If you’ve started developing yourself you’ve probably heard of finding your purpose or passion. I hope you have, in any case, I’ve been wanting to write a piece about it myself. I’ll keep it short and use several sources, in the end, you are the one who has to find your purpose. I believe it is a vital step in personal development, as it gives you a guide to discovering who you are truly about, what you value and what you want to do in life.

I have used several ways to discover mine. Some methods worked better than others, and with a few I felt more of a connection to the result than I had before. I suggest you try a combination of several methods. Below I’ll link a few ways to do so. A reason why it is so important is that it helps you to grab life by the horns as you see fit. A lot of people just ‘live’, they get lost in tasks and duties, work or relationships, and forget about the things that (used to) drive them. At the end of things you want to say you’ve tried your best and lived your life the way you wanted it to. This is a common thought, but having it as your cover photo on Facebook is not going to change anything. A purpose, passion or collection of goals is what can drive you to greatness, in whatever way you want it. Once you’ve discovered it, or tuned it to your current situation, you can lead your life by it. As the knights of old lived by a code, you live by a purpose. It shouldn’t be a limitation or a strict rule book. As the Pirates of the Caribbean say: ‘They’re more like guidelines anyway”.

Here’s a TedX talk by Adam Leipzig, one of the first ones to pop up on YouTube with the search term ‘purpose’.

He presents a simply way to discover a purpose, using the following five questions:
– Who are you?
– What do you do?
– Who do you do it for?
– What do they want or need?
– How do they change as a result?

I suggest you grab a notepad, watch the video and write down your answers. The five things you’ll list give a powerful indication as to what you believe you are good at, and what you can convey unto others. Interestingly, as he mentions, three of the five questions are external. Other than your name and what you do, there are three things that are solely focused on others. The focus lies on doing something for others, helping them in the process. Your life purpose generally has a lot to do with what you want to convey, share or radiate as a person, next to what you want to accomplish.

Another way I’ve tried before is using the ideas on the following website, it’s a bit of an older method I suppose but just as true as it was then.
How to discover your life purpose by Steve Palina – Clue is in the title.
Bit longer than Adam’s 5 minutes, but more extensive and constructive as well. As the author states, it can take longer depending on how open you are to these sorts of methods. The result is a set collection of things (words) you have a connection with, for instance guitar or music if that’s your thing. The combination of these words form a sentence, which in turn is your purpose. Sounds vague? Read the whole things and you’ll understand 😉

There are plenty more, some of which I might add later, for now you should have a clear idea on what a person’s purpose could be, and entails, and some methods to discover it. Try and find yours, use it as a basis from whereon you grow. The founding guidelines to the rest of your superior life.