7 Reasons Why You Must Know Your Life Purpose

There are so many reasons why it’s essential to have a life purpose. However, most people have never considered what their purpose is.

It can be challenging to establish your purpose if you seem to spend all of your energy just surviving your day to day life. 

However, knowing your life purpose can make life a lot easier!

It’s worth taking the time to discover your purpose and to build your life around that purpose.

Consider these reasons why you might want to discover your purpose:

 

Knowing your purpose provides a foundation for making decisions. 

How will you make a decision that’s right for you if you don’t know your purpose?

When your purpose is clear, your options become much easier to evaluate.

Whether your goal is to attend Harvard Law School, run a marathon, or start your own company, knowing your purpose makes the best option for nearly any decision much clearer.

 

When you know your purpose, you’re more likely to persevere. 

It’s easy to give up if you’re not committed. Your purpose is the thing that you’re committed to.

When those inevitable obstacles pop up, you’ll be in a much better position to overcome them.

 

Our time here is brief. 

Why go through each day mindlessly wandering around?

You have a direction for your life when you have a purpose.

Your purpose might be saving the albino zebras or becoming a horror novelist.

It doesn’t matter what your purpose is, but you can live a more meaningful life if you identify it.

Knowing your purpose provides clarity. 

You know what’s important and what isn’t if your purpose is clear to you.

If you’re obsessed with making the PGA Tour, there’s no reason to worry about politics or the fact that your neighbour isn’t mowing his grass.

You have bigger fish to fry.

 

It minimises distractions. 

Many of the distractions in your life are the things that interest you, but not enough to be a genuine purpose.

It’s the things that you like to dabble in that can be distracting. When you have a real purpose, these semi-serious interests get kicked to the curb.

 

It all but guarantees success. 

With greater focus and perseverance, you’re much more likely to be successful.

It’s challenging to be successful at something you feel half-hearted about.

Imagine something that you’re totally committed to achieving.

Now, imagine that it’s also very meaningful to you, and it’s also exciting and fascinating to you.

How likely are you to be successful?

Contrast that with something you’re only mildly interested in that you consider being rather meaningless.

How successful will you be?

The difference in your results would be staggering.

It adds to your charisma. 

Someone with a purpose is much more interesting than someone who is just drifting through life.

You’re much more attractive to others when your purpose is clear to you.

Think of someone you know whose life is committed to something.

Now think of someone you know who seems lost and inconsequential in the world. Which would you rather be? How would you instead appear to others?

When you know your purpose, life is more meaningful and easier to navigate.

Decisions are easier to make. You’re more interesting to others. Your much clearer on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Your purpose is something that only you can determine for yourself.

Think of all your interests, and then consider how meaningful you think each one is. 

Your life purpose is somewhere in there waiting for you to find it. It’s never too soon or too late to find your purpose!

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Need a Hero? Make Your Future Self Your Hero

Maybe your hero is Elon Musk, LeBron James, or Albert Einstein.

Those are all worthwhile heroes. However, it would be even better to become your own hero.

Your life is your story, and every story needs a hero. 

By defining the hero of your story, you have the unique opportunity to become that hero.

And you need to identify the hero of your story because the hero of each story is different.

The hero of your story won’t be the same as the hero of anyone else’s story.

 

A few ground rules:

• Your hero has to start where you are right now. You have a specific starting point and particular resources available to you. Your hero has to begin from your starting point.
• You have to set a time limit on when you’ll become your hero. Your hero doesn’t have 100 years to work with. It would be best if you also had a deadline to work with. A reasonable timeframe is 5 to 10 years from now. At that point, you can reevaluate and create a new hero from your new starting point.
• Avoid the tendency to limit yourself. You would be amazed at what you can accomplish in 5 to 10 years. You’re a hero, after all.

 

Become your own hero:

1. Define your hero’s accomplishments. 

What has your hero accomplished? From this moment in time, until your deadline, what will your hero achieve?

Once you’re satisfied with your list, ask yourself how you could make it even better. Better by a factor of two, or maybe a factor of ten!

