searching to work out. I’ve always thought I’m pretty self-aware, but it certainly wasn't obvious to me for a long time, though looking back the signs were definitely there, and they were telling me again and again that I was heading in the wrong direction.

But I ignored those signs, as so many people do, whilst becoming progressively less and less happy.

In many ways mine is a typical story

I went to a very academic school and although we’ve had a few famous people like Sir Ben Kingsley the actor, Mike Atherton the cricketer and Chris Addison the stand-up comic the majority of people ended up following professions and became doctors, lawyers or similar.

I ended up going to university, then law school and becoming a lawyer which might be a genuine goal for some people, but it was never what I wanted to do.

It was something people around me thought was a good thing to do and in fact, I have no idea why I ever thought it was a good idea. I guess it was just through a lack of knowing what my purpose in life was.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a good job - I worked in the music industry, it was well paid and there were lots of show biz parties which were great fun for someone in their twenties… at least for a while.

But I was never happy being a lawyer as I was not on purpose, though at the time I had no idea why I was miserable. I was heading in the wrong direction. It took me a while to realise that, and as soon as I did, I quit.

It was a scary thing to do and meant sacrificing an extremely well-paid career without any sort of safety net.

That was in 2000 and I’ve worked for myself ever since.

In 2011 I started a new highly innovative company – it wasn’t only a new idea, it started a whole new industry. It was very exciting and I loved it for the first 2-3 years but that industry changed. It became heavily regulated, it took all the energy out of it and negated the ability to help people by offering something different to the banks. I knew I was just not suited to working in a stifling environment such as that. For many years I again felt I was off purpose, and that there was something amiss in my life, and as a result was deeply unhappy.

But, although I wanted to walk away I didn’t, because I felt obligated to clients and investors and also because, being honest, I was scared about giving up on what I’d built and losing my income and the value of my shares which were estimated at several million by that time.

In the end, I think the Universe took matters out of my hands and it forced me to change direction. But that’s a story for another day.

And in your life, there may well be all sorts of roadblocks in your way to stop you from recognising or following your purpose. For example. what you've been brought up to believe, maybe what your family expects of you, your fears about what other people might think if you followed the path you truly want or the fact that you have bills to pay, or you believe that you need to earn lots of money to become happy and so you stay in a job that you hate because it pays well.

But the truth of the matter is you will never be happy in life unless you recognise your purpose and follow it.

And it doesn't have to be difficult. Quite simply, your purpose is what you feel passionate about; what you love doing and what your unique talents lend themselves to.

As someone once said to me:

‘You don't discover your calling, your calling discovers you.’

In my coaching programme, we really delve into this issue of finding your purpose. It comes easily to some people and for others, it can take a little while longer to work out, but here's a little exercise to help steer you in the right direction:

Write down these 3 questions on a sheet of paper and answer them quickly without taking too much time to overthink:

1. What are your God-given gifts and what gifts have you discovered and acquired up until today?
   2. What knowledge, skills and strengths have you developed in your life and your career?
   3. What do you love doing?

Spend no more than two minutes writing down everything you can think of in answer to the above questions. Just let it pour out, don’t try and second guess or edit yourself, what comes out first are probably the truest answers.

When you have the answers to those questions, you’re in a great position to start looking at your life and asking yourself are you spending your days as you want.

If not why not?

We’ll be exploring the issue more in later posts, so stay tuned.

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Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash