PGR Favicon
Personal Growth Resources 

Write Your Eulogy to Find the Purpose of Life

 Life Purpose, Personal Development  No Responses »
Apr 092012
 

[ad#468x60BannerAdsense]

Tombstone

Flikr user unfrenzedspace CC Attr. Lisc.

Are you getting closer to finding your life purpose? If you’ve been following my recent articles on finding your purpose in life, you know I’ve been identifying processes that help you find your purpose. Not every process is right for everyone. But there is a process that will work for you.

Today’s process may not be for the faint-of-heart as it requires that you visualize the end of your life—in fact, your actual funeral service.

How to Find Your Purpose in Life

What if you could be invisibly present at your own funeral service, able to see the people there and hear their conversations? But don’t stop there, imagine that you can also hear their thoughts.

I recall attending the viewing of the spouse of a friend, and observing that the peaceful state of her body was at odds with my recollections of her. Though I made this comment quietly to my wife, she chastised me for saying something negative about the deceased. But that’s what I was thinking.

What if the deceased had known how I perceived her while still alive? Would that have affected how she lived? Maybe, maybe not, but if she was working to understand her purpose in life, perhaps my perception would have been helpful to her.

Back to your funeral service. Imagine you can hear what people are saying about you. Imagine you can read their thoughts. Imagine you can also hear the thoughts of the people who either couldn’t attend or wouldn’t attend. What insights about yourself would you gain from this? Knowing these things in advance you might change your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors while you still had time.

One caution, though. This process isn’t about living your life in a way that pleases everyone else. That’s not the intent, and it’s not even practical. The intent of this process is to use how people perceive your life to better understand how you’re seen by others and how you’re impacting their lives.

If you’re fully aligned with your life purpose, it’s a given that you will make a powerful and positive impact on the lives of others. When you arrive at a eulogy that excites you—I’m not kidding, regardless of your thoughts/fears about death, when you write a eulogy that you’re proud of, you’ll know that this eulogy is what people will think about you if you live your life with purpose.

Write Your Own Eulogy

If what people are saying and thinking about you at your funeral isn’t the way you want to be remembered, what is the way you want to be remembered? What legacy do you want to leave behind? What impact do you want to make on those you love?

Write your eulogy the way you want it to be delivered by someone important to you. Write the eulogy that person is not only delivering publicly, but thinking privately. Write the eulogy in the mind of everyone you care about.

Start the process with a blank word processor screen or sheet of paper. At the top write: The Eulogy of [insert your name].

Now start writing (this might feel kind of creepy, but stick with it).

Write what comes immediately to mind as a stream of consciousness; don’t think about it, don’t modify it, don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or other grammatical niceties. Just write.

Keep writing until you realize that what you’ve just written is the real you. The you that you know down deep you are. You’ll know you’ve hit the jackpot because you’ll feel a strong emotion. I literally cried tears of joy doing this, perhaps you will too.

Find Your Life Purpose

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

Find Your Life Purpose with a Eulogy

If you can live your life aligned with the eulogy you want people to feel in their hearts about you, you’ll be living the true purpose of your life.

I hope the self-reflection introduced by this process helps you move closer to finding your life purpose. The articles listed below contain even more tools for finding the meaningful life you deserve. A useful summary of the entire process for finding life purpose can be found in Find the Purpose of your Life.

Watch for future articles on this site. Better yet, Subscribe to Your Purposeful Growth Update by email.

Jerry Lopper – Personal Growth Resources

Build your life on a foundation of purpose

What is a Legacy? Can it Lead to Life Purpose?

 Fear, Life Purpose, Personal Development  No Responses »
Mar 262012
 

[ad#468x60BannerAdsense]

Last Will and Testament

Flikr.com, Ken_Mayer, CC Attr Lic.

Sometimes the best way to reach an end goal is to visualize the goal as achieved and work backward. This article continues the series of processes and tools you can use to find your life purpose. In this process we’ll start at the end by assuming you’ve discovered and lived your purpose for many years, and we’ll work backward from there.

