How to Discover Your Life’s Purpose – 7 Questions to Ask

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at Dumb Little Man. It has been reposted here with the permission of the author.

“Everything created solves a problem.” – Mike Murdock

Your eyes see, your ears hear, your nose smells. Doctors solve medical problems, lawyers solve legal problems. Your shirt keeps you warm; your watch tells you the time. Everything created solves a problem.

I believe you were created to solve a problem and your success is dependent on your ability to discover that problem and solve it. Finding this problem is discovering your purpose, solving this problem is accomplishing your purpose.

Today I want to discuss 7 questions that will help you discover your purpose.

7 Questions to Help You Discover Your Purpose:

What do you love to do?
Your purpose is directly related to what you love. The most purposeful people in the world spend their time doing what they love. Bill Gates loves computers, Oprah loves helping, and Edison loved to invent. What do you love? Is it reading, writing, playing sports, singing, painting, business, selling, talking, listening, cooking, fixing broken things. Whatever you love, it’s directly related to your purpose.

What do you do in your free time?
Whatever you do in your free time is a sign of your purpose. If you like to paint in your free time, then that’s a “sign.” If you like to cook, then that’s a sign, if you like to talk, then that’s a sign. Follow the signs.

I love to learn in my free time, I have an obsession with learning. Of course, this is a sign of my purpose …which is to teach.

What do you do in your free time? What would you like to do if you had more free time? Would you teach dance a class or a business course?

What do you notice?
A salesman notices an uninspiring sales pitch, a hairdresser notices someone’s hair is out of place, a designer notices a awkward outfit, a mechanic hears something wrong with your car, a singer notices when someone’s voice is out of pitch, a speaker notices an uninspiring speech.

What do you notice? What annoys you?

I notice when information is not presented in a clear, practical, and simplistic form. This is a sign of my purpose. I’m obsessed with practicality and simplicity. When I teach, I try to teach in a very practical and simple way.

What do you love to learn about?
What kinds of books or magazines do you like to read? Do you read about cooking, business, or fishing, whatever it is, it’s a sign. I’m always reading about self development, particularly as it relates to successful living. Of course this is also related to my purpose, which is to teach people how to succeed.

What do you love to learn about? If you have a library, what books do you have in that library?

What sparks your creativity?
Is it painting, designing, building, speaking, or selling?

Writing sparks my creativity. I often feel like a sculptor or painter when I write. I carefully sculpt ideas on paper, ideas that impacts people’s lives; it’s a very creative process. Each word must be crafted for maximum impact.

What sparks your creativity, do you have ideas for new food recipes, or a new creative automotive Web site?

What do people compliment you on?

What “fans” do you have? If no one likes your cooking, then you probably won’t make a good chef.

Do people compliment your writing, or your singing, or your amazing ability to sell? Once again, this is a sign of your purpose.

People always compliment me on my speaking ability, something I was too frightened to do for most of my life. I find it intriguing that my purpose was hidden in something that I was frightened to do.

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Would you start a salon, go on American Idol, start your own business? What would you do if success was guaranteed? It’s a sign to your purpose.

I’d do what I’m doing right now, which is teaching. Nothing is more important to me, what about you?

In Closing

These questions are signs to your purpose. They’re pointing you in the direction of a specific purpose. One question alone doesn’t tell the whole story; you must look at all of your answers collectively. Each answer is a piece of the “purpose” puzzle.

Study these questions, and your answers, and you will be well on your way to discovering your purpose. Thank you for reading!

Written on 11/30/2009 by Mr. Self Development who is a motivational author that offers a practical guide to success and wealth; support him by visiting his blog at mrselfdevelopment.com.

Caring equals productive

One thing that people don’t often mention when they’re speaking about productivity is that productivity relies a lot upon someone actually caring about the project on which they’re working. It’s quite obvious when you think about it. People will be better at, try harder at and spend more time doing things which they want to do when compared to tasks they don’t want to do. I think that’s very clear and I doubt anyone would argue against that fact. The problem with this whole concept is that in our daily lives many of us have to do things which we don’t particularly find enjoyable or want to do. There are a couple ways of dealing with this problem.