Remember to work within the time frame you’ve given yourself.

 

2. Define your hero’s attributes. 

What qualities does your hero have? What traits would they have to possess to accomplish everything they’ve accomplished in that time frame?

What qualities in other people do you most admire and respect?

3. Define your hero’s life. 

How does your hero live their life? How do they spend their day?

Who is in their life? What types of things are they involved in?

Where do they live?

What time do they get out of bed? What do they eat for lunch?

What is important to them?

4. Define your hero’s goals. 

Your hero has accomplished a lot, but they are not finished. What are their goals now?

Whom do they want to become? What does the future hold for them?

What are their plans?

 

5. Make a plan to become your own hero. 

Starting where you are right now, what do you need to do to become the hero you’ve defined?

What changes do you need to make in your life? What goals do you need to set and accomplish to become your hero?

Consider your hero’s finances, health and fitness, social circle, accomplishments, and skills.

This is just for starters. Imagine what needs to be done to transform from your current self into your hero.

 

6. Get started. 

This is the hardest part for most people. It’s fun to sit down, fantasise and plan your future.

It’s a little harder actually to take action, get busy and make it happen.

You have years to complete your mission, so the tendency for most people is to procrastinate, but you don’t have any time to spare.

There’s no time to waste.

The more time you wait to get started, the longer it’s going to take to become your hero.

Unless your life is perfect, your story needs a hero.

And frankly, who’s life is perfect? 

You can define who that hero is going to be right now, right here.

There’s still time to become the most incredible person you’ve ever known.

When someone asks you, “Who is your hero?” you can honestly say, “Me, in 10 years.”

Be the hero of your story.

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Present Self Versus Future Self

You do it every year, you decide to make a change. It sounds exciting. You can sense the self-transformation that is about to take place. 

You can feel the person you will become. That’s the joy of planning life improvements.

They are intoxicating and cost nothing to your present self.

Present self loves to eat crisps under the condition that future self will spend weeks sustaining themselves on spinach and water.

Present self is happy to binge on video games and Netflix because they have decided that future self will be an MMA badass who does press-ups during their lunch break and dedicates weekends to the animal shelter.

He is that overindulgent GP who has smoked and drank for the past twenty years.

They know all the right things to do, prescribes them, however, doesn’t apply a single one to themselves.

Best For Future Self

On the surface, this appears to be sociopathic behaviour, but remember that the present self does want what is best for future self.

Present self isn’t very good at relating to future self.

The plans and prescriptions might actually work if the present self could take a few moments to put themselves in future self’s shoes, 

Future self would look back and thank the present self for being so practical and cunning.

Present self has so much potential if they will only take a little time to understand themselves and learn how to plan better.

Everything you do makes sense to you. After all, you see yourself as a consistent, rational actor.

Each one of your choices is logical within your grand vision. 

 

Thinking Fast And Slow

In Daniel Kahneman’s prize-winning book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the breakthrough thought was that two completely different systems drive your thinking.

System 1 is fast, instinctive, and emotion-driven. It speaks no words, funnelling your behaviours based on feelings alone.

It is the feeling brain that is responsible for all of your chocolate binges, snoozed alarms, and impulsive trips to the takeaway.

This is our spoilt inner child, craving instantaneous pleasure, terrified of pain, and unconcerned for the future.

In contrast, system 2 is logical, systematic, and slower.

It loves to make plans and analyze, but it is likely to spin webs that ignore the influence of emotion and are too complicated.

This is the side that wants to berate our spoilt inner child for not grasping the rules of Chocolate Land.

It is where we come to the complex comprehension that allows for adult decisions.

We are under the delusion that the logical system 2 is in charge except for a few outbursts from that emotional and childish system 1.

However, the reality is just the opposite. 

Our emotionally-driven system 1 tells our logical system 2 what to focus on and brings the fuel to do that analysis.

More often than not, when the logical brain thinks it is in charge, it is really only just finding ways to rationalize the desires of the emotional system.