The end in this case is the end of your life; that’s right, if your question is “How do I find my life purpose?” one answer is to start by visualizing the end of your life. Not your actual death—that’s too morbid and will sabotage the whole process. Instead, think in more positive terms of what you’ll leave behind—your legacy.

What is a Legacy?

The dictionary definition of legacy follows from law: legacy is a gift or bequest of personal property granted through a person’s last will and testament. For our purposes in using legacy to find a meaningful life, we’ll use a much broader definition.

We’ll define legacy as your qualities and characteristics of being that you leave in the memories of those who care about you. If you’re living in alignment with your purpose you will make a positive impact on other’s lives—the nature of life purpose guarantees that.

Leave a Legacy

Without becoming morose by dwelling on your death, think about the way you want to be remembered. Think about the thoughts of loved-ones when they think fondly of you after you’ve passed. What wisdom, what strengths, what favorite sayings do you want them to carry in their minds at times when they most need them?

Think of your loved ones who have passed. What thoughts do you have of them? Are there times when something pops into your mind that was a favorite saying or a quality of someone you loved and respected? Do those memories provide guidance or help you make decisions, or make sense of things in your life? These are examples of legacies. They need not be profound, though they may be. For example…

A Legacy about Pain

If you’ve followed the articles I’ve written over the years you know that I often write about fears—the impact fears have on our lives and the tools for overcoming fears that limit personal growth. A legacy my deceased father left me eluded me for many years, just recently coming to the fore as I faced a tooth extraction.

I’ve had a fear of dentist-induced pain for many years, probably beginning when I was young, with a dentist who filled cavities without Novocain.

Now many, many years later, I was pondering the fear I was feeling for the necessary extraction coming in a few days. As if he were speaking to me, I could hear my father’s voice as he described a medical procedure he was to undergo. He said, “I’m not afraid of pain, what scares me is if they can no longer do something to help me.”

The part that stuck with me was, “I’m not afraid of pain.” Now my father wasn’t some macho guy, he was quiet and private, rarely sharing his feelings. Though I didn’t dwell on it at the time, this simple statement, I later realized, summarized much about him. Here was his simple legacy.

If he wasn’t afraid of pain, I wouldn’t be either.

That’s the practical kind of legacy I’m talking about, not Gandhi, Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King-legacy, but a practical, every-day legacy that you and I can leave to our loved ones simply by living our lives in alignment with purpose.

Find Your Life Purpose

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

What is your Legacy?

Make a list of the legacies you want to leave behind. What qualities, characteristics, and wisdom will you want residing in the subconscious memories of those who love you?

Reflect on your list. Do you feel good thinking of those you love remembering these things about you? These qualities and characteristics are clues to your life purpose. When you live a life aligned with purpose, you will be remembered and remembered fondly for the impact you’ve made on loved ones.

I hope the self-reflection introduced by this process helps you move closer to finding your life purpose. The articles listed below contain even more tools for finding the meaningful life you deserve. A useful summary of the entire process for finding life purpose can be found in Find the Purpose of your Life.

Watch for future articles on this site. Better yet, Subscribe to Your Purposeful Growth Update by email.

Jerry Lopper – Personal Growth Resources

Build your life on a foundation of purpose

Win the Lottery and Find the Meaning of Life

 Life Purpose  3 Responses »
Mar 062012
 

[ad#468x60BannerAdsense]

Flikr user pmschlenker, CC Attr. Lisc.

What if you won the lottery and then found the meaning of life? That’s kind of the best of all worlds, right? Financial independence and finding your life purpose! You’d be set for life.

Though you don’t have to win the lottery to find your life purpose, imagining winning is the theme of this article’s process for finding life purpose.

This article continues the series on procedures and processes for finding your true life purpose. Earlier articles described the importance of differentiating who you are being from what you are doing. Life purpose is about who you are being, not what you are doing. It’s critical to understand this distinction to uncover your true purpose. For a refresher on being vs. doing, read Take the Mystery Out of Finding Your Life Purpose.

Recent articles described processes based on awareness of the activities which bring you strong positive emotions—a fail-safe indicator of life purpose. This article takes a different tack, reducing limited thinking by opening up your imagination to possibilities.