The first way is to find a way to care about your work. Find things you enjoy about it, take pride in your expertise and your effort and claim ownership of the project. Make it your own and as something that is inseparable from you, it will start to matter more and more to you as a person. This is essentially what I’ve done when dealing with IT. When I did IT in the military, I didn’t particularly find the environment or the job itself very appealing, but I found ways to care about my work. I cared about my reputation and about how people viewed my projects. I cared about the protection, maintenance and development of my assets. I made everything my own and I cared what happened with it. I worked to make myself indispensable and respected and although I didn’t see my ultimate future in IT or the military, there were things about it that I did enjoy. I think I was more productive than most people an I don’t know many people who cared about their work more than I did. This approach can earn you trust, friendship and respect even if you aren’t keen on staying in the field.

The second way to deal with the problem is to stop doing work which doesn’t excite you. This is easier said than done, as most people these days tend to specialize in one field and it is often difficult to find employment in a new field without further education or experience. In 2007, I decided to get out of the military. I wanted to pursue freelance writing. I didn’t have a degree and I wasn’t going to work for anyone. I moved with my wife to rural Scotland and I ended up having to do some IT work to get by. While I have done a few paid writing jobs and I am working on some projects on my own, this didn’t end up being what I had hoped it would be. I don’t really consider myself a failure in this respect. At least I can say I tried. I took a risk and lived a life and challenged myself. Some of it was bad timing, some of it was inexperience and a lack of understanding about how to proceed. I still want to be a writer, and I intend to pursue that goal for the rest of my life, unless something inside of me changes. My methods of attaining this goal may change occasionally, but in my head the end is still the same.

So what I’m saying by this in my own simple way is that you shouldn’t live a half life just getting by, doing what is required but nothing more. You should live to produce and create, whatever method you choose. Whether you choose to learn to care about what you already do or choose to pursue something you already care about and learn what you need to know, do either one with all of your available energy. Either path will bring you good things.

Creative productivity

I don’t know if anyone who happens upon my website really knows about my history of web projects. For the most part, nothing has really taken off in popularity. I’ve got this blog, but I’ve also got a blog over at Riding the Wind which is dedicated to spiritual matters, my daily life, my photography and my creative writing/poetry. It hasn’t been updated in a little while because I’ve been busy with this, but I fully intend to continue posting there. I’ve also got another site. HandRooster started out as a little project my wife and I started for fun. We decided to make a webcomic. I wrote the comics and she drew them, and for a while we were pretty productive. It was fun but after a while I found it difficult to come up with new standalone ideas and I didn’t want to have Steph constantly grinding away on super long projects. Some of our comics were much better than others, and we were occasionally accused of ripping off one popular comic or another, but we didn’t really care that much because we weren’t huge comic readers. The only comic I used to read was Penny Arcade and there was no way we could copy that stuff. Anyway, after a while Steph started to find it was taking her a really long time to do these comics and she didn’t really want to do it anymore, so it sort of died out. I didn’t really want it to die out because at this point we were getting some decent traffic and it was the most successful thing I had ever done on the internet. We had actual fans and it was rewarding in that way if not in a monetary way.

I decided to draw the thing on my own, but I think I found it even more difficult than she did, because I am in no way an artist. I can’t really draw, so it took me many hours to create simple stick art. One thing led to another and I found myself lapsing and nothing really got done. That is, until now. I’ve just posted an update on the site and while I make no promises about my reliability in updates, I’ll try my best. You see, I’ve got a new method.

I started to think about how I could adapt my system in order to be more productive in making a comic. Originally, I was creating the comic with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and a Wacom tablet. Sketchbook is really great software if you can actually draw and I love the way it is designed for a tablet but every line I make is a shaky squiggly line and I have to blow things up super huge in order to make things smooth. Basically, I suck at that. I’m not an artist. I’m more of an idea guy in general. This problem had me looking for other solutions. I tried Photoshop and some other software but I still had similar problems. I tried to draw things on paper, thinking I could scan them in to do coloring, etc but it turns out I’m even worse without an undo button, despite finding it easier to make normal lines. After all of this, I decided to try Adobe Illustrator. I’d tried it before and found it difficult to get used to, but I used to use Macromedia Freehand with some success years ago before the comic. I decided to give Illustrator another try. It was not easy, but I did find a way to use it which was much quicker and less labor intensive for me. The result can be seen over at HandRooster. It isn’t a work of art but it is the basis of a webcomic, in the loosest sense of that word. I’m thinking about starting to create longer story lines after being inspired by a comic written by Mr. John Campbell of pictures for sad children.

