Everyone Needs Something to Live For

“Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.”

Washington Irving

 
Your life purpose is an incredibly powerful force that will direct your life and determine your legacy. Find a successful person who is content and fulfilled, and you’ll likely find a life guided by an inspired purpose or mission, and a person who has applied his or her unique talents to a worthy cause.

In fact, without a strong sense of life purpose,

even the most successful accomplishments can seem empty.
 

Knowing your life purpose –what makes you tick, what motivates you, what you are alive on earth to do – is what ignites passion. What’s yours?
 
Passion inspires initiative and creativity. It builds momentum and creates enthusiasm. It also sustains hope and perseverance in difficult times, and provides a reason (and enthusiasm!) for getting out of bed every morning.
 
Your life purpose (or one of them) may be cause-driven (e.g., curing a disease, educating disadvantaged youth, sheltering the homeless, cleaning the planet, protecting our country). Or, it may be skill-driven (e.g., athletes, artists, mathematicians, designers).  How can you discover your life purpose? Here are some questions to consider:
 

• What causes (e.g., global or community needs, people, situations, organizations) am I most passionate about? What problems would I most like to solve? What needs or people tug at my heart?
• What inspires me the most?
• What brings me the greatest joy and sense of fulfillment?
• Whose lives would I most like to emulate and why?
• What are my special gifts and talents?
• Where can my skills have the greatest potential impact?

 
 
Once you ponder these questions, see if a picture emerges about what inspires and motivates you. If it’s still blurry, that’s okay. Sometimes it takes a while to develop. When it does, start thinking about how you can live it out (in my case, a heart for mentoring youth became a full-blown encore career at age 53!).
 
Whatever you do, don’t set your life purpose on a shelf and forget about it. You are a unique individual with gifts, talents, and perspective only YOU can give to the world.  No amount of money, fame, or accomplishment can ever compete with that.
 
Someday, you’ll want to be able to look back on your life and say, “Mission accomplished!” What’s your mission? Are you living it out with purpose and passion? Please share your comments; we’d love to hear from you!