By Tristan J. Loo
“Circumstance does not make a man, it reveals him.”
-James Allen, Author of As a Man Thinketh
Your major definite purpose is a path you follow during your journey through life. It is your one major goal that defines who you are and what you are all about – the essence of who you are as a person. Your life purpose is by it’s very nature something that you are very passionate about, something that gets your juices flowing at the mere thought of pursuing it. It’s what drives and motivates you to perform all the actions that you do each and every day of your life despite the adversity, and even the pain that you might have to endure in order to do so.
A life of passion and significance requires knowing your definite purpose. Think of all the monumental figures throughout history. What was their decided purpose in life? You will find that the great ones believed in their purpose so passionately that some of them even died in the pursuit of living it. Defining and living this purpose brings an overwhelming sense of fulfillment and meaning to your existence by providing you with a way to direct your values and passions towards a meaningful objective. Once you know what your purpose in life is, you will be able to wake up each morning knowing that every action that you take that day will move you one step closer towards achieving it. You will be living life passionately, focused in on your legacy, and the talents and passions that are going to get you there.
Are we Born With a Purpose?
If there ever was a controversial question this would be one of them. Are we encoded, either genetically or divinely, to fulfill a given destiny? Or is our fate, truly, what we make for ourselves? All of us have DNA and fingerprints. DNA is just made up of four nucleic acids: adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Fingerprints are simply the natural ridge patterns on our fingers that gives us the frictional power to grip things without letting them slip. Yet each one of us has a unique set of DNA and fingerprints that can be used to distinguish us. It’s not a question of whether or not we have DNA or fingerprints, it’s how our DNA and fingerprints are uniquely structured that makes us different and wonderful human beings. In a sense, your life purpose is no different.
Everyone has their own unique set of values. Everyone is born with certain things that they excel at, known as talents. Everyone is born with certain things that they love to do, known as passions. Everyone seems to possess a unique desire to leave a legacy. Therefore, the question is not whether we have a major definite purpose, but rather, how our unique passions, talents, and drive to contribute to humanity combine to create a unique life purpose we can call our own.
Not Quite Living my Purpose
When I was growing up I was a big fan of basketball legend Michael Jordan. This was at the time when his Air Jordan shoes were huge with school kids and even though they were expensive I begged my parents to get them for me. I decided back then that I was going to be the next Michael Jordan and be a basketball superstar just like him. Well, I was a pint-sized Asian-American kid about the size of a twig and with about the same amount of athletic talent as one. I went off to basketball camp that summer and got a quick dose of reality. Unless I grew about three and a half feet taller I’d have a pretty difficult time blocking shots and making slam dunks. I loved basketball, but the talent and the ability was not there. It was difficult for me to realize that my basketball superstar dreams were perhaps out of my reach. My parents saw my determination and knew it could be used to propel me forward in other areas where I was naturally gifted, so they enrolled me in martial arts and gymnastics. I excelled in both sports at the international level. The fact that my parents recognized my talent in gymnastics is primarily what was responsible for me getting a scholarship into a top-notch university and getting me a college degree. I was also able to compete with the some of the best gymnasts in the world and live my dream of being right there at their level.
What’s the Point of What You Do?
Have you ever stopped to think about why you are doing what you are doing? Why did you get out of bed today? Why did you go to work or to school? Why are you reading this book? Behind every action and decision that you make for yourself is a reason. If there was no reason behind our daily actions we would wander aimlessly, like zombies. Without a higher-level reason we would become lazy and unmotivated to do anything significant.
During my time as a street cop I came into contact with many people who had no purpose in their lives. They lived day to day and could care less about their actions and the consequences of their actions. They never took any positive actions for themselves because there was no higher meaning, no purpose, that their activities were a part of. These people were the ones who I gave frequent rides to county jail every week in my patrol car because they had no goals or direction. However, every once in a while there were those special few who I took to jail that finally realized their purpose in life. That was a magical moment for them because once they got out of jail, they gave up all the drugs and old “friends” who were not congruent with their new purpose in life. In essence, they rebuilt themselves into an entirely different person. While I don’t expect you to do time at county jail before you realize your life purpose, I do want you to realize that having a life purpose has the power to make a drug addict kick their habit and institute positive and meaningful changes in their life to reverse all the damaging effects of their past. Just imagine what having a life purpose can do for you.