If I Won the Lottery

What would you do if money was no object? How would you live? How would you occupy your days? Humph, you might be saying—that’s a no-brainer. I’d be sitting on a beach drinking frozen concoctions topped with a tiny umbrella. Or traveling the world, all in first class. Most people react this way to the initial idea of limitless money, but it’s really not that easy. Let’s start this way.

Congratulations! You won the lottery!

Wouldn’t you love to hear those words? Wouldn’t it solve all your problems? A new car to replace your twelve-year old junker. Fix up the house. Pay off your debt. Get the braces for your son that you’ve been putting off. Send your daughter to the college she’s yearning to attend. Move your elderly aunt to a nicer facility, and much, much more. Winning the lottery seems a dream come true. So let’s live it.

You did win the lottery—a huge lottery! One of those mega-millions lotteries everyone dreams of.

That was one year ago today—one year since that magic day when you received congratulations and a big check from the lottery commissioner. In this past year you’ve done all the things you thought you’d do with millions of dollars: new home, new cars, travel, college funds, quit your job, and did most of these things for your close family too.

Now you’re looking over your financial reports and you realize that you’ve spent millions, but you still have so much you’ll never be able to spend it all. You and your descendents are fixed for life.

Financial Independence—Now What?

Now what do you decide to do with your life? How will you spend your days? Doing nothing? Visualize yourself with all the toys you could ever want, all the material trappings you could ever imagine, and more money than you and your loved ones can ever spend.

Spend some time mentally living within this reality of extreme wealth. With no constraints on your resources, what will you do with your life?

Write a description of your life under these conditions. How are your days occupied? What captures your interest and energy?

Can you see yourself living this way? Is it fun, energizing, and fulfilling? Think about what you do that brings you pleasure in this future of unlimited funds and resources. Go beneath what you do and identify the qualities, values, and characteristics of this version of you. These are the beingness aspects of what you do. And if you’ve visualized this future reality and can see yourself living a fulfilling, enjoyable life in it, then these qualities and characteristics are aspects of your life purpose.

Find Your Life Purpose

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

These are the characteristics of who you are when you’re not restricted by lack of money, fifty-hours at your job each week, and constant exhaustion trying to keep up with all of your responsibilities. With no financial limits and no restraining job responsibilities, you’re free to live your life every day being the real you. Can you see it?

If You Won the Lottery

This process of imagining you won the lottery as a means of discovering your true life purpose works by freeing your mind of the many restrictions of daily life. Without constant conscious attention to the problems always present in our lives, we are free to live in alignment with our true selves.

I hope this process has helped bring you insight into who you are, for that is your true purpose in this lifetime. But if you’re still lacking the clarity you want, don’t despair as I have many more processes to share. And one or more of these will be just perfect for the clarity you need.

Watch for future articles on this site. Better yet, Subscribe to Your Purposeful Growth Update by Email

Jerry Lopper – Personal Growth Resources

Build your life on a foundation of purpose

Childhood Clues to a Life of Purpose

 Life Purpose  No Responses »
Feb 242012
 

[ad#468x60BannerAdsense]

Flikr.com CooperWeb CC Attr Lic.

Finding a life of purpose, a life filled with meaning and joy, a fulfilling and satisfying life is the ultimate do-it-yourself project.

Finding your passion is an inside job, accomplished with lots of reflection and honest, insightful consideration of what makes you happy, what feels right, what represents the authentic you.

This article complements A Life of Purpose is a Life of Passion, which describes how you can zero in on the characteristics of your true life purpose by starting with an examination of the things you love to do.

The approach of this article is to go back to your childhood and examine the passions in your young life for clues. Even at the tender age of eight, you knew your purpose, though not consciously.

Flash Back to the Eight-Year Old You

Think back to your childhood. When you were about eight years old, in the third or fourth grade. What did you love to do then? What, you might be asking, does this have to do with finding your life purpose?

This time frame, when you were old enough to have some independence and young enough to have some free time, when you had lived a few years of experiences and had memory of those years, provides strong clues to your life purpose.

Recall that your true life purpose was formed within you at birth, polished and cultivated during your youth, but present within you for your entire life. When you were about eight years old you probably had enough life experience to know what you loved to do, and enough free time after school, after household chores, and during summer vacations to cultivate the activities you loved.

