Whether you just finished school or reached the six-figure mark in your career, it’s not uncommon to lack a sense of meaning and joy.
I also often struggled with the question:
“What is my purpose in life?”
After struggling through university, I lost all interest to start my career. Sure, I now had a useful Finance degree. Just no excitement or ambition.
Instead, I took all my saving and went backpacking in Australia.
Within 3 months, I was out of money. I hopped from one job to the next, trying to figure out what to do next. That was one of the best things I’ve ever done btw.
You also may wonder what the right path is for you. You know you’re capable of more. But what’s the right pursuit for you?
Finding your purpose will give you direction, meaning, and fulfillment.
And if you take action on the steps in this article, I guarantee that you’ll find your purpose. At least, you’ll gain a sense of direction and feel empowered to take action.
So let’s dive in!
The importance of having a purpose
Many get caught up in the meaningless pursuit known as the rat race.
You focus all your time and energy on gaining money and status. After years of hard work, you may finally reach your goals. You finally feel happy.
But not for long.
The initial rush fades away. You got a small external upgrade but still feel empty inside. It’s frustrating. When you compare yourself to wealthier and more successful people, they just seem happier.
So you double down, work even harder, and you become more relentless so you can also unlock the good life.
That’s the definition of a modern slave.
It’s no secret that many self-made millionaires feel unfulfilled.
While achieving external success unlocks popular benefits, it doens’t automatically lead to inner success and fulfillment.
In fact, it rarely does.
Understanding WHY you do what you do is important.
Figuring out your purpose first helps you not only achieve meaningful external successes, but also fulfills you internally.
So stop aspiring to others’ social media highlights and societies definition of success. Instead, figure out what success truly means to you – and pursue it.
Your time to start living is now.
What is our purpose on earth?
Do you wonder about the meaning of life?
What are the odds of being a human, in possibly the best and certainly the most interesting time in history, with the privilege to have access to the internet – most likely from a smartphone that connects you with the entire world – and a global infrastructure that’s more advanced than ever before?
The estimated odds are roughly 1 in 400 trillion.
You already won the lottery. Yet, you feel so stuck in your own head and trapped in the system that you struggle to find meaning and joy.
I felt that way too.
While life isn’t always easy, I worked on clarifying this simplified 3-point framework for what I believe is our purpose on earth:
- Become your best self through continuous self-improvement.
- Add value to others through connection and creation.
- Experience and enjoy life in the present moment.
In summary, living a fulfilling life is about growth, love, and joy. It’s a simple framework that I use to focus on what’s truly important.
Do you agree?
While most people use busyness as a proxy for success, a better approach is to focus on what truly matters – and cut the BS.
But… What exactly is a purpose?
Just like the most successful businesses have a strong and clear vision for the future beyond just “making more money”, so does life become more meaningful when you have a reason for existing.
In other words, a purpose is the vision you have for your life.
You can split it up into a:
- Personal mission statement: What change would you wish to see in the world? This statement focuses on the contribution you want to make, often reflecting a problem you wish to solve.
- Personal vision statement: Who do you want to become in life? This statement focuses on what’s most important to you, including your values and personal goals. It reflects your idea of self-actualization.
When you have those two statements, you’re well on your path to enrich your life with more meaning and joy.
But before we dive into the steps to find your purpose, let’s stress…
The benefits of having a clear purpose
The most important reason to find your purpose is to gain a sense of meaning and clear direction in your life. Purpose empowers you to focus your time and energy on what’s most important to you.
After all, life is messy.
There are a gazillion things that demand your attention. If you don’t decide what’s important to you, other people will. And you’ll drift aimlessly.
What if you do have a clear sense of purpose?
The most important benefits include:
- Setting more authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling goals.
- Getting and staying motivated, even when challenges arise.
- Feeling aligned with your passions, values, and strengths.
- Experiencing more depth and meaning in your relationships.
- Enjoying a sense of lasting freedom, fulfillment, and joy.
In essence, finding your purpose transforms how you live and interact with the world. Everyday moments turn into opportunities for growth, connection, and joy.
How to find your purpose in life?