Engineered for a Purpose
Imagine a hammer – one of the most ancient tools. The engineers who designed the hammer crafted it with the purpose of pounding nails. It’s the best implement in the toolbox for that type of work. Let’s imagine that a hammer has a soul, with emotions and feelings. Imagine if that hammer is left in the toolbox unused. Imagine how it would feel if the owner grabbed the screwdriver to pound in a nail instead of the hammer. That hammer can do other things, but the thing that it wants to do more than anything is pound nails. Like the hammer, all of us are designed with a unique blend of values, passions and talents which make us uniquely suited to contribute to humanity, just as the hammer contributes to the construction job by pounding nails. Now, a hammer can serve different purposes in different hands. It can be used to kill and destroy, or it can be used to create. Like the hammer, you too can be an instrument of destruction or an instrument of creation. The choice is yours. Unlike a hammer, your life purpose isn’t automatically clear to you. It’s your responsibility to figure out what passions and talents you have been gifted with, and then figure out how best to use those passions and talents to create something amazing.
A Quick Test to See if You’re Living Your Purpose
Here’s a very quick and simple test to see whether or not you are living your purpose yet. Ask yourself if you get stressed out each day. Do you find yourself handling crisis after crisis and seem never to get ahead? If your answer is YES, then you are not yet living your purpose. People who are living their purpose live mostly stress-free lives. They rarely blame the world for their problems, ceaselessly complain, or are continually miserable. People who are focused on their purpose discover significance in their daily activities.
The Law of Attraction
The Law of Attraction states that you manifest into your life the things, people, and events you think about the most. Your major definite purpose in life works hand-in-hand with the Law of Attraction because the more you begin to clarify, and begin to live your major definite purpose in life, the more you will begin to attract all the things, people, places and events that will help you in your journey.
Belief is a primary ingredient in the Law of Attraction. No matter how many times you repeat an affirmation or visualize something that you want, if you don’t believe that it is possible, you won’t attract it. For example, a poor person might focus a lot of their attention on money, in fact, they may be obsessed with it. If their internal belief is that they will always be poor and that wealth is out of their reach, then they will only manifest scarcity. Without belief, there cannot be any attraction. That’s where values become part of the equation.
Your values play a crucial part with the Law of Attraction because your values determine what you believe about yourself, your abilities, and the world around you. Once you understand what your values are you will begin to attract things and people that are congruent with those values.
Life Purpose as the Basis for all Goal-Setting
I try not to approach the issue of life purpose from a spiritual aspect because that’s not what I’m good at doing. I approach it from a functional, goal-setting approach. Having a life purpose is the foundation from which all of your decisions and goals are born. It’s simply pointless to design a goal without knowing with full clarity what your life purpose is. It would be like shooting arrows at a target you can’t see! Creating a goal that’s not aligned with your life purpose may leave you feeling unhappy and unfulfilled even if you successfully accomplish it.
Many people set and accomplish goals for themselves which are not aligned with their true passions. One of my close friends graduated from UCLA Medical School at the top of his class and went on to become a cardiologist. By most standards he was successful. The problem was that he never really wanted to be a physician in the first place. He was pressured into adopting a career his parents wanted for him, but that he did not want for himself. As a result he was acutely dissatisfied. After several coaching sessions my friend eventually gave up his medical license, quit his job as a cardiologist, and pursued his real passion, cooking. He’s now a very successful chef and has never been happier. My friend’s goal was to become a physician. He was successful, but his life purpose, his passion, existed elsewhere. Therefore, in order to find his happiness in life it was necessary for him to retrace his steps and design goals that were congruent to his life purpose.