You loved certain activities then, just as you do now, because they gave you the opportunity to experience the true you, your purposeful life. Though the activities themselves might not be the identical activities you love as an adult, they were surely childhood versions that permitted your qualities of purpose to shine through.

Who Were You Being?

As you recall the things you gravitated toward as an eight-year old, focus on the qualities of being, the characteristics and values you were experiencing while absorbed in these activities.

In my youth I played lots of team sports in the neighborhood. Much of the time I paired myself with younger boys whom I led, taught, supported, and encouraged. In my adult life I often took on a coaching role, both life and athletic coaching. The qualities of being between the childhood and adult me were consistent: mentoring, leading, teaching, supporting, encouraging, and challenging.

The Passions of Your Youth

What did you love to do when you were around eight-years old? List your activities and reflect on the qualities and characteristics you were experiencing while in these activities.

Find Your Life Purpose

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

If you’ve been working toward finding your life purpose with the other processes I’ve been describing in these articles, you probably see some consistent qualities and characteristics throughout. Those are most certainly components of the real you.

Are you feeling the excitement of understanding the real you? Finding a life of purpose and a lifetime of passion? If it’s still eluding you, don’t despair. There are many more processes, each designed to provide you with the insights necessary for your journey of purpose. Watch for future articles on this site. Better yet, Subscribe to Your Purposeful Growth Update by Email

A Life of Purpose is a Life of Passion

 Life Purpose, Personal Development  No Responses »
Feb 202012
 

[ad#468x60BannerAdsense]

Flikr.com Smudge9000 CC Attr

In this article we continue our journey toward finding meaning and purpose in life. This process utilizes the strong positive emotions we experience while aligned with purpose by carefully examining the things we love to do, our passion’s in life.

Start with a list of things you really love to do.

Focus on activities or behaviors that you make time to engage in, or if lacking time, you find yourself wishing you could be doing these things. Whatever the activities that come to mind, these should be things that nearly always bring you joy.

You look forward to them, you plan for them, you enjoy doing them, and when finished you start looking forward to the next time. Doing these simply makes you feel good about yourself. You feel competent, authentic, and valuable; you feel like the real you.

Convert Doing to Being

The list you’ve made is a list of doing-things. In themselves, they’re not your life purpose, but since they bring you joy they’re excellent clues to your purpose.

Re-order your list if necessary putting those activities bringing you the greatest joy at the top.

Now reflect on each activity, especially those near the top. What qualities, values, or characteristics are you using when doing these activities? Drill down on each activity until you feel you’ve identified a quality or characteristic that is you at your core.

For example, let’s say the activity you’re focused on is writing. Whenever you can, you open your notebook or journal and write. What qualities or characteristics might be in action? Perhaps creativity, imagination, story-telling, musing, adventure, exploration, or information organization.

There can be many qualities at work during your writing, but there are probably one or two that are primary; these are the core qualities that bring you the joy you feel in this activity. As you consider each possible quality, you’ll feel more joy and energy with some; you may even notice you’re smiling while thinking about them.

As you reflect on the group of activities near the top of your list, explore your qualities and characteristics when engaged in them. You’ll probably notice some qualities and characteristics present in multiple activities.

Highlight these qualities present in multiple activities.

You’ve now reduced what may have been a fairly long list of qualities to a very short, but extremely important list. These are probably qualities and characteristics at least partially describing your purpose in life, the being part of you, the human being.

You may notice a similarity of qualities in your list to those of people you admire, which was the process we described in Find Meaning in Life Using Personal Characteristics.

Do you find yourself feeling that you’re getting closer to an understanding of the purposeful life? If the flash of insight hasn’t hit yet, don’t despair. By going through these processes you’re increasing awareness and engaging the power of your subconscious to ferret out the information you seek.

Find Your Life Purpose

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

Live with Passion

As they close in on clarity, some people feel a bit cheated, thinking their life purpose should point to some magnificent accomplishment for humanity. Your purpose allows you to do with it whatever you feel called to do, whatever brings you a life filled with passion and purpose. If magnificent accomplishments call to you, the good news is that you are more likely to be open to them and more likely to accomplish them when building on the characteristics of your life purpose. Anything you choose to do is better done when you align it with your purpose. A life of passion, whether in pursuit of world peace or personal tranquility, is a life of purpose.

