How to Find Your Life Purpose

I saw the Broadway musical Avenue Q last month. In it, the puppet Princeton is searching for his life purpose.  He believes a purpose will give him meaning and direction. Friends, I was once that puppet. I wanted a life purpose. As a teenager, I thought I’d found it. It involved computers and knowing the format a TCP/IP protocol header packet by heart. (Yeah, I know. I was 16.) To make a long story very short, I was mistaken, and still haven’t found anything with the same certainty I felt then. Perhaps my certainty came from being 16, not from a real sense of purpose. Hormones can do strange things to teenage boys.

How to Find Your Life Purpose

About five years ago, I reviewed my life and discovered the most meaningful events were all serendipity. My grand plans had never worked out, but the unexpected Yowza!s have given me a lot: direction (at least in retrospect), meaning, fulfillment, and great friends.

These days, I’ve mellowed about life purpose. Instead, I go straight for the things a life purpose was supposed to give me. I ask, “What will be a meaningful, fulfilling thing to do next that will put me around the kind of people I like having as friends?”… And now I get to agonize over not having an answer to this question, as well.

Fortunately, I stumbled across Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck. It gave me some great tools. (Click here to hear my interview with Martha.) Your North Star may or may not be a huge overarching purpose, but you have a compass you can use to choose what’s next on your path, even if you don’t know where the path leads.

Use Your Body as a Compass

You know that icky feeling you get when you think about eating worms? Yes, that one. If you pay close attention, it’s the same feeling you get when you think about spending time with your brother-in-law Melvin. And that’s not coincidence. That’s your body telling you that it’s time to set Melvin up on a blind date with Bernice, hoping they end up taking a two year round-the-world honeymoon. Hanging out with Melvin is not your next life activity. (Yes, you may feel bad about foisting him off on Bernice, but she has shown a remarkable ability to form dysfunctional romances with anyone who wears too much eye-liner and glitter. And that certainly would describe Melvin.)

Then there’s that other feeling, the one you get when you think about Oreo ice cream cake. Your face lights up, you feel bright and cheerful— like you haven’t a care in the world. Your body relaxes, and animated birds start chirping around your head. If you notice that you get that same feeling when you think about doing a triathlon, that’s your body telling you it’s time to start training. Listen to your body, not to me; I think you’re crazy, but while you’re out running, biking, and swimming, I’ll just help myself to your piece of ice cream cake before it melts.

These feelings in your body are the compass that leads to your North Star.

Survey Your Activities

Once you’ve got your compass, use it to survey your activities. Think about the different tasks you do at work. Are some calling to you more than others? Find ways to do fewer of the eating-worms tasks, and more of the Oreo ice cream cake tasks.

I’m sure your North Star is somewhere at work. But just in case it isn’t, also survey the activities you love in the rest of your life. Maybe you’re drawn to time spent with people, or time spent alone. Perhaps sports, or chess, or public speaking, or writing poetry. Maybe you love the time tending your garden, or doing crossword puzzles, or stitching together zombies. When you find the activities you love, do more of them. And at least for now, find ways to ignore or delegate the others. That’s what kids are for.

Bring Back Your Dreams

Reviewing your childhood dreams can also give you a clue. If you always wanted to be an astronaut and became a chicken farmer instead, maybe now’s the time to start taking night classes at community college. Virgin Galactic may be looking for flight attendants, and it could be your lucky day.  If you wanted to be Alexander the Great and unite civilization world-wide, it’s never too late to give it a “go.” Abraham Lincoln lost a gazillion elections before becoming president. So grab that needle and thread and get sewing on those zombies; the world needs your unifying presence.

Brainstorm Your Peeps

Your North Star may be less about what you do, and more about whom you’re with.

If your activities and dreams aren’t helping you find your next direction, look to your people. Who puts you down, makes you feel small, and fills you with despair? Avoid those people. Who nurtures you? Who makes you feel good, confident, and more like your heroic self without the secret hypnotic drugs you sneak into their coffee?

If the people who put you down are the members of your bridge club, stop playing bridge. Or throw them over a bridge. Either way, remove them from your life.

When you find the people who make you feel the best, notice if there’s any pattern to where you spend time together. If you’re doing certain activities together, like hiking or playing board games or knitting exciting underwear, spend more time in those places, doing those activities. Hmm… I like to make friends with the entertainers on cruise ships. I’m just sayin’.

Your North Star may be less about what you do, and more about whom you’re with.

Experiment and Explore!

It can take time to find your North Star. Maybe you’ve never done the thing you should do next. If becoming a ski instructor would be a perfect fit, but you’ve never seen snow, it won’t be high on your list. Get out there and try new stuff. If it seems scary and unfamiliar, give it a shot. You never know where porcupine breeding might take you. If you don’t like it, don’t do it again.

The way you’ll find out is to listen to your body to know what is and isn’t right for you. Use your knowing to review your activities, your dreams, and the people in your life, to hone in the kinds of things you can do next to find fun, happiness, and fulfillment.

Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!

RESOURCES

Episode #91: Is it time to give up on your dreams?

• – My interview with Martha Beck.

Compass image courtesy of Shutterstock