Why are so many of us searching for our purpose and experiencing confusion about what the purpose is in our lives?
Intuitively, we understand that this is an important part of our life to understand but many of us have mistaken our vocation with our purpose.
What is the purpose of just existing? I think it evolves and shifts and changes over time and we want there to be one answer that is unchangeable. We get tripped up and lost when it feels like our situation has changed or what once worked for us and was meaningful has stopped working and being meaningful.
I believe our purpose has a lot of overlap with our values, and how well we align with our values. Connecting with our purpose has a lot to do with connecting with what we value and acting in accordance with that. When we achieve this we find the deepest sense of satisfaction and meaning in our lives.
The difficulty arises when no matter how hard we work, no matter what we focus on, we don’t necessarily feel that it’s making an impact or making a difference. We want to see that our work and our efforts have had a purpose. We see this through observing results in the outside world. But if we don’t see outward results from our efforts, it is profoundly disappointing and leads to a crisis of faith in ourselves and wondering if we have misunderstood our purpose in life.
We would never want to do anything if we always felt great, so feelings up and downs helps us to move and change, to shift and grow.
There is a human longing for an impact that lasts longer than our lifetimes, and most of us recognize that we probably won’t have a timeless impact that ripples for 1000 years, and that makes us sad. And as humans, we love to change things. Even when we ourselves don’t want to change!
We need to slow down enough to notice what’s going on right now and notice how much impact our actions are having and the way they are rippling out right now. It’s what allows us to see our long-term influence. Ironically what we’re worried about happening in the future is most felt in the present, and being present lets us have the best possible impact towards the long term.
I like to let people off the hook and say, maybe just existing is OK! Maybe being alive is the miracle, and we should find the wonder in that existence, right now.
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Thanks for listening!
