You are currently reading part 6 of a 7-parter series on discovering your real purpose.
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.” Rumi
“Decide upon your major definite purpose in life and then organize all your activities around it.” Brian Tracy
Are you ready to discover your real life purpose?
Out of various purpose-finding exercises, I feel that the practice below on finding your consciousness is the most effective and efficient. Instead of looking towards the world or other people to feed you your purpose, it involves you looking within yourself and consulting your own subconsciousness. This exercise was first recommended by personal development blogger Steve Pavlina.
Before you start the exercise
Set aside at least 30 minutes for this exercise, with no distractions. If you feel that you are too busy to spare even 30 minutes, consider that 30 minutes is a miniscule investment for an output that will turn your whole life around. Shave off those time from what you spend on surfing, chatting, watching TV or any time wasting activities.
Steps:
- Equip yourself with a pen or paper, or sit yourself in front of your word processor. You can do this with either your eyes open or closed (if you can type with your eyes closed) - I prefer closed as it allows me to focus/concentrate better.
- Clear your mind and relax
- Ask yourself the question ‘What is my life purpose? Why am I here for?’
- Start writing down all thoughts that pop in
- Keep writing and press on until you finally reach the answer that evokes your strongest emotions and resonates with the depth of your soul.
Some notes
- Be persistent. Half-way through, you might get the nagging feeling to stop and do something else. Or maybe your mind is drawing up in a blank. Press on; this means you’re getting somewhere.
- Do not overthink. It does not matter if your thought is a short phrase, a long sentence, repeated or seems irrelevant. The point is not to let your logical mind interfere and filter out anything.
- Getting to the core of your liberating purpose. If you have not experienced any clarity on your purpose in life before, you will find that your answers start off as imposed purposes. These are the flakes of social, media and environmental conditioning that are accumulated in your mind over the course of your life. Just write down them anyway because it helps to get them out of the way. Your liberating purposes will soon start popping in
Note that the quality of output you derive out of this exercise is very closely tied with two factors:
a) Your breadth and depth of experiences in life up till the point.
The more contexts you have been exposed, the more likely you would have come into contact with what really stirs up your soul on the inside. If you were unable to generate something tangible from looking within yourself, try looking towards the world on the outside - what have you not explored or seen? Go wild and open yourself to the widest latitude of contexts possible. The more situations you expose yourself to, the higher the chance of finding what really sets you off on the inside.
As I have shared in my personal life story on discovering my purpose, it was the active pursuit of growth and exposure to different contextual stimulants that allowed me to eventually realize what I truly want to do in life. The more growth contexts you place yourself in, the higher the likelihood you will find something that aligns with yourself inside. This is the same as the concept of heuristics - it refers to the act of learning and discovery to find the optimal solution to a problem. In a matter of time, the process of trial and error will eventually lead you to your real purpose which clicks within you.
b) Your consciousness level.
Your understanding of the world and its full context are extremely important because it sets the stage for defining your purpose. If you have a warped understanding of reality, you will end up having a warped purpose. The lower your consciousness, the longer the time needed for you to unroot the answer. A high level of consciousness will help you gain higher perspective - like getting a bird’s eye view from a maze versus being trapped in the maze. In properly understanding the whole landscape of the world and life you are in, you will be able to more accurately identify your purpose and build it on an unshakable foundation. One way to increase your consciousness is looking your life from a larger context of time and space. I’m currently writing a consciousness series which includes how to raise your consciousness, so be sure to check in for that.
My results with the exercise
When I did this exercise 2 years ago, my first set of answers were social-conditioning junk, like earning money, becoming slim and pretty, becoming successful, etc. They started to disappear as I progressed through the exercise. The first signs of my purpose started popping at #20 and I finally arrived at a full answer that fully resonated with me at #80. Some of you might take longer or shorter. For me, I was doing a lot of introspection on my life and flushing out mental waste for the few days before I did the exercise, so it helped facilitate the exercise.
If you have been going at it for over 30 minutes and you are not getting any constructive output, try again later in the day or tomorrow at a higher level of consciousness. Please do not give up! I promise you that you will get to your purpose in a matter of time. Please do share with me your experience and the output you generate from this exercise - I would love to read about it.
After you have defined your purpose, make sure to review it periodically, for example once every 6 months to ensure that it still resonates with who you are. It is possible that you have undergone changes or obtained new revelations in your world beliefs which makes your purpose irrelevant to you. This is just like how companies need to regularly review their mission statement to ensure that it has not been made obsolete.
For your easy reference, here is the life purpose I generated from this exercise, which I have mentioned in my article on my personal story. The purpose is two-fold:
1) “To touch the lives of others, help them discover their purpose and achieve their highest potential”
2) “To achieve my highest potential and live consciously and freely in truth, love and power”
Now that you have discovered your new found purpose in life, you need to start integrating it in your life. In the last part of this series, we will discuss on how to reconcile your current life with your new purpose.
This is part 6 of a 7-parter series on discovering your real purpose in life.
via http://embraceliving.net/blog/2008/12/discover-your-purpose-in-the-next-30-minutes/
Posts
