Purpose is a noun and a verb meaning:
Your purpose is what you were created for and what you intend to do.
So how can you identify what your purpose is?
1. What are you willing to struggle for?
Life and doing what you love isn’t always going to be easy. Sometimes life will suck for a while. But are you willing to endure because everything has a cost. Everything involves some type of sacrifice. Nothing feels good all the time. What determines our ability to stick with what we love is our ability to deal with the rough patches and ride out the terrible days.
I know a story of this lady who would go to cities and teach people. She was just starting out so she didn’t have a lot of money. She would sleep in her car and eat McDonald’s when she went out of town. She struggled for what she believed in and now she teaches millions of people around the world.
Are you able to deal with people not understanding what you are doing? Are you able to come home after work and still have to work on your dream? Would you do what you love without getting paid for it?
2. What makes the world stop for you?
What gets your mind so worked up and stimulated that the world around literally stops. For me, I love talking to people and just making them feel at home so when I get talking I can be there for hours. At times, my girlfriend walks over or texts me that it’s time to go.
But more than identifying what makes the world stop, look at what principles are in play when it does. Is it teaching people something new? Or maybe you can organize things very well or you like fixing things? All these things can be applied elsewhere.
3. How are you putting yourself out there?
Before you can be good at anything, you have to suck. It’s the law of doing anything new. And in order to suck at something you have to put yourself out there for the world to see and you will be embarrassed. Being embarrassed comes with the territory of doing anything amazing. If you are too afraid of being embarrassed then you won’t accomplish anything that’s amazing and meaningful to you.
It’s about being vulnerable.
Right now you have a passion and something you want to pursue but you are afraid because of reasons you tell yourself.
Let them go, if they have to do with what people will think of you or being judged by people for failing. Those reasons will keep you from your passion, and being unhappy.
4. If you have to go somewhere all day, every day, where would that be and what would you do?
The one thing that can stop any of us is complacency. We get into our routines and get distracted. We like to binge watching Netflix, Love and Hip Hop, or eating Cheetos while laying on the couch.
Andy Mineo said “we are prisoners of comfort.”
Discovering what you are passionate about requires going to find it. The more experiences you have the better you are able to define your passion. Meaning you actually have to go out there and do stuff.
You leave the house and there are no distractions. No YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix. No distractions and you can’t come home until bedtime. What would you do and where would you go?
Write a list of things you think you want to do and go try them out. See which ones you want to stick with and which ones you didn’t like at all.
5. What legacy do you want to leave?
Do you want to leave something that lives past you? Do you want your legacy to be remembered? To impact the world in a way that changes it in a positive way?
Wanting a legacy is not a matter of wanting to puff up your chest and have all these things listed or said at your funeral. It’s wanting to do something bigger than yourself and greater than yourself. And wanting to leave the world better than you found it.
“This is everything I love, this is everything I need Never sacrifice this feeling even though my heart it bleed”
– Logic
These 5 questions will help you find or discover what may already be in your hand or your heart to do. You just never took the time to look at it in this perspective.