Even “good” behaviour follows this formula. 

 

Avoid The Discomfort

We don’t work out every day because we have not rid ourselves of the emotional desire to sit entertained and avoid the discomfort that comes with exercising.

We work out because we have attached new emotions of confidence, strength, and power to our workouts along with disgust from the thought of declining. 

Even when we are overcoming emotional impulses, our feelings are in charge.

This reality contradicts our perception of ourselves as acting rationally.

However, when we understand what drives us, it gives us the power to use our logical system more effectively. 

We can begin to notice when we get pulled down a wrong path by our emotional system and craft better plans to move towards more useful ends.

Like a good parent, we can respect that emotion, giving it the freedom to express itself, while redirecting it in the right direction.

Our Logical Brain

We can enlist our logical brain in designing a plan that can actually stick when we understand what drives our behaviours.

This is essential yet frequently overlooked. 

Our usual process is to get a wave of emotion, that pulls us to get healthy and delude ourselves that we can ride that wave forever.

“Wow, I am so excited. I’ll go to the gym tomorrow, and before you know it, I will be healthy and slim.”

That random decision to start exercising every day won’t last unless you get lucky and making secure connections and find a sense of community from the start.

Remember, emotions are fickle.

The reality is that we will eventually encounter a block of days where we don’t want to go to the gym.

You need a plan that accounts for the realities of your life and clarifies choices.

Knowing you need to plan ahead isn’t enough. You need to leverage your understanding of your own psychology to create a plan that will work. 

To help, here are the four essential ingredients for successful change.

 

Ingredient #1: Pick A Worthy Goal

This is the most important and complicated step. It will do you no good to achieve a goal that causes more harm than help.

Well done for starving yourself for 21 days to lose 12 pounds. You have managed to lose a lot of water weight and lean muscle while ruining your metabolism.

When you inevitably start eating more than your pet hamster again, you’ll gain it all back and then more.

Many people’s goals are overly influenced by the bad advice and complex pseudoscience that abounds in the fitness industry.

As a consequence, resolutions gravitate towards crash diets, arbitrary weight loss goals, and the popular fads that are likely to fail over the long run.

In reality, what works is less sexy.

 

Worthy goals are:

 

Based in common sense. 

There are no shortcuts or magic tricks.

Aim to eat a balanced diet of predominantly unprocessed foods that could have existed 200 years ago and strive towards being more active.

That is what works today and always has.

Long-term commitments. 

The only successful and sustainable approach to eating and fitness is a lifelong approach.

Consistency is the number one variable, and the only actions that stick will be the ones that become your habits.

 

Very small! 

Any change should be one that you can maintain for 5, 10, or 30 years.

Your confidence and willpower will grow over time so embrace the long-term journey.

Make each adjustment gradual so you are always sure it is something you can sustain.

Make it a habit to never allow yourself to not follow through on a plan. The plans you make are a promise between system 1 and system 2.

To succeed, both these systems must work together.

Regardless of how good your planning is, you will need the willpower to take action. 

 

Ingredient #2: Identify Potential Pitfalls

It is pointless to plan to gym every day after work if you know that you have a massive project on that is going to keep you working late.

You could try a home workout plan or a workout that you incorporate into your workday.

That 5:30am Pilates class sounds like a great idea, but if you are not a morning person who loves their snooze button, then you are going to have to devise a plan that forces you out of your bed. You might want to read Ingredient 3.

Do you always succumb to that chocolate syrup drizzled “coffee” when you pass Starbucks? Is there another route you can take?

How about the rest of your life?

Where are the temptations?

What are the obstacles to following through on your goals?

 

Ingredient #3: Create the Environment

Environment is key.

You may think there is no way you could ever wake up, workout, and eat only three balanced meals each day, but if you found yourself in SAS training, I bet you would.

Our environment creates our behaviour.

The most powerful lever for creating change is to create an environment that creates obstacles to deviating from your desired behaviour.

For example, place your alarm under your pre-staged gym clothes.

