purpose in life Archives » Purposeful Growth

Stream Of Consciousness to Find What Life is all About

Life Purpose, Personal Development No Responses »

Apr 182012

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Flikr.com redcargurl, CC Attr Lisc.

You have a purpose in life. There is a reason you were born, the reason you’ve experienced the events of life that you’ve experienced, and the reason you’re still alive. If your life is less meaningful, less satisfying, and it’s bringing you much less happiness than you hoped for in your youth, the thing that’s missing is purpose.

Your seeking may take the form of changing jobs, changing spouses, cars, and other aspects of your life, but—as you’ve no doubt found—these changes do not bring the answers you’re seeking.

The answer to the universal questions all humans eventually ask, “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, and “What is life all about?” are already stored within each of us. The process of living is designed to give us opportunities to find these answers.

The processes I’ve been covering in recent articles provide opportunities for insightful self-reflection, opening you up to hear your true life purpose. The process I’m covering today, Stream of Consciousness, provides for a direct path for your answers to surface—if you’re ready to hear them.

The Meaning of Life Through Stream of Consciousness

Find a quiet place, somewhere you won’t be disturbed for at least forty-five minutes. Turn off your cell phone. No TV, no music, no sources of interruption. Equip yourself with pen and paper or your computer open to a blank word processor page.

Get yourself comfortable, feet flat on the floor. Take a few very deep, very slow breaths. Breathe in for a count of four or five, hold it for a count of two or three, and exhale for a count of two or three. Pause for a count of two or three and repeat the whole process. Do this four or five times, until you’re relaxed and peaceful.

At the top of your page write My Life Purpose Is.

Skip down a couple of lines and start writing. Write whatever comes into your mind. Don’t think about it, don’t re-phrase it, don’t worry about grammar and spelling. Just write what comes into your mind.

Initially you’ll probably think of things that “should” be your purpose, but probably aren’t. That’s okay, the process requires that you purge these things, getting them out of the way for the real stuff to come out. Keep writing. Don’t think, just write. If it comes to mind, write it down.

Ignore the clock, this could take some time—twenty or thirty minutes to get clarity is not unusual. Stick with it until you write something that seems to come with a blast of clarity and a burst of emotion.

Positive Emotion Indicates Life Purpose

When I used this process, after about twenty minutes I wrote something that I knew in my heart was my purpose—and I cried, tears of joy filled my eyes and I could feel the joy of purpose surrounding me. It was a wonderful emotional event, bringing me the freedom and joy of finding life purpose.

Your reactions may be different than mine, but when you’ve purged the false purpose components you’ve accumulated over the years and opened the path for true purpose to surface, you will experience strong positive emotion. Your purpose statement may lack polish and completeness at this point, but if you felt strong positive emotion, you’ve just uncovered the core of who you are and why you’re alive. Congratulations!

What now? Just relax and absorb the revelations of purpose for a few days. Let this new understanding of life rest in your subconscious. Over time your subconscious will surface insights that further clarify your purpose. Give the process some time to flesh out the details.

Example: My Life Purpose

You may recall my life purpose from previous articles. My purpose is to be peaceful, to be unconditionally loving, to be courageous—unafraid of rejection and failure—and to use my insights in the service of others while allowing my life to flow as it will.

This fairly articulate and grammatically correct (I hope) statement isn’t what initially surfaced for me. As I recall, what popped out of my mind and deposited itself on the paper in front of me was this: to be peaceful, to be unconditionally loving, to be unafraid. The rest of my current understanding of purpose surfaced a bit at a time. I say my current understanding of purpose because the full extent of born-in purpose evolves and unfolds as we grow into it.

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

Life Purpose Through Stream of Consciousness

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

Find Meaning in Life Using Personal Characteristics

Life Purpose No Responses »

Feb 102012

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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.

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

How to Know You’ve Found Your Purpose in Life

Life Purpose, Personal Development 3 Responses »

Jan 272012

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Is There a Purpose to Life?

Flickr.com user Mia Coffee Snow, CC Attribution License

What is the meaning and purpose of life? Is there a purpose, or do we just randomly exist in the experiences of birth, life, and ultimate death?

