Lost and confused about how to find your life’s purpose? Below is a step by step framework that we created to give you guidance in creating your Life’s Purpose, through developing self awareness.
To start, take each step in order. Each step builds off of the step before it. All steps need to be completed to have the full understanding. Good luck on your journey to creating your Life’s Purpose!
- Self Awareness
- Core Values
- Decisions
- Meaning
- Life’s purpose
1. Self Awareness
Self Awareness is the ability to have clarity in your understanding about your personality, strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, motivations, and emotions.
Some practical ways to exercise self awareness is by asking yourself questions. You can start by asking yourself, “What do I Value in life?”. Other questions you can ask are, “What impact do I want to have on the world?” or “What do I enjoy doing with my life?”. If you’re having trouble thinking of questions to ask, it might help to center the questions you ask around a personal problem you are trying to figure out. Another question to ask that might help tap into your intrinsic motivations I, “What would you do with your life if no one else knew that you were doing it?”. If you eliminate the satisfaction that you receive from other people, then it will allow you to look inward to only your personal reasons for doing things in life. The goal of this introspection is to unlock a conscious understanding to your Intrinsic Values.
The practice of Self Awareness is not a one time process either. It’s a routine that must be performed daily and consistently to allow yourself to build on your thoughts and lead you to deeper self-reflection.
2. Intrinsic Values
Intrinsic Values are things that you believe to be important in and of itself. In opposition to extrinsic values like Money, Intrinsic Values drive your behavior in doing something simply for the sake of doing it.
An example of this is going to hike because you enjoy the act of hiking. By practicing self-awareness, you can tap into what you intrinsically value. The things of importance to you lends itself to what you intrinsically value. You can ask yourself questions to help you identify what you believe to be important and then you can make a list of these to see where your priorities in life are.
During this phase, you are likely to unlock a deeper understanding about your personality, beliefs, and ideals as well. These characteristics can also be of use in the formulation of your life’s purpose. We expand on this idea later in step 5.
3. Decisions
The decisions you make in life can have an effect on how meaningful your life can become. The commitment you take to achieve goals that you set out for yourself is decision making.
You can make decisions that lead you to what is important in your life. With self awareness, you will have a better sense of what is important to you. When you make decisions that align with fulfilling your Intrinsic Values, a greater sense of value can be brought into your lives.
For example, take someone who understands that health is what they intrinsically value. They deeply hold this belief that health defines who they are as a person. This person has an increased likelihood that they are going to make decisions in their life that allow them to be healthy.
In opposition, that same person might be less likely to make decisions that harm their health, such as smoking, because it doesn’t align with their Intrinsic Value of being healthy.
All in all, align the Decisions you make with what is Intrinsically Valuable to you in your life.
4. Meaning
Meaning is the sense of fulfillment you receive when you get something of significance.
Meaning can be achieved when you complete Decisions that align with your Intrinsic Values. When you have deeply rooted Intrinsic Values that define who you are, you can live your life more authentically. This authenticity allows you to make Decisions that are more accurate in fulfilling your Intrinsic Values. By making Decisions that fulfill your Intrinsic Values, the potential for meaningful experiences can increase. The deeper you understand your Intrinsic Values, the more meaning is brought into your human experience.
5. Life’s Purpose
A Life’s Purpose is achieved after you align steps 1–4 with aiming at the highest conceivable good that can be provided for humankind.
Someone can live a meaningful life, but not have a purposeful life. The thing that differentiates a purposeful life with a meaningful life is that a purposeful life has intentions of leaving a positive impact on humanity.
The ultimate Life’s Purpose is achieved when all the steps are in alignment. This is when you have the Self Awareness to understand what you intrinsically value and make decisions to fulfill your Intrinsic Values for the betterment of humankind. You can find your Life’s Purpose by taking the responsibility to fix a problem humans are experiencing. Once you identify the human problem, you can find ways to use your skills and abilities to fix the problem. At the same time, it’s important that the solution you’re striving to accomplish is still in alignment with your Intrinsic Values.
You can use your findings from Step 2 to incorporate your personality, ideals, and personal beliefs to make your Life’s Purpose even more personalized and authentic.
Emotional Intelligence is a tool that allows you to be sustained in the pursuit of your Life’s Purpose throughout the 5 step process.
It’s important to understand that this guide is a framework that provides guidance when having introspection in creating a life purpose. It’s not a quick fix or one time process. This is a step by step guide that is not meant to give you the answers. It’s simply a road map that one can use to find answers in their life for themselves. It will take mental and emotional exercise to evoke the understanding that is needed to create a life’s purpose. Deep introspection and questioning is needed to unlock the truth of who you are.
To start, it might make sense to stay in order of the steps to understand the context. However, once a basic understanding of all the steps is achieved, one can go back to past steps to expand upon their personal discoveries. The steps don’t have to be linear in order after you have a general understanding. Creating a life’s purpose is a constant process of learning, understanding, and refining our insights and experiences to build upon past wisdom. By being rigorous and committed to creating a life’s purpose, we can achieve a life that is authentic to oneself and have a positive impact on humanity.
“I believe that there is something unique in everyone that makes them valuable. It’s my mission to unlock how individuals are valuable in their own unique way and how we all play a part in positively impacting humanity.” — Kyle Fisk