In today’s episode, I’m speaking about how to live your purpose. Let’s dive in.
We hear it all the time, live your purpose. We are desperate to discover the one thing that will light us up and motivate us to work hard and spread our passion to millions. We spend time looking for it in books for some people they’re looking for it in church or in a course after course, in meditation. But our purpose, seems to be elusive. I know this because I spent years chasing it too. Purpose is defined as the reason why something exists. Your purpose is the reason why you exist. Your brain immediately tells you that you don’t know why and that you’d better figure it out or it will all be wasted.
Your brain tells you that it had better be good. It had better help the planet or those who are less fortunate, it had better matter so you can justify your existence. We look to others for inspiration. Look at Mother Teresa who obviously had a purpose. Her life obviously mattered. And then we start spiralling into guilt because we’re pretty sure that she didn’t drink wine the Saturday nights or secretly by a sharing bag of chocolate buttons and eat them all herself. We’re pretty sure that we are failing at living a purposeful life. We have no idea what the point of our existence is, but we’re pretty sure that we’re doing it wrong. We like the idea of saving the world, but we’re exhausted from raising kids and doing the laundry and running a business. We better just keep looking for that perfect flavour of purpose that will make it all effortless.
And so we keep searching and we never find the answer. Wait, that is not entirely true. We find our purpose a few times, like when we had our children or worked with that one client, we thought was it. But it wasn’t. The unicorns didn’t prance around and life didn’t become effortless. That for sure wasn’t it. Back to searching. What is your purpose? I’m going to tell you, are you ready? Your reason for existing is to exist. That is your purpose. You don’t have to do anything to fulfil your purpose in life. Your life is purpose. You are a result, a product. You are an evolved human being and being alive is enough. Being alive is enough. You are already enough and completely complete. You don’t have to be better, give more or save the planet. Your purpose is humanness. No one is taking notes to see if you did it right.
No one is judging you to see if you are good enough. No one is about to give you a grade on how you are doing. That’s your job. You are the only one whose opinion matters. Whatever relationship you have with the spirit within you, no matter what you call it, that’s the only purpose that is. And that purpose, I’m here to tell you, has already been fulfilled. You are done. You are complete. You are already purposeful. You are already awesome because not because of anything you did or didn’t do, but just because you were born and you’re here and you are a 100% lovable. You have already arrived so stop trying to arrive at a place where you will prove that you are good enough. Relax. You are already completely good enough. There is nothing you can be do or have to be more purposeful or complete. Your life will never be more valuable than someone else’s.
So now what? So now you know the secret to life. You don’t have to be, to do it better or smarter or more lovingly, unless of course you want to. But the reason to want to is not what you think. It won’t make you better in the eyes of some external watcher. You’re already as better as you can be. It won’t earn you a treasure or a prize that will make everything make sense. But what it will do is make your experience on the planet way more fun. You see, you can spend your life sitting on the couch watching Netflix or you can build a school in Africa. You’ll still be a perfect human, but your experience of the world will be different while you’re here. Many of us are trying to find a way to matter, not realising that we cannot matter more than we already do, so we chase purpose.
We desperately try to find the success that other people already seem to have. So many of us trying to find a way to matter, not realising that we can’t matter more than we already do. Look at Oprah, and we’re sure she has lived a better life than we have. She has done it right. She’s one of those purposeful ones, but the truth is that Oprah has the exact same values as you do. She has chosen to fulfil a purpose that has made her life way more fun and meaningful to her. It’s changed her experience. You see, you don’t have to do anything to be more worthy. You get to choose what you want to do with your life simply because you want to. You get to pick the reason.
Here’s what I figured out. It might seem that once we understand that we don’t have to do anything to make our life matter, we wouldn’t do anything, but actually the opposite is true. Once you realise there’s nothing that you have to do and your entire life can be about what you want to do, you choose a purpose that matters to you and only you. We think that if we do what we want, we’ll only eat pasta and bread and drink wine on the patio, but that’s not what happens. In fact, we only seek false pleasures when we think that we aren’t good enough as we are.
Here’s how I created my purpose. I accepted that I am already complete as a human and I don’t need to fix myself or make myself more worthy. And two, I decided that I wanted to have a super fun life by being an example of what is possible. Three, I want to push my limits of possibility with my mind, my emotions, and my actions because it makes my life more interesting and it helps us evolve as a species. I wanted to enjoy getting better at things for the sake of enjoying it full stop. And that was it. Once I realised that getting better is fun and that growing and evolving is interesting, I felt even more alive. I wasn’t more alive. I was always as alive as I am now, but it was the experience I enjoyed so much more. And it all came from a place of knowing that it was just a bonus. I was already good enough. My accomplishment was about showing who I already was, not being a better human.
If your purpose is winning a golf championship, playing professional football, or making millions of pounds, the reason for doing it will determine how you experience it in your life. Once you realise there is nothing you have to do and your entire life can be about what you want it to be about, you choose a purpose that matters to you. Your purpose for existing is existing. How you want to use that time existing is your choice. You simply decide.
I hope that this episode has been useful for thinking about how to live your purpose. Â Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity and your numbers, increase your wealth and get more money in your pockets.