I think what I’ve learned through all of this is that creativity is work too. It’s not easy stuff and in order to continue to create, you must give something of yourself. It’s natural to have highs and lows of activity and to find yourself searching for inspiration or ideas. It’s natural to want a break sometimes. It’s also possible to rejuvenate your creative energy and continue to create. Sometimes you’re going to have critics and hatemongers hounding you and sometimes you’ll start to believe that what you’re producing isn’t worth anything but the good thing about continuing to do anything is that you’ll only find better ways to do it and gain skill in the process. Since the whole talent thing has been proven to be nonsense and mastery is really about lots and lots of practice, why shouldn’t your (or my) projects be out there for the world to see just because you’re new to the process?

Ping Pong – Healthy AND Happy

When you think of ping pong (perhaps you call it table tennis) you probably don’t think of fitness, but when was the last time you saw an obese pro ping pong player? I know, the average ping pong player is probably very different physically than a pro, but you get my point. Any moving is better moving than no moving, right?

I haven’t really done anything physically in over a year and a half and as part of my new plan for success in life, I’d like to get fit. I’d like to lose a bit of weight and just get to the point where I feel a bit better. When I got home from my recent trip back to the US, there was a ping pong table awaiting me upon my return.

The great thing about ping pong is that there isn’t really much to it. It’s a simple game with relatively few equipment requirements. Once you’ve got the table, the paddles and balls are hardly an expensive purchase. On a lot of tables, you can lock up half the table so that you can play on your own against the far surface of the table or you can play with someone else in the usual way. While ping pong starts out at a basic level just dinking a ball back and forth over the net in a pretty awkward way, once you introduce the more advanced aspects of the game such as spin things get a lot more exciting. Spin always you to introduce a lot more force to the ball and before long the ball will be flying back and forth across the table from corner to corner as the competition between you and your partner heats up.

I started playing one day and the next I was extremely sore so I knew that I had been working muscles I hadn’t used in a long time. To top it off, once I get started I don’t want to stop. After a while dodging back and forth for the ball, I work up quite a sweat and it really does end up to be a decent workout for me, and I’m sure this only increases along with skill level. I’m not claiming ping pong should be your only form of exercise, but it isn’t a bad place to start. It’s tons of fun, interactive, competitive and it gets you moving. If you’re not great at first, don’t worry. Spend a day or two bending over to pick up the balls you’ve missed and you’ll get exercise anyway.

The Tao of Unemployment

It’s no secret that I’m looking for employment at the moment, and I’d be lying if I said that the process hasn’t gotten to me occasionally. It can be extremely difficult to deal with the constant rejection and indifference from potential employers. For months I’ve been looking for and applying to jobs via every conceivable method available to me. The thing is that for all of the hundreds of jobs I’ve tried to get, the times when I’ve been closest to employment have been the times when I’ve done the least amount of work and not tried to fight the situation.

What I mean by this is that on these occasions, I let my personal and/or professional network work for me. A friend, family member or colleague would recommend me to someone, citing my particular skill set and experience and all I’d have to do is answer a few questions. I can’t say whether or not these situations have been successful or not only because they are still ongoing, but I have hope that at least one of these opportunities will work out and that I’ll find a position which fits me.

I find that when I don’t try to force things, I am more relaxed and therefore perform better when faced with a legitimate employment opportunity. This being said, obviously trying to get a job is something which requires a certain amount of effort. The important thing to remember is that when doing this, the best and most productive way is to spread the news about your job search is through your existing network. Even if you end up only hearing about an opportunity through a friend of a friend of a friend, you may still end up with information about a position to which the general public is not privy. This can often bring up strange opportunities which may not have occurred to you otherwise, but you shouldn’t dismiss them.

It is really worth considering unemployment itself as an opportunity rather than a curse. It can give you a chance to think about your priorities and consider different directions to pursue in your career, to build a network of contacts or to work on improving skills and knowledge. It has given me the chance to consider my long term goals, assess my career path and think about where I want to end up, both professionally and geographically. It may not be the most stable point of your life but it can be just what you need at just the right time in order to rejuvenate your life and prevent career stagnation. So, to recap -

Don’t fight your situation
Let your skills, experience, and network work for you
Don’t force things or dismiss unique opportunities
See unemployment as an opportunity for growth

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