Ask yourself the following questions:<ol><li>What would you do if you never had to earn another dollar?</li><li>What would you choose even when it sucked?</li><li>What did you love doing as a child?</li><li>What makes you afraid of judgment?</li><li>What makes you angry?</li></ol>

How to find the TRUE Passion of your life in 5 minutes

<ol><li>Discover what you love to do</li><li>Consider injustices that bother you </li><li>Find out what you spend hours reading about</li><li>Discover your true priorities and remove false objectives</li><li>Break out of the herd mentality</li><li>Never give up</li></ol>

Have a purpose in your life

The only way to do great things is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, don't settle

You should always have a purpose in life and the courage to follow you passion, these questions and tips will help you make your life more meaningful!

Your purpose rests in the intersection of what you love to do and what others need. Be powerfully in service while living your life with joy.

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Personal Development

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Motivation & Inspiration

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Habits

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Problem Solving

Do you want to learn how to find your purpose in life?

Wonderful! This article is for you.

From the age of six, we hear constantly, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Those of us that don’t know (or guessed wrong) are left with a gnawing sense of emptiness.

Before we go any further, I want you to know that you are not alone.

My research and experience have taught me that many thousands of people — from students to grown adults with multiple degrees under their belts — are struggling to find the answer.  Every single day.

The feeling of being lost without purpose or direction can be overcome with the right process.

This article is going to walk you through the process right now.

Originally published March 04, 2019, this article was updated and republished December 07, 2020.

People have a natural need for a sense of purpose — a feeling that you know who you are and where you fit into the world, that your goals and desires are in sync.

We often move through much of our lives without quite knowing what our purpose is. We follow the social scripts that we’re given — get good grades, get into a “good school,” get a “good job,” buy a house and start a family.

We do what we feel that others expect of us, or what the society we live in prescribes for us.

But we can find ourselves with a lingering sense that something is missing from our lives.

What is your purpose in life? This is a question that no one can answer but you.

Why is it difficult to find your purpose in life?

Everyone and I truly believe that every single person has a purpose in life.

But contrary to what we expect, it’s rarely an obvious or straightforward path. The way is hidden by insidious forces, and the first step is to recognize them.

From childhood, we’re programmed with the expectations of parents and role models.

These expectations give us something to look up to, something to aim towards. But they also blind us to our own true path.

For example, parents often encourage a path of safety. They push kids towards a degree and a lucrative career. For some people, this road leads to success and satisfaction. For others, it’s a narrow path that leads to frustration.

Of course, parents just want what’s best for their kids. And it’s hard to let down the people who care about us.

That’s how expectations lead us in the wrong direction — going to great lengths trying to fit someone else’s version of success.

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Who doesn’t want more money, praise, and status? Those things are awesome. But they don’t provide a sense of meaning or purpose.

We’re wired to look for validation outside of ourselves. Instead of following an internal compass, we follow rewards. And society rewards a linear path.

Parents reward children for being obedient. School rewards students for good grades. We get praised when we get a new job or a promotion, and a raise for a good annual performance review.

On the other side of the coin, kids are scolded for being dreamers. Students are punished for thinking differently. And nobody will congratulate you for saying no to a job offer, even if taking it would surely crush your soul.

You know that feeling when you meet someone at a dinner party who really has their shit together — passionate career, perfect family, competing in a triathlon next weekend?

Or the deliriously happy couple who quit their corporate jobs to raise llamas?

You don’t automatically think that a fulfilling life might look different for you. You’re too busy picturing yourself in someone else’s running shoes (or rubber boots).

This is why comparing yourself to others leads you astray:

Finding purpose in life is a process of looking inward, not outward.

We tend to talk about “purpose” in a tone of reverence, as though each soul has a singular, eternal, reason for being here.

If that gives you the kind of tension in your chest that it does to me, I want you to take a deep breath and relax.

There is no “Holy Grail” of purpose.

I’m proposing an entirely different approach — one in which you don’t have to chase after a mysterious relic. Instead, think of finding purpose like an archaeological dig. It’s an expedition to uncover parts of yourself that have been buried.

<a href="https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/504120665847234576/743360150785491015/Calmwealthybadger_8703bb_7899570.jpg?width=432&height=432">Should you quit your job </a>and do something new? Should you reinvent your professional identity? Should you stay on the same path, but become more focused on a specific result?

We’re going to <a href="https://soulsalt.com/speaking/">find out what your heart wants </a>. Then we’re going to take small steps to build a life that aligns with those secret desires. To learn <a href="https://soulsalt.com/how-to-believe-in-yourself/">how to believe in yourself </a>, so that you can have the courage to embrace your aspirations and make them real.

That’s how you find enough excitement and purpose to last a lifetime.

We’ll start by looking for the clues that you already have in your own mind.

Your purpose rests in the intersection between what you love to do and what other people need. It’s a way of being powerfully in service while living your life with joy.

