Skip to content 
How To Find Your Purpose In Life
Finding your true purpose, living it, and starting every day full of energy and motivation. So many talk and dream about it, but what does it actually mean, and how to accomplish it?
Our purpose or calling is something that we love, that is in harmony with our values, passions, interests, ideas, and ultimately our true self. It fulfills us, gives us strength and we enjoy doing it. But it is also something that serves others and is honored by them.
In short, our purpose is the reason we get up in the morning. People who have found their calling in life are more satisfied and fulfilled, worry less, and life comes easy to them.
My Profession = My True Purpose?
Another term for profession or job is occupation. Synonyms for occupied are not only employed and engaged but also tied up and clocked up. If we contemplate on this term we could come to the conclusion that people who are occupied are therefore often held back and distracted from finding their true purpose in life.
Many do the same job for years or even decades, but only a few know their real purpose or calling and actually live it. For most people, their path in life seems to be predetermined. After school, they go to university or start a career. They choose a profession that is safe, secure, and well-paid. Once this topic is sorted they start planning a family and buying a house. Because that’s how an ideal life should look like, doesn’t it?
For some people, this path is perfectly fine while others feel right from the beginning that this way of life is not what they truly want and what makes them happy. And there’s also a third party: Those who need decades to realize they made the wrong choices in life and that they are not truly satisfied.
They realize that the job they are doing is not fulfilling them as it’s the same routine day in and day out. There’s this deep inner knowledge that they would prefer to do something entirely different and they dream about finally following their true calling and their passions in life.
Some of them long for creative activities and jobs where they experience something new every day, while others would rather help other people than sit in an office from 9 to 5 every day. The empty and tired faces we meet on the train to work every morning are the best proof.
As soon as they take a step back and listen to themselves, many would realize that they have not found their true purpose yet or that they have ignored it until now. They constantly feel that there’s some hidden potential within them that finally wants to be unleashed.
It’s never too late for a change! So if you feel like you haven’t found your true calling yet and you’re ready to unleash your full potential, now is the best time to start.
Finding your purpose can be a lifelong journey, with the true goal only emerging as the process progresses. So the journey itself can be seen as the ultimate goal!
How Do I Find My Life Purpose – Start With Three Questions
Take a moment and reflect on the following questions. Writing down the answers helps to focus and leads to additional insights and impulses:
-
Is this the life I actually want to live?
-
Does my current job fulfill me and make me happy?
-
What do I really want in life?
After answering these questions, you may realize that there is “more” to life and that you have so many hidden talents and qualities that need to be expressed. Maybe you come to the conclusion that your full potential has not yet been unlocked. If that’s the case it’s time to start searching for your true calling.
How To Find My Purpose In Life?
Very few people find their purpose in life in a single afternoon. It is a process that requires time, curiosity, openness, and also discipline.
Our calling is closely related to the development of our full potential. After all, in both cases, our passions, talents, strengths, and interests come into play. So finding our purpose and developing our potential go hand in hand and this process can be very well compared to the life cycle of a plant.
A seed only sprouts when we manage to create the optimal conditions and the best possible breeding ground. The seed eventually becomes a plant, which then grows strong roots, and becomes taller and taller until the blossoms finally bloom. This is the time when we can harvest our well-deserved fruits.
It is never too late to start searching for your own purpose in life. All the positive and negative experiences in the course of a lifetime can be a great guide to help us identify, what fulfills us and makes us happy and what does not. As already mentioned, finding your calling is a journey, not just an average goal that can be achieved within a certain timeframe.
These tips will help you on the way to finding your true purpose in life:
1) Become Aware Of Why You Want To Find Your Purpose Or Calling
Try to find out what’s behind your desire to find your purpose. Why is now the best time to start this journey? There’s often a specific trigger, desire, wish, or life event that creates the urge to search for it exactly now.
The better you know the reasons behind your goal, the easier it is to stay on track if roadblocks appear and things don’t go as expected. Try to become clear about your mission and your „why“ and you’ll start this journey with confidence and motivation.
2) Find Your Calling: Take A Look At Your Past
Some people knew exactly what they wanted to be since they were children. They simply know their talents and passion and work towards them from an early age.
But the truth for most people is that their career path is mostly chosen based on external and society-imposed and influenced criteria. Passion and talent often take a back seat when it comes to choosing a job and they hardly play a role in our lives in the years to come. Many people literally forget what they were so passionate about in their childhood.
Take a look back at your past and search for traces that point toward your true calling.
Perhaps life already gave you hints in your childhood or through certain experiences that you did not perceive as such or that you simply ignored. The exercise in the „Find Your Purpose“ Toolkit will help you to examine your past to gain a better understanding of your purpose.
3) Become Aware Of Your Talents, Strengths, And Qualities
Another essential building block on the way to finding your purpose and unleashing your full potential is awareness of your talents, abilities, and strengths, but also weaknesses. This sounds so easy and obvious; after all, everyone should know their talents and positive attributes. In practice, however, it is not always that easy, and many people struggle to recognize their positive qualities.
Many abilities are simply seen as common and nothing special while they are valuable and unique. Phrases like „Everyone could do that!“ often pop up in our heads when we think about things we do extraordinarily well.