Eliminate crisps, fizzy drinks, and sugary processed foods from your home.

Start keeping apples and almonds at your work desk. Stage tomorrow’s work clothes in your gym locker the day before.

With creativity, your options are endless.

 

Ingredient #4: Get Clarity

Unclear thinking in the planning stage will be easy to wiggle out of when your emotional brain takes charge.

Get clarity on every element of how you will meet your goal daily.

Be crystal clear on exactly what you are going to do.

Every decision you push yourself to make saps your willpower.

To be successful, you need to reduce the number of decisions you have to make.

That means meals are planned and prepared in advance, and workouts are as simple as showing up.

Don’t jump in and follow a fad.

Commit to an approach that respects the realities of human nature, and you will see changes over time. 

In it, you will grow a better understanding of habit, environmental design, how to intentionally build your willpower muscle, and how to make healthy changes that actually stick.

You will be successful if you approach your goals as a lifestyle that you are committed to nourishing through education. 

This requires a mindset change. It is no longer about getting fast and easy results.

Think of who you could be in twelve months if you were consistent, deliberate, and patient.

It might not be sexy, but it is the approach that will bear the most fruit.

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5 Ways To Perform At Your Best

Do you think it is important to be able to perform at your best? Absolutely. We need to be able to tap into our best.  

In today’s competitive marketplace, being average will not win you new customers, guarantee you a pay rise or bring the person you dream of into your life.

This isn’t about becoming someone that isn’t you, this is about being the best version of you.

I love the phrase “Perform At Your Best” because it reminds me to keep going when I feel like quitting, to keep up with my new routines, and it evokes an aura of resilience and confidence that I want not only for myself but for all of you too. 

What are the components to Perform At Your Best? 

This is an overview of a model I developed based on my own experiences and the research I’ve reviewed.

This pathway will help you to manage stress, find balance, and build your resilience.

 

#1. Get Out And Stay Out Of The Weeds

To ‘Get in the weeds’ is a golf metaphor for losing control and being overwhelmed. And it is easy to get stuck in the weeds.

The more you have going on then, the busier you are, and the more time you can spend in the weeds. 

To see something better and more significant for yourself, the critical step is to get out and stay out of the weeds.

We are all meant to live a life of greater meaning and purpose.

Sometimes, it may seem as though there is no way out of the weeds.

And sometimes getting in there is unavoidable. 

However, in most cases, this condition is not only self-imposed but self-perpetuated.

Yes, you may be choosing this, maybe not consciously, perhaps not intentionally but you are choosing this.

 

A life of purpose beckons to us each day.

And when we answer that call, we feel invigorated, energised, and deeply gratified. However, when we procrastinate and resist, we are overwhelmed, tired and frustrated.

We don’t always realise when we stray off course until we find ourselves stuck in the weeds, becoming stagnant and increasingly irritated with our lives and ourselves.

This can happen in our professional or personal life when a project or endeavour takes us past our comfort zone and into procrastination. 

It can happen in critical conversations when we skirt around the real issues and stay mired in trying to save face or placing blame. 

Or it can happen in relationships when we resist taking things to a deeper level and play it safe instead. 

And it can happen in our lives when we trade our dreams and visions for doing what gets us by.

And then we go through the motions of staying busy instead of doing what we are really meant to do.

The problem is RESISTANCE.

Resistance intends to have us play it safe. Planning, controlling, preparing, and orchestrating.

Resistance urges us to cling to the familiar, even if the familiar is unpleasant. 

It leads us to control our emotions rather than merely feeling and experiencing them. 

 

 

#2. Know Your Sentence

Know your sentence is a simple way of identifying your life purpose. 

The idea originated with Clare Boothe Luce, who was a businesswoman and one of the first women to serve in the US Congress.

Luce expressed her concern to President John F. Kennedy that he might be in danger of trying to do too much.

And as a result, would lose focus. 

She told him early in his presidency that “a great man is one sentence.”

What she meant is that a leader with a clear and definite purpose could be summed up in a single line. 

This concept is useful to everyone, not just presidents.