Your unique gifts, your attitude, your experiences all combine beautifully to create an ideal vision of yourself. You hold a place in the world that no one else can ever fill!

You may have even once had a sense of purpose and lost it, or fulfilled it in some way and are back to feeling lost. The great news is that you are allowed to change and grow. Just ask any <a href="https://blogs.plos.org/neuro/2017/05/09/qa-with-greg-dunn-neuroscientist-turned-artist/">scientist turned artist </a>, or corporate executive turned personal trainer. Life is long and we have so much potential!

A lot of us have been lost so long in the daily grind or in the expectations of those around us. We might not even feel a pull towards any specific purpose, but we have a deep feeling that there is more to life. This can cause us to become <a href="https://soulsalt.com/are-you-too-passive/">too passive </a>in our daily lives.

That’s what we’re going to dive in to discover right now.

Are you ready?  It’s alright if you say no. Walk through this process anyway. It’s time to be bold and fearless!

The 5 questions that will help you find your purpose

Dedicate an hour or more to journaling your answers to these questions. Free write where your mind takes you and <a href="https://soulsalt.com/how-to-control-your-thoughts/">explore where your thoughts wander </a>.

It’s OK if your answers are short, and it’s OK if you wind up writing lengthy stories.

You can even take a day to answer each question as deeply as you feel you need to. That would be a week full of enlightening introspection! If you need help, here’s <a href="https://soulsalt.com/how-to-improve-focus/">how to improve focus </a>.

1. What would you do if you never had to earn another dollar?

I can hear you imagining mai-tais on a beach. You’d love it…for about three days. Soon, you would wander off in search of a mission, a mystery, or anything to break the monotony.

If you didn’t have a day job but you still had the income, what would you do with all that time?  What would you learn, what would you create, where would you go?

2. What would you choose to do, even when it sucked?

Things get hard, and you know how you feel after a terrible day in the office. You stick with it because you’re getting a paycheck and maybe some respect and prestige for what you do, not because you love it.

What would you willingly keep doing, even if you knew you would have those crap covered days sometimes? Because seriously, creating a life of purpose and meaning can have some challenges.

At the end of the day, what would make the challenges worth it?

Did you persistently draw on the walls even after being scolded? Did you drum rhythms on the table with whatever pencils, silverware, or stray stick you could get your hands on?

Maybe you couldn’t resist the call of the woods, running through fields, climbing trees, and hiding in caves.

Our inner child knows our calling far better than we, as conditioned adults seem to. If it fills you with the single-minded glee of an 8-year-old, do more of it.

We could feel judged for dropping our big, successful lives to follow some crazy dream.

The world is made better, YOUR world is made better, by those big crazy dreams! There are people who dress in authentic 17th-century recreation dresses, and they are rocking it!

You can rock your weirdness too because your weirdness is what makes you awesome.

What makes you so mad you’ll fight with strangers on the internet? What topics, when your friends bring them up, make you so mad you want to yell at them?

Instead of fighting internet trolls and arguing with friends, you could use your anger to make a positive change. It can light you up and propel you towards issues worth fighting for.

Do you have your journal pages complete? Did you write all the ideas and random thoughts that came to you as you were answering each question?

It’s OK if only one or two of these pushed you to think deeply. If none of them did, come back to the questions after a good night’s sleep when you have some time to put your brain and your heart into it.

You now have a lot of clues. The next job is to sift through them and pay attention to how you feel.

Chances are you uncovered a few ideas that are giving you an emotional reaction, but only one or two that swirl into some kind of vision in your head.

Now that you think about it, you can’t STOP thinking about it, can you?

“A heart-dream is a place within us where a vision of the future connects with a desire of the heart.” – <a href="https://soulsalt.com/conversational-intelligence-how-smart-how-open/">Judith E. Glaser </a>

Listen to those heart dreams. They are unique to your own neurochemistry and present an opportunity to find your way to a purpose-driven life.

Remember, we’re not looking for a holy grail. We’re looking for clues.

Heart-dreams can be short-term missions to learn something new or take you to a new place. They can also be huge sweeping changes. Pick the one that pulls at you the strongest and lean into it.

That now-gnawing thought, that vision of yourself doing a bold and fearless thing? That life that’s at least a little but probably a whole heck of a lot different from the life you’re living now? That thing that’s weird and wonderful and might even change the world?

That, my friend, is your mission to explore. That’s where you will start to soothe that harking thought in the back of your head: “<a href="https://soulsalt.com/i-dont-know-what-to-do-with-my-life/">I don’t know what to do with my life </a>..”

You did the modern, quick and dirty vision quest. Now you’re excited, but what do you do with these newfound self-realizations?

How to Find Your Purpose in Life – SoulSalt

How to find the TRUE Passion of your life in 5 minutes

Have a purpose in your life

STEVE JOBS

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