Discover and Live Your Purpose in Life

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players…”, so said William Shakespeare in ‘As You Like It’.

And how well we play our part in life on this stage depends, entirely, upon the clarity we have about our purpose or mission that we need to fulfill. We live life  only once and  in life, there is no rehearsal or possibility to wind back your life like a clock and start all over again. So, we need to live our lives with awareness and right understanding. For most of us, life goes on without even knowing what our purpose or mission in life is. Some of us may question: “Well, how do I find the purpose or mission of my life?” Let me share with you the process that I followed to discover my purpose or mission in life. This may, perhaps, help you in finding your purpose or mission in life.

I started the process by asking myself: ‘What is it that I would like to stand for?’ After much pondering, I realized that ‘Integrity’, ‘Dignity’, and ‘Fairness’ are the values or principles that I would like to stand for. The second question that I asked myself was: ‘What is it that I would like to strive for?’ The answer I got was that ‘Growth’ and ‘Excellence’,  as these would help me in reaching my highest potential. The next question that I posed to myself was: ‘What is it that I would like to be known for or would like people to remember me for?’ The deep contemplation revealed that I would like to be remembered for ‘Service’ that made a difference in the lives of others.

These answers helped me in arriving at my purpose or mission statement, as follows:

“The purpose or mission of my life is to live with ‘Integrity’, ‘Dignity’, and ‘Fairness’, to strive for ‘Growth’ and ‘Excellence’ and  to ‘Serve’ to make a  difference in the lives of others.”

Having thus conceived my purpose or mission so deliberately, I began to pursue it by committing my time, energy and talent towards it. I also started to make my decisions based on it. At the end of the day, I audited my activities  to check whether I performed them in alignment with my purpose. This process of audit also helped me to understand the mistakes I was committing and what needed to be done to correct them and to avoid their recurrence in future. Experiences thus gained also helped me to fine tune my purpose in life.

So, purpose acts as a beacon guiding us all the time and helping us focus on what really matters.

Lastly, “In the ultimate analysis of our lives what matters is not the positions that we attained or wealth we accumulated, but the lives we touched and helped transform”, with these words, I sign off this blog post wishing you all a very Happy and Purposeful New Year, 2013.