Don’t Confuse Purpose With Achievement
Purpose is different from achievement. You can be successful at achieving a particular goal, but unless that goal is aligned with your purpose in life, it won’t make you fulfilled and happy. For instance, I could be successful at robbing a bank and getting away clean. That goal hurts people instead of helping them, so it’s in direct opposition to my purpose in life. Hence, even the achievement of that goal won’t bring me any sense of happiness or fulfillment. In fact, achievement is not a necessary part of living your purpose because there is nothing specific that you need to achieve in order to feel happy doing the things you feel most passionate about. When you are on purpose you are feeding yourself continual and daily motivation that makes you ecstatic about living and staying on that path.
Understanding Precessional Effects
The famous philosopher Buckminster Fuller once said, “Precession is the effect of a body in motion with other bodies in motion.” Precessional effects are the side effects of the actions that we take in life. For example, a honey bee travels from flower to flower to collect nectar to make honey, but in doing so, it cross-pollinates flowers which allows more plants to grow and in turn those plants release oxygen that helps keep most living things on this planet alive. Simple bee, simple task, important precessional effect. Fuller believed that all of us have similar precessional effects occuring in our lives. He believed that our true purpose in life works at 90 degree angles to our goals, just as the ripples in a pond are at 90 degrees to the pebble that is dropped into that pond. Fuller believed that if you pursue your goals and happiness in life, with the good of humanity in mind, then your precessional effects could be so profound that it helps support and nurture the entire world, just like the honey bee.
Why Do Some People Experience a Mid-Life Crisis?
If we don’t clearly define our purpose early in our adult life it eventually hits most of us at some point somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty: the infamous mid-life crisis. This “crisis” almost always comes from an inner voice telling us that something is missing from our lives. That feeling is the need to find and pursue our major definite purpose in life. It’s our subconscious mind saying, “Hey, you’re at the halfway point already. Why don’t you stop wasting time and start doing what you are supposed to be doing!” Why wait for your subconscious alarm clock to go off like that? Start working on it right now.
Take the Shrink Wrap Off Your Internal GPS Unit!
In my experience as a Life Success Coach, I’d venture to guess that roughly 80% or more of the people I’ve encountered don’t have a clue as to what their life purpose is, and of the remaining 20% only 3% are actually living it! Those people who don’t know what their life purpose is have been branded “wandering generalities,” bouncing from here to there, but never reaching the destination that will bring them happiness and success.
The fortunate thing is that all of us come prepackaged with a genetically-installed GPS unit that can help guide us to exactly where we want to go in our lives. This GPS system is guided by our feelings of inner joy and happiness. When we are feeling our greatest happiness and joy, we are following the straightest path towards our purpose in life. Conversely, when we are harboring negative feelings and emotions, we are the farthest away from that purpose.
So how do we activate our internal GPS unit? First, take out a sheet of paper and write down ten times in your life when you have experienced the greatest amount of happiness and joy. Take a look at that list and analyze what you were doing that produced that level of happiness. What are the common elements that run through your list? Once you figure that out you’ll be able to hone in on the things that you are passionate about.
-James Allen, Author of As a Man Thinketh
Your major definite purpose is a path you follow during your journey through life. It is your one major goal that defines who you are and what you are all about – the essence of who you are as a person. Your life purpose is by it’s very nature something that you are very passionate about, something that gets your juices flowing at the mere thought of pursuing it. It’s what drives and motivates you to perform all the actions that you do each and every day of your life despite the adversity, and even the pain that you might have to endure in order to do so.
A life of passion and significance requires knowing your definite purpose. Think of all the monumental figures throughout history. What was their decided purpose in life? You will find that the great ones believed in their purpose so passionately that some of them even died in the pursuit of living it. Defining and living this purpose brings an overwhelming sense of fulfillment and meaning to your existence by providing you with a way to direct your values and passions towards a meaningful objective. Once you know what your purpose in life is, you will be able to wake up each morning knowing that every action that you take that day will move you one step closer towards achieving it. You will be living life passionately, focused in on your legacy, and the talents and passions that are going to get you there.
