A Life Purpose, A Goal and A Plan: Three Steps Towards an Authentic Life

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“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cheshire Cat.
“I don’t much are where —” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t mat­ter which way you go,” said the Cheshire Cat.
”— so long as I get some­where,” Alice added as an explanation.

Lewis Carol, Alice in Won­der­land.……

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I love that quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won­der­land. In fact, I have prob­a­bly lived that quote far too many times in my life. Move­ment became the bench­mark through which I gauged progress in my life — as long as I was mov­ing for­ward, I was get­ting some­where and mak­ing progress, or at least that is what I used to think.

Then I started learn­ing about life pur­pose and how to find my life pur­pose — that qual­ity or pas­sion that I wanted to cen­ter my life around. That ‘thing’ that I wanted to build a career on, or spend time study­ing, or spend time doing. That ‘thing’ would make me feel like I was accom­plish­ing some­thing with my life and not just going some­where; anywhere!

OK, so I’m not the only per­son that is seek­ing to iden­tify their life’s pur­pose. Seems that there are a few other baby boomers, and Gen Y’ers that are cur­rently search­ing to define their life’s purpose.

There are numer­ous tech­niques that peo­ple use to explore and iden­tify their life’s pur­pose. Many tech­niques involve answer­ing ques­tions, like the one’s below.

10 Ques­tions That Can Help You Dis­cover Your Life’s Purpose:

source: florindas­de­signs Flickr, Cre­tive Commons

1. What do you love to do, whether in your spare time or at work?
2. What parts of your present job or life activ­i­ties do you thor­oughly enjoy?
3. What do you nat­u­rally do well?
4. What are your ten great­est suc­cesses to date (in your eyes)?
5. Is there a cause about which you feel passionate?
6. What are the ten most impor­tant lessons you have learned in your life?
7. Are there some issues or per­ceived prob­lems that have occurred over and over again?
8. What do you day­dream about doing?
9. Imag­ine you are writ­ing your epi­taph? What things do you want to be remem­bered for at the end of your life?
10. What would you do if you know you could not fail? What would it take to achieve that?

There is another tech­nique that I really enjoy using to iden­tify top­ics that I am inter­ested in, but that could be because I am more than just a lit­tle bit book obsessed. Try spend­ing some time wan­der­ing around a large book store. What top­ics are attract­ing your atten­tion? His­tory? Archi­tec­ture? Travel? Look for a pat­tern in what book top­ics attract your attention.

You can also look at the books you own. What top­ics have inter­ested you enough that you have actu­ally bought books about the topic — and spent time read­ing them?

And you can look at what mag­a­zines you sub­scribe to. What are the top­ics of the arti­cles that caught your atten­tion and you enjoyed reading?

Once you have all of this infor­ma­tion col­lected, see what pat­terns you can iden­tify, what top­ics keep pop­ping up. These com­mon inter­ests and pat­terns will point towards your life’s pur­pose and will help you set life goals, help you design your lifestyle, or help you maneu­ver through a major life transition.

With your life’s pur­pose, a goal and a plan in hand, you can begin build­ing your best life. Or at least that is what I plan on doing

TTFN

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This arti­cle was orig­i­nally pub­lished on my other blog Age­less Explorer, on July 17th, 2009, under the title Would You Tell Me Please, Which Way I Ought To Go From Here