Finding your purpose starts by understanding its key elements:
- Passions and interests: What excites you? Doing what you enjoy fuels motivation, consistent growth, and personal fulfillment.
- Personal strengths: What are your talents and skills? Leveraging your superpowers is enjoyable and often leads to making the biggest impact.
- Personal core values: What do you deeply care about? Success feels meaningful and authentic when it aligns with your principles.
- Positive impact: What difference do you want to make? Providing value to others adds a deeper layer of meaning to your purpose.
Include each element to shape a purpose that aligns with who you are and what’s most important to you. In addition, the most meaningful purposes all include a strong element of positive social impact.
Let’s uncover how to find your purpose step-by-step.
Step 1: Unravel your personal blueprint
Self-discovery is the first step to crafting your purpose.
Before you do anything else, you need a basic understanding of who you are and what makes you tick. While that may sound obvious to you, many people skip this part. Instead, they seek the fastest path to fame and riches.
But not only is the pursuit of fast success soul sucking, upon succeeding it rarely leads to lasting happiness or personal fulfillment.
A better strategy is to find your authentic path to success.
Task 1: Internal self-reflection
Self-reflection is an important first step because it gives you raw and unfiltered data. It also reveals insights into your level of self-awarness.
Start by answering the following questions:
- Who are you?
- What interests you?
- What are you good at?
- What makes you unique?
- What do you value the most?
- What are your dominant personality traits?
Note down everything that comes to mind.
Do it now.
If you’re just starting on your journey of self-discovery, you may struggle with the answers. That’s normal, so don’t stress about it.
The next task will be easier.
Task 2: Use external insights
You should only continue after you’ve done the previous self-reflection exercise. If you haven’t answered the questions above yet, do it now.
I mean, if you really want to find your purpose, you’ve got to do the little bit work that goes into it…
Done?
Great!
The next task is to take the best personality test and combine those findings with your reflections. If you take those tests before you reflect on yourself, you have no raw self-reflections to compare your test results.
So, if you still haven’t answered the self-reflective questions, you know what to do.
Anyway, let’s continue.
The Myers Briggs, a.k.a. The 16 Personality Test, is my preferred test for beginners. Why? Because it contains a wealth of insights that are easy to understand and actionable.
In other words, this test is great if you have no psychology background and want to get the best value for your money (if you get the premium report, which I highly recommend – although you can get some free insights too).
Do these two tasks and within two hours, you’ll have powerful insights into your personal blueprint for a meaningful and authentic life.
Take the personality test nowStep 2: List all your passions and interests
If you only pursue something for the wrong reasons, like money or status, then you’ll likely not enjoy the process, burn out, and give up.
That’s why I’m in favor of pursuing your interests.
You’re more likely to stay committed to what you enjoy, especially when life gets tough. At least, find something you enjoy learning more about and won’t give up on when inevitable setbacks arise.
However, you may still have to find your passion.
For example, since my teacher said my writing sucked, I never developed any interest for it. Until I started this blog. It took me decades to find my passion in writing.
The lesson?
It’s okay to pick something and change your mind later. Your passion isn’t set in stone. So keep an open mind, explore options, and stay flexible.
For now just make giant list of all your interests.
Step 3: Identify your superpowers
Knowing your personal strengths helps you identify your purpose.
Your superpowers often align with what you’re most passionate about and where you can make the most impact. Leveraging your strengths increases your effectiveness, motivation, and personal fulfillment.
But how do you find your talents and skills?
If you did the self-reflective exercise and got the premium report of Truity’s personality test in step 1, you can already extract many insights about your personal strengths.
Do you need more help?
Here are more ways to find your strengths, like viewing this inspiring list of talents or taking one of the best strength tests.
Step 4: Clarify what matters to you
Your personal core values are your internal operating system.
Act in alignment with your values and you’ll flourish. Go against your values and you’ll struggle to make progress, feel inauthentic, and get frustrated.
Here are some ideas to clarify your own:
- Self-reflection: What aspects of past experiences made you feel deeply satisfied or proud – and why? And what principles guide your decisions?
- Set life goals: What do you want to achieve in life? Outlining everything you want to accomplish can reveal a path to your purpose.
