Aligning Your Purpose in Life …
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Helen Keller
The purpose of our lives is to be happy. Dalai Lama
How many of us were told as a child that your purpose in life was to be happy?
How many of us were told that the purpose of your life was to get a good job that paid well so that you could have all the other wonderful things in life? Get married, have a family, raise your children, have a summer home, a boat, a nice car, etc.?
I don’t ever remember being told to find my purpose in life so I could be happy.
I learned by spoken word and unspoken actions that my self-worth, value, & purpose in life, were tied to what other people believed, what other people wanted, or what made other people happy.
It has taken a long time to get to this point where I am driven to define what truly makes me happy.
And while it may be easy to find joy and happiness in one’s work, it can sometimes be difficult to align our work purpose with our personal life or vice-versa.
It may be the opposite for you … you’re crystal clear about the personal side of your life, but the business/career side is unfulfilled or empty.
Either way, the requirement for aligning your purpose in life requires total and complete honesty with yourself. It’s a soul-searching of sorts that can fill up your chest or leave you gasping for air because you’re suffocating in one area or the other.
So is your business/career purpose in alignment with your personal purpose? Are they interwoven in some way that brings you incredible joy? Are they one in the same?
If so, that is incredible, embrace it and be grateful.
If not, maybe it would be a good thing to sit back and look at the gaps (or similarities) and think about how you can align them or align them even more … as easy or as difficult as it may seem! It may simply be a shift in perspective so that you are seeing the bigger picture, or it may require a complete upheaval of one side or the other.
If it is a complete upheaval, please know that it will be challenging. Why? Because in the beginning, you will have to let go of all the things that have been preventing you from blending these two worlds together. If it was easy you would have let go of them already.
That said, in order to let go, think beyond the short-term sacrifice and embrace the possibility of the feeling, that you may never have to work another day in your life. Imagine what it might feel like to be truly happy?
And what would that be worth to you?