Whether you believe in God, a divine higher being guiding your life, or that your life consists only of what your five senses recognize, the question of purpose is an important one to your life and happiness.

Positive psychology researchers are confirming what philosophers, spiritual leaders, and poets have long espoused: life is good when it is lived with purpose. The specific purpose is irrelevant—there is no single purpose that fits all of us. Research and personal experience show that when life is meaningful, people are happier, healthier, and actually live longer.

What Does it Mean to Have a Purpose in Life?

Though some would have you believe that their purpose is your purpose, your purpose in life is unique to you. Whether it is divinely inspired or simply a result of your unique combination of upbringing, experiences, and personality, you have a purpose in your life—and it’s not your job, nor is it an important role you serve. For more background on life purpose, what it is and the important difference between what you do and who you are, see Take the Mystery Out of Finding Your Life Purpose .

The One True Indicator of a Meaningful Life

How do you know if you’re aligned with a meaningful life of purpose? Don’t be afraid that you will build your life on a false premise. There’s one true indicator—a fail-safe indicator—that you’re on target. The indicator is your emotion—how you feel about who you are being at any point in time.

When you’re well aligned with a meaningful life, you’ll feel positive emotions. The stronger your alignment, the more positive your emotions. Feeling joyous? You’re right on target using the qualities of being that are the real you. Feeling generally positive? You’re using some qualities of the real you, somewhat aligned, but not completely.

Feeling negative? You’re not aligned; the more negative your feelings, the greater your misalignment.

What About that Great Job?

Are there activities in your life that you genuinely enjoy? Do certain roles and responsibilities bring you satisfaction and fulfillment? These are not your purpose, but they’re giving you the opportunity to express the qualities and characteristics that are your purpose.

How to Separate Who You Are From What You Do

Reflect on an activity that you really enjoy. This will likely be something that you choose to do as often as you can. If you’re fortunate, this may be your job or one of your primary roles in life, but maybe it’s a hobby or something that you used to do, but no longer have the time.

Think about doing this activity and mentally experience the positive emotions you usually feel when doing it. Are these strongly positive emotions? If not, search your memory for another activity that does carry the memory of strong positive emotion.

Once you have an appropriate activity in mind, mentally re-live the activity and emotions. Think about the qualities and characteristics you’re using while involved in the activity. These qualities and characteristics will be something like the following: helpfulness, courage, loving, creative, insightful, adventurous, etc. That is, they describe qualities about you, rather than about what you’re doing.

Let’s say one of the qualities you’ve uncovered is that of being adventurous. When you’re adventurous you feel happy and energized, and you feel authentic, like you’re being the real you. If being adventurous describes your purpose, then think of all the things you can do while being adventurous. Recognizing that this quality is at least a part of your purpose provides you with a wide array of potential activities, all of which will be satisfying, enjoyable, and bring you a life of fulfillment.

There are two additional bonuses to living your life aligned with purpose: The breadth of available activities will encompass your entire life and you will excel while doing these activities. Think of the advantages of being able to align your entire life with your life purpose qualities!

Image Courtesy Life on Purpose Institute

Separate What You Do From Who You Are

Finding your life purpose depends on understanding the distinction between what you do and the qualities of who you are. The second component necessary to finding these qualities is that your emotions are continuously providing clues; positive emotion means you’re well aligned, negative emotion means you’re off-target.

It’s really that straight-forward. Be aware of how you’re feeling when you go through your daily routines and when you encounter special, demanding situations. The qualities of your behavior present when your emotions are positive are your clues to a meaningful, fulfilling life.

Subsequent articles will introduce a wide array of processes that build on using these two concepts to uncover and clarify your true life purpose.

If you’re having difficulty separating qualities and characteristics of being from activities of doing, refer to Take the Mystery Out of Finding Your Life Purpose .

For more on Finding Your Life Purpose read the following:

Find the Purpose of your Life

Bad Experiences Offer Clues to Life Purpose

Is Fear Keeping You From Your Life Purpose?