Have you thought about your sentence? If you have, that is amazing!

And if you have not, then now is the time to do just that. 

 

A mighty challenge.

It takes time and effort to distil down the essence of what you’re trying to achieve in a short and memorable sentence. 

Reducing life to a handful of words is a mighty challenge. 

Why is it so bloody difficult to sum up your life in one sentence?

After all, articles have headlines, brands have tag lines, and even Twitter limits you to a few characters.

Does it feel too cheesy, morbid, or limiting?

Is it reminiscent of a dating profile or a tombstone? 

It might be a little bit of all of them.

We consider ourselves multi-dimensional beings with professional and personal lives, not to mention family, friends, hobbies, and interests.

How is it possible to capture all that in just one sentence?

So what is your sentence?

There is ONE thing that probably defines you more than anything else.

One Sentence for one defining moment.

 

This simple yet complex exercise works well as a form of aspiration, that is, how do you want to be remembered?

This is powerful at any point in your career. Still, the sooner you do this, the more time you have to make changes so that you can become the person you are capable of becoming.

The reason for doing this now and delaying is that once you decide how you want to be remembered, the entire focus of your life changes.

You then concentrate on the essential things that will help you achieve what you have always dreamt of. 

 

#3. Build Meaningful Connections With Others

Whether you’re talking about developing resilience, managing stress, or finding greater life satisfaction, building meaningful connections are a must.

You and I and all humans have a basic necessity to connect with others.

These interactions lend meaning and happiness to our lives.

Too many people succumb to the misconception that the ability to connect with others is an unteachable trait that belongs to only a blessed few.

The reality is that the ability to build meaningful connections is under your control.

And it comes down to a matter of emotional intelligence.

Matthew Lieberman at UCLA conducted some research that shows being social and connecting with others is a fundamental human need similar to food, shelter, and water.

 

Impossible And Exhausting.

It would be impossible and exhausting to make a meaningful connection at every encounter, yet enhancing our awareness and ability to improve relationships leads to many benefits.

Meaningful connections support our well-being in a holistic sense. People in positive, supportive relationships gain a greater sense of self-worth.

And the better quality relationships at work, then the higher your work satisfaction. 

The research conclusively shows we experience overall health benefits such as reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.

It is also demonstrated that caring behaviours, which are evident in meaningful connections, release stress-reducing hormones.

No wonder that a phone call with a friend helps us feel more relaxed, confident, and content.

Convinced Yet?

 

It is easy to make meaningful connections because they can occur in any interaction and are not limited to your most profound relationships.

Whether it is working on a project with a coworker, supporting your partner through a difficult time in their career, or coordinating snacks with another rugby parent, qualities such as compassion, honesty, respect, support, and positivity enhance every interaction. 

Interactions create meaning when something personal happens.

We bond instantly over a shared experience that conveys respect between two people.

These enriched interactions with others not only increase your health and happiness but provide a deeper meaning to our lives.

 

#4. Find Your Smile

A lot of people out there need to find their smile.

Because while going through life, they lose the ability to laugh, to laugh without worry. The change is gradual and subtle. 

You might brush it off because you don’t even notice yourself changing.

 

Consider that a decision is taken at the moment the choice is made.

Decision making, precedes the decision being taken.

What often happens is that we rush the decision-making. And some may still be undecided, unclear, or even unsure.

The likelihood is that they might be unclear what the consequences of the decision are or vague what actions are required following the decision.

You need to be crystal clear what decisions are required and how you will make them.

Whenever you are faced with a significant decision, making it is an enormous emotional leveller.

Make a decision to find your smile.

When you do, it will clear the old clutter and restart happiness. 

You will feel invigorated, even if it is hard work.

 

#5. Be A Flexible And Accurate Thinker

Resilience requires flexible and accurate thinking and the ability to see differing perspectives.

Flexible and accurate thinking allows you to find multiple solutions to a problem. 

We know how life is full of unexpected detours and roadblocks, so being able to develop alternative plans is a vital aspect of resilience.

