Finding our life’s purpose is one of the most profound quests of human life. In the daily pulls and pressures of life, this question often get’s lost. You float through life driven by forces around you. It sometimes feels like you are a puppet with an unseen hand pulling the strings of your daily existence. You act your part but do not seem to be in control of your own destiny. Life goes on but you feel an aching emptiness. You feel that you have not had the success that you should have had. Even if you are successful in others eyes you do not feel happy inside. You start having fundamental questions about the purpose of your life.
Purpose of one’s life is difficult puzzle. It is sometimes difficult even to find the start point where you begin unraveling this puzzle. Moreover, it seems to have many layers. The more you uncover, the more questions it seems to throw up. However, it is necessary that we attempt to solve this puzzle of life. Having a powerful and sustained purpose in life is key to both achieving your full potential and to find lasting happiness in life. It brings energy and focus that can unlock your potential, spark the leader within you, and lift you and the world around to a different level (see my previous blogpost, Achieving your full potential). Moreover, having clarity on purpose and being able to live it brings alignment that leads to lasting happiness and inner peace.
I believe our Purpose becomes apparent when we find the “Sweet Spot” where our passions, unique talents and important needs come together. Finding your “sweet spot” is a journey. Passions are the likely starting point but not enough. They need to be coupled with talent. Finally and most importantly you need to channelize them into solving some important needs or problems around you. Magic happens when you find the “Sweet Spot” at the intersection of these three forces. You realize the powerful and sustained purpose of your life. However, finding this “Sweet Spot” is not a predictable formula. It is a voyage, a patient journey, an exciting adventure.
Here are some thoughts on finding your “Sweet Spot” – your powerful, sustained purpose:
Start with your passions
Passions are a gift. They are a source of energy. They light up your life and bring joy and vitality. Life without passions is not a full life. They are also the foundation for excellence. You are likely to give your best in what interests you and brings you happiness. Passions are like a luminous compass that light up the way to your purpose. Follow your passions and you would have begun your journey of life well.
However, we often do not follow our passions because of fears and conditioning. A child has few fears. As we grow up, we keep on building fears inside us and it becomes progressively more difficult to overcome them. Fears stop you from connecting with your true self. They limit you from enjoying life. Let go of your fears and take more risks. The downside is less than what you think and upside lot more. So, take that initial leap of courage and go after your passions. Be like a child, live your life freely!!
The other big factor stopping us from following your passions are expectations. As we grow up, we start accumulating expectations of our family, friends and the society around us. We often look at the world from others lens. We are conscious of what we are expected to do and how we are expected to behave. Success has a narrow and rigid definition. We often end up living our life for others or as others expect of us. This is very limiting. You need to challenge this conditioning and live your own life. It is important to be conscious of one’s responsibilities towards others and to discharge them fully. However, in that process do not forget yourself. You need to have a balance between living your life and living it for others.
So break free from your fears and conditioning and follow your passions. That is a happy and energizing way to begin the beautiful journey of life!!
Seek opportunities to serve important needs
Passion is a very important ingredient in the journey to find your purpose but it is not sufficient. Passions alone are like sparks that will flicker but might not sustain. They need to be aligned with serving an important need to convert the sparks into a bright and sustainable fire. Life is not to be lived in isolation. We live in an interdependent world. One of the fundamental objectives of life is how we make a positive difference to the world around us. We need to translate that into our personal purpose. Moreover, it is not just about noble purpose. At a more practical level, any effort needs to create value for others for it to be sustainable. You create value not just by pursuing your own self-actualization but solving problems or serving needs of others. Therefore, we need to figure out how our passions and/or skills (which are internal) can be made relevant for the world around us. How what interests us or what we are good at can create value or solve problems of others? You need to link the internal with the external, or to put in more commercial terms, you need to link supply with demand!!
Finding how you solve problems of others and create value is not easy. We are naturally wired to be self oriented. Therefore, it is easier for us to have an understanding of our needs, our aspirations, our strengths and our passions. To create value you need to have an outside-in orientation where you have the empathy to understand the world around you. You need to go out of your cocoon and relate to others. That allows you to understand the needs of people around you. This is necessary to spark the thought process on how you can solve them and create value.
You also have to open yourself up to different experiences. Finding out where and how you create value is not easy. You are unlikely to uncover significant opportunities if you look at world through a narrow lens. Therefore, exploration and having different experiences is very helpful. As you do, you discover more about yourself and the world around you. This process can help uncover where and how you can add value.
Persist to build unique skills
Once you have identified your passion and/or the needs you want to serve, you need to practice deeply to develop unique skills or competences. Passions are often the sparks that light the fire, and serving important needs the fuel that turns the sparks into a sustainable flame. However, unique skills and competence can raise the flame to become a brilliant, ever shining sun. They are necessary to provide depth to the purpose and raise the impact you can have. They can lift your purpose from the ordinary to something that has a significant and lasting impact on the world around. Equally, unique skills can also be starting point to figure out opportunities to add value. You are likely to more easily find opportunities where you have unique skills.
However, building unique skills and competence is not easy. It requires hard word, patience and discipline. Even if you are blessed to be naturally talented, you have to practice hard and long to build distinctive competencies. There are no short cuts. It takes time and you have to keep at it. Devil will test you in this process. You will face pain and feel like giving up. But, you have to persevere, bite the pain and not give up. As you build the habit of not giving up, of not taking the easy course, you will discover hidden reserves of energy within you. You will find that you are able to go on for much longer. However, even as you start reaching higher and higher levels, you cannot stop. You have to keep on practicing and aim to move to a next level. The fruits of your persistence will be sweet. Once you build distinctive skills, you will find that future activities become effortless and actually pleasurable. And, off course the impact you will have will be much higher.
There is a synergistic relationship between your passions, serving important needs and your unique skills. Passion can lead to building distinctive skills. Together they can point you to opportunities where you are most likely to create value. However, this flow is not necessarily sequential or linear. The three can connect with each other in different ways. What is important is that you are able to link them well with each other. This can lead to a virtuous cycle where they can feed into each other and therefore each becomes stronger. The “Sweet Spot” that emerges will be powerful and can create magic!!
I want to leave you with three final thoughts on how to proceed on this magical journey of discovering your “Sweet Spot” – the powerful purpose of your life:
- Ask the question. Starting point is to question the unique purpose of your existence. Ask that question of yourself and of nature. The answers you get in life are a function of the questions that you ask. As you keep asking the challenging questions, the mist of confusion clears and answers that you seek start becoming visible.
- Understand the flow. Everything that happens in your life happens for a purpose. All the answers you seek are within you, so “connect the dots of your life”. Reflect on your life and the various experiences. Whatever has happened in your life has happened for a purpose. It is very likely that as you piece your life’s jigsaw puzzle together, the purpose of your life will jump out at you.
- Keep faith. Finding the powerful purpose of your life is an unpredictable journey. It is possible that the answer lies at the next corner or it is far away. Answers might take some time in coming but keep the faith that God has a special purpose for you. Seek persistently and with belief and the answers shall start to follow.
Finding the powerful purpose of life is one of the most profound questions of human life. It is a question that you should attempt to answer. If you can find your “Sweet Spot”, it will lift you and the world around to a higher level. Gandhi ji has put it beautifully, “Find purpose, the means will follow.” However, this process of finding your purpose is a patient journey. Take it as an exciting adventure and do embark on it!!
