How To Find Your Purpose - 9 Types (Which one is for you?)

The desire to protect often extends beyond one’s family and loved ones and can reach one’s community, their ethnic group, and even their ideas. To cultivate this sense of purpose, you must fall in love with something outside of yourself (this could be a person, group, or even an idea) and then observe something that threatens the survival of what you love (this could be a possible occurrence in the future, another group, or an opposing idea).

The desire to teach is the desire to arm those around you with the knowledge to survive and thrive and to prepare them for the future. To cultivate this form of purpose, you must become exceptionally good at something, see the benefits it has brought into your life, and pass it down so that others might feel the same.

The desire to explore is the desire to experience as much as possible, whether it be experiencing ideas or physical moments. Those with this form of purpose find learning—especially when they know little about the subject—extremely fulfilling. To cultivate this form of purpose you must first cultivate openness, becoming a kid again and embracing your fear of the unknown. This can be done by exploring new places in your city, trying a new dish, learning a new language, or even reading a new book.

The desire to conquer is to be the best of the best at something and dominate the competition. To cultivate the desire to conquer, you must believe that you can become the greatest at your chosen skill with enough work and effort, in addition to spending some time every day visualizing how it would be like to conquer the competition. However, while this purpose can be extremely motivating, it is often not very fulfilling in the end game and as such you will need another purpose down the line as well.

Faith is the desire to live life by certain rules, either because of the belief that something good will come if you stick by them, or because you believe that they are the best way to go about living your life. To cultivate this form of purpose, you must dispel as many doubts as you can and try to completely believe that life should be lived according to your faith. Be aware that if you start to doubt your faith, you might lose your sense of purpose, and that you should never blindly follow whatever beliefs people tell you to have.

The desire to accumulate is the desire to have more and to collect what is rare or valuable. To cultivate a desire to accumulate, all you have to do is spend time on social media looking at people who have more than you. Looking at those who have more free time as opposed to stuff is often healthier, as you will never be truly fulfilled by the latter, but you should still be careful to not overdo this form of purpose.

The desire to create is the desire to create new things and share your work with others. Not only is this extremely fulfilling for the creator, as they can become immersed in their work and feel accomplished, but for others as well, as the work could make them feel positive emotions, passionate about certain things, or even improve their way of life. To cultivate this sense of purpose, you need to spend less time consuming and more time creating, which can be done through small steps each day.

The desire to help is to help remove the suffering of others and help them overcome obstacles, which can be extremely fulfilling. To cultivate this form of purpose, you must first learn to love others, understand that others have many of the same fears and desires, and understand that we all feel pain. When an individual does this, preventing suffering in others becomes just as important as preventing suffering in oneself. Secondly, you must begin doing small favors for others and pay attention to the difference you can make.