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Do You Know What Your Purpose Is?

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  • #30267
    Hannah Eagle
    Participant

    The most common thing people say on their deathbed is “It went like that” as they snap their fingers with a sigh. How many of us come and go without having consciously decided what our purpose is and then living accordingly.

    Mostly we live on autopilot and so the days and months and years fly by without much notice.  Have we taken the time to be clear about what our purpose is?

    I have a practice of waking myself up to being conscious of being alive and aware of my purpose as often as I can throughout my day. I practice coming to my senses, I feel what I am physically and emotionally feeling.

    Right now, I sense my fingers typing this message and my bottom on the chair and my cat laying on my feet, and the visceral love I feel for him. I sense the movement in my body as I breathe, I hear the muffled voices of people in another room, and I see and notice the things I haven’t seen or noticed before.

    When I do this, I re-connect with myself and what I value and what my purpose is.  My purpose is to be as awake as I can and to appreciate the gift of being alive and also to be kind to others. And to try to add value to the world so that when it is my time to leave, I’ll be satisfied with my contribution and ready to gracefully leave.

    What is your purpose and how to you keep in touch with yourself?

    Hannah Eagle co-founder of GreenPsychology.net

    #35355
    Meagan
    Participant

    Most of my anxiety comes from thinking or believing I know my purpose but convincing myself that it is unnattainable. This only makes my mind go on a downward sprial into the depths of anxiety and I drive myself nuts thinking about all of the people who are doing what they love, meanwhile I’m sitting here doing nothing.
    I classifiy a goodday as one where I feel that I can do anything as long as I set my mind to it. But I become discouraged easily which is probably my biggest problem.

    Sometimes I am awake. Sometimes I’m not.
    Sometimes I believe in myself. Sometimes I don’t.

    I want and try to re-connect with myself and when I am doing the things I love, I feel alive. Taking some time each day to convince yourself you can do anything you believe you can do is a crucial part of staying awake, even when pebbles of doubt are tossed your way.

    #35484
    Pryce
    Participant

    No matter how hard you try to think, you’ll go crazy and apart from the reality, there will be no certainty on how to know your purpose here in life.
    all you can do is to believe and strengthen whats in you and plug every positive energy in you, to make and know somehow what could be our purpose here and now in our living.

    I myself asked this very same question in mind when I was about to enter college, whether to pursue law or go on to a different path, but I was able to know what is there that is need to be done, when I tried this program without any frustrations but with a lot of hesitations of course. And in there I found other options, monster eating variety of options I can choose, and in there I knew what I want. although I am not saying that I can forecast my purpose, but somehow I knew what is out there to pursue.

    • This reply was modified 10 years, 11 months ago by Pryce.
    #35807
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I’ve been reflecting on this topic for a while, and I’m wondering if it would be better to rephrase the question and ask, “Do You Know What Your Purpose Is Today?”

    Pryce is perhaps right, the other question will drive you mad and force your mind into the past and future. Where as if you ask yourself, what is my purpose right now or today, it’s a lot more manageable and helps you focus and stay in the moment. Which is exactly where the response has led Hannah; to experience and stay in the moment.

    But it can also be a more practical question. In that, what career path you chose, what relationships you have, where you live, what school you attend, there is no right or wrong answer, it’s what feels right at any given moment on any given day and what helps you stay in the moment. On a cosmological time scale, all decisions are inconsequential.

    With that said, I hope my tombstone reads, “Here lies one who left the world a better place than he found it.”

    #36697
    Bob
    Participant

    “Do You Know What Your Purpose Is Today?”

    Thank you, Peter for making this topic more relevant and personal. All change begins in the ‘present moment’ of our life and that is so very essential for us all to come to grips with. It is so easy to fall into the whirlpool of putting it off until another day. Saying to ourselves I will take action of this another day this week but I CANNOT make a decision today. When if fact we have made a decision, we have chosen to do nothing about it.

    We all need to have a purpose, a reason to do what we have chosen to do in life this common need is what makes us all human beings. We need an identity, a connection to others and we need validation along with encouragement and good advice. This is a major hurdle for all teenagers and young adults who bounce from one thing to another based on the current flow of thinking by their peers and TMZ. Becoming an addict to Facebook or heightens the need to be belong or be connected, but in social media you do not have to confront others unless you want to do so. The other hazard to this identity crisis is making poor choices that could quite possibly ruin their life down the road.

    My rule of thumb is to do good even when it is not popular. Do good when the rain pours down or the sun is in abundance and dances all around you. Do good even when others take your act of kindness and treat it like garbage. Remember that there is goodness all around you even on dark days and you feel hard pressed to the floor and cannot get up again as quickly as you would like to do so.
    “When life knocks you down, learn how to land on your back. Because if you can look UP, you can get UP.” — Les Brown

    #39064
    PryingMiMi
    Participant

    One of my biggest fears is growing old and not knowing my purpose or to have never been comfortable with myself. Im 18, and one my aunts would always call me an old soul. After finding out what that meant, I realized I was. I could never understand why I was not interested in partying, why I was not boy crazy like all my friends, why I was made fun of because my old-fashion way of seeing life. Now that I’m in college, I’m finding out more about myself and it scares me sometimes. Society can be critical to anybody who is outside the ‘norm’. I want to be comfortable in my own skin. Its so cool to see people who just dont care about what people think; I envy those people. When I try to tell my “friends” I want to find my purpose, they laugh at me or call me ‘momma goose.’ We’re taught to go to school, get an education, get married, and have children, but nobody told me how to find myself and just be happy with me. Outside forces like social networking sites, make me feel even more like an ‘outcast’ because I do not use them, because I do not like what they represent. I currently am out of school, and spending a few weeks by myself. I want to become comfortable by myself, without any chaotic forces. If only there were NO negative influences that would make everybody who is deemed an ‘outcast’ feel so much more comfortable. Its kinda funny because, as I got older, I always thought everybody found their purpose once they were 18. Once I turned 18, I didnt know my purpose. I have so many questions about like, but I dont know any of the answers.

