First Blog Entry - Finding Your Purpose

For my first post I would like to start with what I consider the necessities. One year ago I was considering whether I wanted I should apply for an engineer development program with a company I had completed two internships with. I had enjoyed the work I had completed there, but it seemed to "normal." That is, I would be following the standard American development model, which I grew up with: get an education -> get good grades-> get a good job -> become independent -> get married -> buy a house -> start a family -> provide for your kids so they can get a good education. Then repeat this cycle repeats for my children while I would theoretically go into retirement after working about 40 years and give the same advice to my children, which my forefathers gave me. Thereby completing the circle.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this path and it can lead to happy and successful people, as it has with my predecessors. And up until I was 19 years old, I was doing a great job following this course and was looking to continue it. But while I was watching a presentation given by Professor Joe Martin for the "National Society of Success and Leadership" society, he challenged this central life-directing belief. He said that there surely must be more to life than this plain cycle produces. Joe introduced the concept of living a life of purpose, which has been essential to my path of self-discovery. He said that each person is born with a unique purpose, which must be figured out through self-inquiry, and it is based on the skills, talents, and gifts a person has been given. These characteristics must be used to serve others (a boss, customer, community or others, who can provide you with something of value like food, respect or money as a thank you for your service) in order to fulfill the purpose of our creator. 

I agree with Joe's description and application of this purpose. Everyone has realized at one part of their life that some things are naturally easier, more fun and interesting than others. Joe is suggesting that we use these aptitudes to serve others. Okay, this doesn't seem so ground breaking, as it happens all the time. Someone who is interested in mechanics and machines goes to school to become a mechanical engineer and continues to work with machines for their life. This is still completely inside of the cycle (which please note, as I already stated, is NOT a bad thing). But Joe goes further. He asks: what are you going to do in your life to set you apart from the crowd? As we already know what sets us out from the crowd (hint: our skills, talents and gifts), we have a good idea were to start.

To put it simply, we should find our passions. There are the things that we prefer to do in our free time, can do for hours on end and the time still seems to be flying by, and bring us continual joy. The things we look forward to doing on Monday morning or Friday night and love to talk about with our acquaintances. There are multiple ways to find your purpose, which is merely a statement describing the reason you exist. It can be a little difficult and overwhelming at first to think about things like this, especially if it is new to you, thankfully there are great resources from people living purpose driven lives. Joe Martin has a great way described on this website at www.rwuniversity.com/articles.cfm?id=32&action=show, Steve Pavlina at www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/ and there is also a book entitled "The Passion Test" by Janet and Chris Attwood, which will also result with a similar outcome.

I used my own variation of the above methods. I asked myself what is my true purpose of live and made a list of all the ways I want to live. Some examples were to not waste time, to not be self-centered, to share everything I know and to excel in what I love. There ended up being 51 total, which seems like a lot, but it is amazing on how similar they are. Due to this similarity, it is easy to decrease the size of the list by combining these ways to live into short statement. One example for me is reducing: to lead a full life, to smile when everyone else is frowning, to enjoy each day to its fullest, and to help others accept themselves into the statement Being happy with myself while making others feel good.

By doing this, on Sept. 19^th, 2005 I was able to condense the most important and majority of my personal goals into seven statements.

• Being happy with myself while making others feel good
• Spreading the truth and ending the corruption in the world
• Loving and helping everyone
• Being a positive impact on peoples lives and minimizing their pains
• Utilizing all of my potential
• Living in Christ's example

This was a huge step for me. The feeling I get when reading my purpose is of completeness and of ease. Once your purpose is defined, it makes other things much easier to do. One specific example is when I need to make a difficult decision, I can easily reference my purpose (since I keep a printed copy in my wallet) to analyze how the decision would be in-line with who I am. Small things that have only a temporal meaning or pleasure can be easier to let go of when considering fulfilling an ultimate purpose or goal. It also should be noted that our purposes are not always static and can change. In my example, after completing this process again in December 2007, I noticed the perpetuation of my old purpose, but much more concentrated. Just for your information, you can see how it changed below:

• To serve others by improving their lives through the access to the basic necessities of life (water, food and sanitation)
• To help others question paradigms by opening their minds to new ideas to better solve the problems which are a burden to the society
• To help others to find what they are looking for and help them realize it is inherently the basic needs of love, shelter, food, water, family, self-fulfillment and peace and not the materialistic luxuries of the modern world
• To live a humble life while being at peace with the world by minimizing my environmental footprint and living only the with necessities of life
• To be only myself, while doing what I love and what drives me to achieve my goals
• To function as I was designed, cherishing every moment in life in this beautiful world while constantly learning and utilizing my skills and potential
• To worship and live in Christ’s example by extending love to everyone and giving up one’s possessions to help the poor

To readdress the cycle I referred to earlier, if you are following your purpose, this cycle might remain the same for you, or it might change completely. The point I am trying to make is now it is an individual process, no longer dictated by what society or your family views as the right way to go, but what satisfies you. You should never feel forced to fulfill someone else's life. Granted, it may look very similar based on how you complete it, but the choice should always be yours. So if you haven't already discovered your purpose, I would highly recommend doing so.