The worksheet included here will help you become aware of all the things that make you special and unique. Perhaps you will even identify or remember skills and abilities from your childhood that have been buried in the hustle and bustle of your daily life.
4) Explore And Know Your Values And Desires
After examining your talents, skills, and strengths, it is time to get to know all the desires and values you want to align your life with. It is our unique set of values that we want to align with our abilities and strengths in order to authentically follow our destiny. This means being true and honest with ourselves. We live authentically when our actions and words are in line with our values and beliefs.
Living an authentic life means following your passion and living by your natural abilities, strengths, desires, and talents. It means being your true self instead of imitating someone just because you think it might be more promising or successful.
The exercise included in the „Find Your Purpose“ Toolkit is a great way to analyze the areas of your life where you already live your values, use your strengths and identify those that have still room for improvement.
5) Learn Self-Acceptance
Accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and cultivate the wisdom to know the difference.
Self-acceptance is the ability to accept yourself as you are. It is another very important part of the journey to finding out who you were meant to become.
Almost everyone is familiar with this inner voice that tells us we are not good enough. We curse ourselves for not being able to do certain things or criticize how we look.
These self-defeating thoughts often come hand in hand with the desire to become a better or different person. It’s because we constantly compare ourselves with others in almost every area of our lives. We always find someone who is better, more beautiful, more skilled, or smarter in certain areas. In doing so, we disregard the fact that these people also have their flaws and weaknesses like every other human being.
The self-defeating inner dialogue often starts with, “If only I could…”.
We imagine what our lives would be like if we only had this talent, the perfect body, or this mesmerizing charisma.
However, in the search for your own calling, these thoughts are not helpful. It is much better to become aware of your true self and to accept it in order to find out step by step what really fulfills you and makes you happy.
6) Review Your Career – Find Your Purpose und Unleash Your Full Potential
Nowadays our career is often not based on our inner voice and calling but on the values, goals, and ideas that are conveyed to us by our upbringing and society. These include prestige, security, earnings, and career opportunities instead of our talents, passions, and values. This ultimately leads us away from recognizing and following our true purpose.
For most people, their work is all about having a safe income, being able to pay the rent, and having a well-respected profession. In fact, a job only becomes a true calling when we can fully identify with it, when it is in harmony with our own values and ideas when we enjoy doing it, can grow with it, and when it matches our own talents and abilities and ultimately fulfills us.
Try to take a close look at your current profession and become aware of how much it actually matches your true calling in life. Find out to which extent your potential and abilities are being utilized and expressed in your current profession and whether there is room for self- improvement and personal development. The exercise included here will help you.
7) Examine All Your Roles In Life – Maybe Your Purpose Is „Hiding In Plain Sight“
On the way to finding your true purpose in life and in order to fully unleash the potential that lies within you, you should take a closer look at the various roles in your lives. They make up a large part of your day and often determine your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Not all roles are beneficial for us. We have often unconsciously adopted some of them or they have been imposed on us by others. Many people then feel obliged to fulfill these roles even though they don’t feel comfortable with them.
Try to become aware of all your roles in life. Analyze where they come from, how they affect your life, whether they correspond with your true personality and whether you would like to adjust or change something.
The questionnaire included here will bring a lot more clarity. It’s very likely that you’ll find indicators of your true calling by examining your roles in life.
8) Ikigai – The Japanese Concept For Happiness
When it comes to finding their true purpose or calling, many people in Japan turn to the so-called Ikigai concept. This is an all-encompassing philosophy of life that is supposed to lead to satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness.
The term Ikigai is composed of the words iki = life and gai = value. Possible translations into English are “life value”, “sense of life” or simply the reason to get up in the morning. Every person has their own individual Ikigai, but not everybody knows it, respectively have already been looking for it consciously.
However, the Ikigai philosophy can help us gain new insights about ourselves and, in the best case, give us ideas about how to live a life that is in line with our desires, values, abilities, talents, and passions.
What makes the Ikigai model so special is that it unites our desires and ideas with the needs of the world around us. After all, in terms of our work and career, it is not useful if we are particularly good at something and passionate about it, when there is no demand for it in society.
Finding out your Ikigai can be seen as an exercise to get closer to your own “product-market fit”. Ideally, you find the intersection between your passion, your talents, and the demand and need of others.
There’s a special Ikigai exercise included in this Toolkit.
9) Finding Your Purpose: Be Brave, Open, Curious, And Act Courageously!
Finding your own purpose or calling is one thing, but actually living according to it is another. Our lives are often so dominated and shaped by rigid thought patterns, beliefs, obligations, roles, and routines that it is almost impossible to make radical changes from one day to another.
Therefore, the safest way to lasting success is to put your newly gained self-knowledge step by step into action. Taking action and changing things that have often been established over years requires courage, curiosity, openness, and the joy of experimenting.
On the way to actually living your true purpose, it’s wise to keep in mind that not everything will always go your way. Try not to be discouraged in these moments and to keep going in the right direction. A healthy relationship, a loving family, good friends, and also a coach, can act as a support or anchor on the journey, that everyone ultimately has to go alone.
Try to implement new things without fear of failure and don’t curse yourself in moments of failure. The exercises included in the “Find Your Purpose and Unleash Your Full Potential” Toolkit are a great companion on your journey. We wish you all the best!