Now that you recognize the role these qualities play in your life, you’re able to focus on aligning your life to utilize them more consistently. This is just one of the many processes you can utilize in your journey of self-discovery. I hope this process produced some insights for you, but if it didn’t don’t despair. I’ll be sharing many more processes for finding the meaning and fulfillment in life you’re looking for.

Find Meaning in Life Using Personal Characteristics

 Life Purpose  No Responses »
Feb 102012
 

[ad#468x60BannerAdsense]

Being vs. Doing

In previous articles I described the two critical components of life purpose that you must understand in order to find your true purpose. Recall that the first of these is the concept that your purpose is composed of characteristics and qualities of your ways of being rather than things you do. This is often the most difficult concept to get your head around because as humans we do, do, do. Beingness is more abstract, but it’s the path to purpose.

The things we do arise out of the qualities and characteristics of who we are—the descriptors of our being. The things we do allow us to experience our qualities of being; our qualities of being shape our lives, our behaviors, our decisions, and our actions.

The Fail-Safe Indicator of Purpose

The second component crucial to understanding the path to your meaningful life is recognition that your emotions—whether positive or negative— are fail-safe indicators that you’re aligned with purpose.

With these two components—awareness of your qualities of being and awareness of your feelings—we’re ready to pursue the various paths open to us in discovering true life purpose.

Life Purpose and People You Admire

If you’re having trouble assimilating the concept of being versus doing, Find the Purpose of Your Life provides background and my personal life purpose example. Following the process described below will also provide insights into this distinction.

We often don’t see ourselves from the perspective of distance, which is helpful in recognizing qualities of being. We’re better at perceiving states of being when we view other people because we have sufficient separation to gain the perspectives of distance and disassociation.

The process starts simply this way: Think of people you greatly admire.

Who pops immediately to mind? Focus on the first two people who immediately popped into your mind. Don’t analyze this too much trying to think of the people you should admire; think of the two that you do admire, people you greatly admire.

They do not even have to be people you know personally; they can be historical or current-day personalities.

Write the two names on a blank sheet.

Note what you most admire about these two people.

What are the qualities of each of these people that you admire? For example, you might identify someone’s courage, compassion, creativity, inner-drive, helpfulness, integrity, or generosity. There are hundreds of words in the English language identifying qualities of being. You might think of these as values. What values/qualities of being come to mind when you first think of these two individuals?

Clues to Your Life Purpose

It’s likely that the qualities you most admire about these people are qualities that represent them at their best. These qualities are at least partial components of the life purpose of the two people you identified, because when you’re aligned with purpose you perform at a very high level.

Seeing this avenue into identifying someone else’s life purpose will help you in your own quest. Now here’s the neat wrinkle of this process.

Focusing on qualities you greatly admire in others provides very strong clues to your own meaningful life.

The reason you admire these qualities is because they are qualities of your life purpose too. No, you might say, I’m not as courageous as that person, nor as helpful as this person. Maybe so, but you probably display these qualities at times. And when you do, you probably feel very good about yourself, a strong clue to purposeful living.

Now list these qualities on a new page.

Think of each quality and allow your mind to surface memories of times you’ve displayed each quality. Capture your feelings when you recall a time when you were aligned with one or more of these qualities. Did you feel good about yourself? Did you perform at a high level?

Watch yourself carefully over the next few days, noting when you behave with these qualities, paying special attention to how you feel at the time. Positive feelings reinforce that these are qualities comprising your life purpose.

Find Your Life Purpose

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

Now that you recognize the role these qualities play in your life, you’re able to focus on aligning your life to utilize them more consistently. This is just one of the many processes you can utilize in your journey of self-discovery. I hope this process produced some insights for you, but if it didn’t don’t despair. I’ll be sharing many more processes for finding the meaning and fulfillment in life you’re looking for.

Image Credit: Ian Muttoo, Flicker.com, CC Attribution License

 Older Entries