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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.
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