- Who inspires you: Who do you admire – and why? A good way to explore this is by reading the best biographies.
- Create a personal vision: What do you want others to say about you when you’re gone, specifically about your character? You can find your values by reverse engineering your vision statement.
By clarifying what matters to you, you can identify a purpose that aligns with your most authentic self.
Step 5: Consider the impact you seek to make
An important step to deepen your purpose and make it truly fulfilling is to identify how your work or pursuits can make a difference in the world.
When you achieve success by positively impacting the lives of others, you’ll experience more fulfillment than just satisfying your own needs.
It’s a win-win scenario – in which you get to win twice.
It’s one of the reason why I quit trying to become a poker professional.
Besides focusing too much on the potential results, my pursuit also lacked a sense of meaning. I didn’t experience any personal fulfillment. Although you can find ways to make it meaningful, it just wasn’t the right path for me.
Now, I know many of you seek success…
So what about achieving success first – and then giving back?
Making money is a function of providing value.
The more value you can provide, to the more people you can provide it to, the greater your rewards will be. So if you want more success or wealth, focus on creating more value for others.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
In addition, most people feel good and experience greater levels of fulfillment when they can help others in the process.
How can you provide value to others?
List your answers to the following questions:
- What problems and issues bother you?
- If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
- What legacy do you want to leave behind?
- What do you want others to know you for?
- Who do you want to become as a person?
- What do you want others to say about you after you pass away?
There’s a reason one of the 7 Principles of Highly Effective People is to start with the end in mind. By considering the impact you seek to make, you can reverse engineer a meaningful and fulfilling path in your life.
Step 6: Craft your purpose statement
Once you gathered all the insights, it’s time to combine, mix, and extract patterns.
Let’s create your first purpose statement.
Perhaps you already uncovered a few dominant topics. You might struggle with too many options. Or maybe you still need to explore more ideas to see what resonates most.
It’s all good.
Just do the best you can with your insights in this step. After all, your purpose is fluid – not set in stone. The more serious you take this exercise, the harder you make it for yourself.
Instead, have fun with this exercise.
Be like a kid in a playground, exploring the options.
And finally, don’t be so hard on yourself. Your first purpose statement likely won’t be perfect, especially if this is your first time doing this exercise.
My purpose statement wans’t perfect and changed a lot too.
And it will continue to evolve.
Remember: the goal of your purpose statement is to provide a general direction to focus your time and energy towards. You can always adjust or change it later, based on new information.
Have fun and don’t worry about perfection.
Here are a few purpose templates to try out. Play around and keep tweaking until you find something that feels right to you.
#1: Passion-oriented purpose statement template
- Template: My purpose is to pursue [passion] with joy and dedication so that I can [contribution or outcome] and inspire others to do the same.
- Example: My purpose is to pursue writing with joy and dedication so that I can share my lessons and inspire others to live an authentic life.
#2: Self-improvement-oriented purpose statement template
- Template: My purpose is to continuously grow and improve myself in [specific area], so I can become the best version of myself and contribute to [community, family, or society].
- Example: My purpose is to continuously grow and improve myself in public speaking, so I can become the best version of myself and inspire others to pursue growth as an important personal value.
#3: Strength-focused purpose statement template
- Template: I aim to leverage my strengths in [skill or ability] to create [impact] and help [who you serve] achieve [positive outcome].
- Example: I aim to leverage my strengths in research and planning to create and implement innovative solutions to help small businesses grow sustainably.
#4: Personal goal-oriented purpose statement template
- Template: My purpose is to use my strengths in [skills] and passion for [passion] to achieve [personal goals], all while making a positive impact by [specific contribution or outcome].
- Example: My purpose is to use my strengths in writing and growth to achieve my personal goal of creating personal freedom, all while making a positive impact by inspiring others to take control of their own lives.
#5: Legacy-oriented purpose statement template
- Template: I am committed to living a life of [core value or mission], so that when I am gone, I will be remembered for [specific impact or contribution] that made the world a better place.
- Example: I am committed to living a life of generosity and love, so that when I am gone, I will be remembered for the lives I touched and the kindness I spread.
