4 Questions to finding purpose

Living with intention is all about putting your time towards what is important to you. But how do you actually know what is important to you? Over time, I think it is easy to forget what we truly care about, instead focusing on what others care about, or what is most seemingly important in the moment.

It’s hard to remove ourselves from our peers. It is hard to separate out our wants from theirs. As humans, our desire to fit in and be included means we often agree to, and convince ourselves we enjoy, things others suggest just because we want to be included or we have a fear of missing out.

If we have kids it adds another layer. Our kids have wants and needs. They are increasingly under peer pressure to make decisions about their opinions, and a strong intuitive desire to fit in. How do we teach them to remove their surroundings and learn the ability to internally develop their own thoughts and feelings?

Then there’s our own friends. And our parents. Our children’s friends’ parents. And so on. Everyone we interact with has opinions and feelings about how we should act, what we should want and do, and what we should believe. Add in social media and it can be impossible to get away from.

All of that can mask what we truly want. How do we dig deeper and figure out what is truly important to us? What is worthy of our time and attention? What is worthy of our money?

I’ve read a lot about this over the years because of my own interests in determining my purpose and values, and finding what I’m truly passionate about has not been an easy road for me. I work a job I don’t particularly love, a road I knew I was going down back in college. However, I never did anything about it, because when faced with all the different options in front of me, I didn’t know which path would lead me towards a career I would really enjoy. It became one of those moments where “I can go somewhere else that is potentially equally or more unenjoyable, or I can just stay in a path I don’t love, but at least know and understand.” Staying put is always the easier option.

I knew there was more for me. I couldn’t imagine living this life for 40 years, missing most of my children’s childhood to work for someone else, on a problem I didn’t really care about, only to retire when the best part of my life was behind me. I wanted more for me, and for my family.

Therefore, I kept searching for this “find your purpose” idea. While I haven’t completely found it, I have found multiple areas of interest to me in which I want to spend more of my time. For instance, I want to be more involved in my town, and fostering some of the curriculum and programs for our children; I want to be home more so my kids don’t have to spend time in before and after school care programs; I want to participate in growing and fostering our town’s library; I want to foster dogs and volunteer with animal rescues; I want to accurately, confidently, and successfully help others – that is just to name a few. This isn’t exactly a one fit all career path that I’ve come to, but these are all areas that I can find value and prosperity and love, if only I dedicate my time and money in the right places.

Maybe you have the time to dedicate and you don’t know what to do with it, or maybe you know you just need a shift, but don’t know how to shift? To help you find answers regarding which areas of life of are valuable to you, I’ve filtered through everything I’ve read to bring it down to 3 question that has been most helpful for me.

Answer these 3 questions to help you determine your values

1) If you didn’t have to work and money was not an issue in your life, what would you do? How would you spend your time?

2) Write a list of everything you currently spend your time on, and rate it in order of importance to you, 1 being most important. No ties.

3) If something fatal were to happen to you, is there anything in your life you wish you would have been able to do that you didn’t (i.e. a bucket list)?

Take some time to reflect on these questions, journal about them, daydream with them in mind, and most importantly, remove yourself from the opinions and knee jerk reactions of others so you can really feel deep in your soul what you want.

The fourth question

If you are struggling with these questions, or aren’t sure if your answers are genuine, question yourself. Every time you come up with an answer to one of the questions, ask yourself why. Once you have that why, ask yourself why again. Keep asking yourself why over and over again even once you think you can’t answer it anymore. Challenge yourself to find the answer to it, and you start to determine if what you think you want is seeded out of fear, the thoughts and actions of others, or your own self love and desires.

Out of all the reading I’ve done, these have been the steps that have helped me the most as I try to figure out what is important to me, and where I want to spend the time I have on this planet. Our time is limited, and I believe we are all meant to make a difference, but that doesn’t mean that difference presents itself in all the same ways. Once you can take some time to figure out what is truly of value to you, then it becomes easier to modify your actions to spend less time just busy in the moment on what seems important at the time, and create more time for those things of which are actually important and will make a lasting impact.