    #39243
    Jeff
    Participant

    Personally, I think one’s purpose can take a lifetime to discover. In fact, half of what I think my life’s purpose is has been to figure out what my ultimate purpose is supposed to be. I don’t think I’ve done yet what I was sent here to do. Maybe my purpose is to untilmately discover who I really am. Or maybe it’s to create something that will resonate beyond my life. I’m not sure yet. But I keep striving to figure out what it is, within the context of my world. And when the time comes, I’ll know that it’s my purpose.

    #39244
    John
    Participant

    Alan Watts once lectured,

    “I remember Soki Antsuzaki, who was a great Zen master, sitting in his gorgeous golden robes, with incense burning in front of him, and his scriptures open on the stand, and holding a sort of sceptor that Zen masters occasionally hold, and reading a passage from the sutra, then by commment saying, ‘Fundamental principle of Buddhism is purposelessness. Most important to attain state of no purpose. When you drop fart, you don’t say ‘At 9:00, I drop fart.’ It just happen.’ ”

    🙂

    #39458
    Jacques
    Participant

    All my years I have felt different, I felt that i didn’t fit in to society. And now I know that I am although it hasn’t made it easier for me and I have become increasingly frustrated. I fear the route that mankind is taking is a route to destruction, I fear we are forgetting or have forgotten our roots. At the moment we are just another cog in this machine called society. And this machine is destroying everything in its path. Money has become our leader. We are neglecting our connection with nature and the bonds that once guided us. I am afraid to pursue my purpose as I fear the disapprover’s.

    #40863
    HaveLipsWillSmile
    Participant

    I am just starting my journey of self-discovery and it’s very important to me to find my purpose or at least find what it is I need to be doing to feel fulfilled. Right now, my first step is to be open to any possibility and learn as much as I can from you kind people.
    With warmth,
    K

    #40866
    Andy
    Participant

    I recently saw the film Before Midnight at my local theater. I would highly recommend it to everyone, but make sure you watch the first two installments of the series, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. After the film was over, an older woman probably in her 60s came up to my group of friends to ask us what we thought of the film since we were clearly discussing the series and were fans. We told her we enjoyed it and she proceeded to tell us about her life as it related to the film (it deals with getting older and life ambitions), and she mentioned that she missed being very ambitious and motivated like she was in her late teens and early twenties. This really struck me because nobody had ever mentioned that to me before. I’m 19 and I am very motivated on the things I want to do- my pipe dream is to be a screenwriter and I work on my scripts daily with little to no foreseeable hope of them being made into anything, but I still enjoy the process because it feels like my purpose. Ever since I talked to that woman, I try to stay motivated and ambitious every day, and I will throughout the years now that I know it can fade.

    I guess I think that we should all remember what it feels like to be just starting out with life and how everything is a challenge that can be tackled. Who knows if I’ll ever sell a single script, but I’ll keep working on them because deep down I truly think something will come of it. Start what you want and believe it will come to something even if you’re surely deluding yourself.

    #40910
    Jacques
    Participant

    Hi Kristy, the best advice I can give is to let your emotions guide you and not your logical mind, a lot of emotional thoughts are often conflicted with logic and the idea is to break the chains of your logical mind that are hold you down. I know that can be really hard to do, I know i’m also trying to do the same.

    With warmth
    Jacques

    #40947
    lucia
    Participant

    Wow! I love how philosophical this topic is. 🙂 Life is definitely a journey. Some of us find out our “purpose” earlier than others. I’ve found that I really love helping others. I went through some tough times with my career and took some time to realize that I still really love helping others.

    I think a really great way of finding what “your purpose” is, is by volunteering. You get a lot out of giving your time. I dunno…that’s just what I’ve found through experience.

    #41107
    Jacques
    Participant

    You are right Lucia life is a journey, you also need to surround yourself with the right people to enhance your way of life. My problem is that my family and friends do not think or feel the way I do and so journey is so far a lonely one. I really need to find more people who are like me.

    #41417
    lucia
    Participant

    Hey Jacques,

    You totally can! The people are out there. If you’ve got a passion for something…join a club/group or volunteer for that cause. Chances are you’ll find like-minded people. 🙂 It may seem lonely now, but I promise you as time goes by, you’ll have friends and possibly family who will understand/think/feel the way you do. Sometimes, you will be the first person to experience something completely out there and at other times, you may be the last. In any case, there are people out there who may have similar experiences and may even parallel your journey. You’ll meet them some day. It took me quite a few years to find my parallel buddy, now I chat with her on a regular basis.

    Keep your chin up!

    Lucia

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