This is backed up by research from Albert Ellis, Karen Reivich, Martin Seligman and others that show it’s your thoughts that drive your emotions and reactions to a specific event. 

Our ability to assess a situation accurately is influenced by our thinking traps, our core values and deeply held beliefs, and our downward spiral thinking.

When we know how to identify these factors that interfere with our accuracy, we will build self-awareness and a more realistic thinking style.

 

Much of this is dictated by mindset.

Someone with a more positive mindset will concentrate on specific aspects of a situation that someone with a more negative mindset will not. 

But neither of them is necessarily in the wrong. 

Wanting to adopt a more positive mindset doesn’t mean you have to lie to yourself or get brainwashed.

What it does mean is that you have to focus on different aspects of the situation selectively.

Your state of mind determines how you predict future events and also, how you evaluate events as they are happening.

These two factors work symbiotically to reinforce each other. 

Our predictions about the future are derived from the information we have stored about past experiences.

When compared to pessimists, optimists tend to evaluate their daily events from a more positive perspective.

This means they are continuously creating positive memories and beliefs to influence their predictions. 

You can see how this cycle works.

The more optimistic the outlook, the more positive evaluation of daily events, the more positive the memories, and the more positive the expectations about the future. 

And it continues to perpetuate itself.

And good predictions are priceless, the act of expecting an event to happen makes it much more likely that it will happen.

In other words, if choosing between an optimistic belief and a pessimistic belief, know that the optimistic one will usually lead to measurably better outcomes.

Because optimists make more positive predictions, they are more likely to be successful than pessimists.

Which means they have the opportunity to store even more positive memories and reinforce better beliefs.

 

There is an easy way to become more positive. 

Start now to evaluate events as they happen from a better and more positive perspective. That way, you slowly build up more positive memories and beliefs.

This is where the self-fulfilling prophecy comes in. If you generalise positive experiences, they will influence your beliefs more and improve your future predictions. 

All it takes is to choose to evaluate positive experiences as more meaningful and exemplary.

When you do that your generalisations will eventually become reality. I am not telling you that this will be easy.

Thinking is hard work. 

Let’s take a moment to realise how amazing you are. What you’re doing right now is quite extraordinary.

You’re taking a series of squiggly black lines and extracting meaning from them. 

No other creature can do that as you can. 

And you can probably achieve it with relative ease.

You see the words in front of you and process them in an instant, never thinking of the words themselves, only what they represent.

Remember that time when it wasn’t always easy to read?

It might be ages ago, but when you were first learning to read, you would have had to put a lot of effort into it.

Unusual words would have been obstacles.

You would have stumbled, concentrating on the individual letters and how they are pronounced.

It’s impressive just how far you’ve come.

Most learning follows this trajectory.

You learn, and that learning requires effort.

But the knowledge you form afterwards becomes more natural to use. 

We have all been a student of life for many few years now.

We have picked up many skills along the way.

Think about it, we can read, talk, walk, use cutlery, brush our teeth, and all with little effort.

Most of our daily activities can be done while we are entirely detached from the activity itself.

This is pretty darn incredible.

What’s more, you probably have unique skills and knowledge that most people don’t have.

Maybe you have an interest in math or physics or math, cooking, or psychology. 

Your thoughts make you YOU.

Your mind is like your fingerprint, it’s yours and only yours. You are a unique mixture of abilities, concepts, facts and memories.

Your thoughts make you YOU.

But you had to work to get here. You had to work to become you. And, you’ll have to work to become your future self, too. And you will only undertake that work if you see the benefits of doing it. 

Learning is refining the mind, making it more accurate, efficient, and versatile.

As beneficial as it may be, learning isn’t always a pleasant experience. To become our future self requires some discomfort.

I trust this was enough to yank you out of your autopilot and make you think about the five points we covered here. But, if you would like more actionable steps to live an outstanding life, then enrol in the free webinar,

5 Ways To Perform At Your Best.

And remember dare to dream.

Follow your passion.

Be outstanding each and every day.