Three simple excerises to get you closer to finding your lifes purpose

A lot of people are talking about the importance of finding your life's purpose. It seems like it should be a very simple thing to do, people like Steve Pavlina says in his post "How to discover your life's purpose in about 20 minutes" that when you discover it, you will literally begin to cry an abundant amount of tears. I'm not much of a cryer myself so it seems to me that if this is that powerful, we should be closer to it than we are. It doesn't seem right that if its this powerful, so many of us would be roaming half aimlessly trying to find it. However no matter how much sense it may make, that's what most of us seem to be dong.

So what is it all about? Why is it so important for you to find your life's purpose? First, it makes you a stronger and more attractive person to all of those around you. When you know your life's purpose and are constantly working to achieve it, we tend to forget about the more remedial things in our life. The petty seems to go away. We can see with greater focus and clarity. A man or woman that is on their path is a force to be reckoned with.

Your path is the seed for all other things and its importance can scarcely be measured with words. More importantly, it can't be measured by the distractions. What I mean is that no amount of distracting world news, plastic trinkets, or status can take you off of it. It makes you real. People are always talking about just being themselves but its pretty hard to do when you have so many social pressures to be something else. I don't know about crying when you find it, but I do know that when you find it, you will be motivated beyond all else to fulfill it.

Magic things tend to happen with that much motivation. First you attract others to your cause without trying. You become a leader whether its your cause to be a leader or not. Those without a path will see your enthusiasm and will back you. Those people in your life will feel more comfortable around you. You will become transparent in your dealings and a new honesty will encompass your life. You will gain room in your life for goodwill toward others. Then benefits to both you and to the world around you when you are on your path are almost impossible to count.

So how do we discover our path? Well there are many ways to do it but you have to find the one that is right for you. I will make the suggestion however that simply sitting down to write a million lines of text on what your path could be will be futile if you have to overcome hundreds of layers of social programming. Unfortunately, this will be the case for all but the most transparent of us.

Here are some tips I've found that have helped me in coming closer to my goal of finding my ultimate purpose. Please try them and tell me your results.

1. Write out what you know to be true about yourself.

Sit in a quiet place alone, clear your mind, take a few deep breaths and be ready to be honest with yourself. As humans, we tend to be very hypocritical. We are very judgemental characters and we hate to label ourselves as the things we dislike. Problem is, normally the reason we can identify those things in others that we so dislike is because we can identify with them so well. They are a part of you. So be honest with yourself. List your family and friends and other healthy things but also list your guilty pleasures. Be honest about them and they will be honest with you. You don't have to show this to anyone so open up.

2. Make a list of the things you would do if you suddenly came up with $1 billion dollars.
There's a catch in this one. I want you to think about what you would do with it if nothing you did would effect other peoples opinion of you in ANY way at all. So for instance, some of us may say we'd buy a new designer wardrobe. Before you write that, remember that this is solely for you, in this exercise, no one cares about how you dress. It won't get you status, it won't get you dates, it won't even have the opposite sex checking you out. Similarly, if you said you'd give to charity, think of it as giving 100% anonymously. No one could EVER know that you gave the money, even the IRS. If you said travel, make sure there is no part of that is showing off the places you've been or even making yourself more worldly so you can fit in better. This is strictly about you. Now of course there are some fuzzy lines in this exercise because after all we are social creatures and our social nature will probably play a part in all of our overall purposes but try to only step over that line where absolutely necessary.

3. Write out where you would like to be in 5 years. Then ask yourself honestly, "Why do I want to be there?"

I wanted to save this one till after the two above because I wanted you to get in the habit of determining the difference in what you want, and what it is that you want because of other people. If you had a five year plan already, hopefully this made you question a few things that are on it.

I hope these exercises are as helpful to you as they have been for me. As of now I haven't been able to pinpoint my exact purpose but I must say that doing these exercises has gone a long way in stripping out the social pressure of my life and making me feel more in tune with who I am.

Until Next time,
Kris