#6: Overarching purpose statement template
- Template: I am here to [how you contribute], by [what you do], for [who you help or benefit], so that [desired change or outcome].
- Example: I am here to inspire others to live an authentic life, by writing on my blog, for young professionals, so that they can take full control of their own lives.
#7: Start With Why purpose statement template
- Template: My purpose is to [Why: the core belief, motivation, or cause you care about] by [How: the way you take action, using values, strengths, or a process], so that [What: the result or impact you create in the world].
- Example: My purpose is to inspire young adults to pursue their true potential (Why), by helping them discover their strengths and align with their values (How), so that they can live fulfilling and impactful lives (What).
This last template came from the book: Find Your Why. It’s the workbook based on the more popular: Start With Why by Simon Sinek. They’re some of the best books on finding your purpose.
Quick tips to make your purpose statement more punchy
You can always combine, mix, and create your own purpose templates. Either way, here are some of the best tips to tweak your purpose statement:
- Focus on ONE element per part. For example: I help young and old people have more fun and experience more joy in what they do… becomes: I help adults find joy in what they do…
- Be specific. For example: I help people find their unique strengths… becomes (if your focus is actually on people who just join the workforce): I help people who start their career to find their unique strengths…
- Shorten it by removing words or replacing groups of words with more powerful synonyms. For example: I want to help people who want to work for themselves… becomes: I help aspiring entrepreneurs…
- Make it energetic by using strong, positive, and action-oriented words. For example: I hope to better the lives of others by… becomes: I transform lives by…
- Use emotional words that pack a punch for you. For example: I help people earn their way to freedom… becomes: I empower people to achieve financial freedom…
Finally, step away from your purpose statement for a day or two. Don’t look or think about it. You’ll see more clearly once you return with fresh eyes.
Then, have one final go at your purpose statement.
Step 7: Act on your purpose
After you let your purpose statement rest for a day or two and get back to the drawing board, it’s time to make a plan and take immediate action.
The reason is that taking action leads to clarity, which is the final but continuous step for finding or defining your purpose.
Even if you feel aligned with your purpose, it can change over time.
Your purpose is an evolving thing – like yourself.
Creating your purpose isn’t about finding the one singular thing to hold onto and pursue for the rest of your life; it’s about identifying a meaningful direction to channel your energy and efforts towards.
By transforming your vision into reality, you gain self-insights. And these insights lead to a more clearly defined sense of purpose.
Craft your purpose → Set goals → Act → Reflect → Sharpen or redefine your purpose → Set goals → Continue this never-ending loop.
So what’s the first step?
You’re right!
Then, develop self-discipline to achieve your goals. Build self-confidence to break through the barriers that stand in your way. And finally, seek continuous self-improvement.
Fulfillment and joy hide in the process – not the destination.
How to know when you’ve found your purpose?
Do you still feel the pressure to create the perfect purpose statement?
It’s a common pitfall.
Even if you create the perfect statement and feel excited about your purpose, you might start doubting it within days or weeks. You might question it and wonder if you’re actually on the right track.
That’s natural – so don’t worry about perfection.
Finding your purpose is a messy journey.
Like life in general.
The more action you take, the more life experiences and wisdom you gain. As a result, you gain more clarity about your purpose.
The paradox is that you get insights through action. So if you wait for the perfect purpose statement, you miss the essential ingredient that will provide better information. That ingredient is action.
So use the steps above to identify a general direction.
Set goals in alignment with your purpose.
And take action.
Remember that purpose is fluid.
It should provide a general direction and excite you; not stifle action.
So craft your purpose statement and act on it. But avoid clinging onto it as if it’s the holy grail that you can never change or redefine.
Final words on finding your purpose
Remember what’s most important in life (according to me):
- Become your best self through continuous self-improvement.
- Add value to others through connection and creation.
- Experience and enjoy life in the present moment.
Your purpose ideally aligns with each of these elements. At the very least, pursue a path that fulfills you and adds value to others.
If you want to learn more about finding and living your purpose, I recommend the following tools and resources:
- Reflect with one of the best guided journals
- Read the best books about finding meaning and purpose
- Take one the best free personality tests (although I recommend upgrading at least one to get the premium report insights).
