Discovering Your Life Purpose - Clue #10

Clue No. 10: What would you do if you knew you could not fail? Our final clue is a fun, and very effective, game you can play with yourself. If you have struggled to respond to the previous clues, this one encourages you to look beyond your perceived limitations. If you have been saying, ‘I’d really like to do it, but I know I could never succeed,’ I encourage you to forge the last part of that sentence for now, and think what you would do with your life if you knew you could not fail.

So now we know that life purpose is an overall theme or mission of our life that is unique to us. It is fun, joyful, absorbing, and fulfilling, and it meets a deep inner need within us. Taking the answers to the 10 clues, the next step is to notice any themes in the answers, e.g., do many of them relate to being with people in a particular way, or to solving problems or working with your hands? Those themes can then be distilled down into an ‘essence,’ the core of your purpose that is relatively unchanging, and the ‘expression,’ or the ways in which that purpose is being expressed (or could be!) in your life now. Here’s an example: ‘My life purpose is to promote harmony and balance through working as a mediator, parenting my children to live nonviolently, and volunteering in my community association.’ What is your life purpose? Do you have a clearer idea now?

Stay tuned tomorrow for: Implementing your Life Purpose


Marcia Bench is the Founder and Director of Career Coach Institute, which offers career coaching services and trains and certifies individuals who wish to be career coaches. For details, see www.careercoachinstitute.com.

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