Are we Born With a Purpose?
If there ever was a controversial question this would be one of them. Are we encoded, either genetically or divinely, to fulfill a given destiny? Or is our fate, truly, what we make for ourselves? All of us have DNA and fingerprints. DNA is just made up of four nucleic acids: adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Fingerprints are simply the natural ridge patterns on our fingers that gives us the frictional power to grip things without letting them slip. Yet each one of us has a unique set of DNA and fingerprints that can be used to distinguish us. It’s not a question of whether or not we have DNA or fingerprints, it’s how our DNA and fingerprints are uniquely structured that makes us different and wonderful human beings. In a sense, your life purpose is no different.
Everyone has their own unique set of values. Everyone is born with certain things that they excel at, known as talents. Everyone is born with certain things that they love to do, known as passions. Everyone seems to possess a unique desire to leave a legacy. Therefore, the question is not whether we have a major definite purpose, but rather, how our unique passions, talents, and drive to contribute to humanity combine to create a unique life purpose we can call our own.
Not Quite Living my Purpose
When I was growing up I was a big fan of basketball legend Michael Jordan. This was at the time when his Air Jordan shoes were huge with school kids and even though they were expensive I begged my parents to get them for me. I decided back then that I was going to be the next Michael Jordan and be a basketball superstar just like him. Well, I was a pint-sized Asian-American kid about the size of a twig and with about the same amount of athletic talent as one. I went off to basketball camp that summer and got a quick dose of reality. Unless I grew about three and a half feet taller I’d have a pretty difficult time blocking shots and making slam dunks. I loved basketball, but the talent and the ability was not there. It was difficult for me to realize that my basketball superstar dreams were perhaps out of my reach. My parents saw my determination and knew it could be used to propel me forward in other areas where I was naturally gifted, so they enrolled me in martial arts and gymnastics. I excelled in both sports at the international level. The fact that my parents recognized my talent in gymnastics is primarily what was responsible for me getting a scholarship into a top-notch university and getting me a college degree. I was also able to compete with the some of the best gymnasts in the world and live my dream of being right there at their level.
What’s the Point of What You Do?
Have you ever stopped to think about why you are doing what you are doing? Why did you get out of bed today? Why did you go to work or to school? Why are you reading this book? Behind every action and decision that you make for yourself is a reason. If there was no reason behind our daily actions we would wander aimlessly, like zombies. Without a higher-level reason we would become lazy and unmotivated to do anything significant.
During my time as a street cop I came into contact with many people who had no purpose in their lives. They lived day to day and could care less about their actions and the consequences of their actions. They never took any positive actions for themselves because there was no higher meaning, no purpose, that their activities were a part of. These people were the ones who I gave frequent rides to county jail every week in my patrol car because they had no goals or direction. However, every once in a while there were those special few who I took to jail that finally realized their purpose in life. That was a magical moment for them because once they got out of jail, they gave up all the drugs and old “friends” who were not congruent with their new purpose in life. In essence, they rebuilt themselves into an entirely different person. While I don’t expect you to do time at county jail before you realize your life purpose, I do want you to realize that having a life purpose has the power to make a drug addict kick their habit and institute positive and meaningful changes in their life to reverse all the damaging effects of their past. Just imagine what having a life purpose can do for you.
Engineered for a Purpose
Imagine a hammer – one of the most ancient tools. The engineers who designed the hammer crafted it with the purpose of pounding nails. It’s the best implement in the toolbox for that type of work. Let’s imagine that a hammer has a soul, with emotions and feelings. Imagine if that hammer is left in the toolbox unused. Imagine how it would feel if the owner grabbed the screwdriver to pound in a nail instead of the hammer. That hammer can do other things, but the thing that it wants to do more than anything is pound nails. Like the hammer, all of us are designed with a unique blend of values, passions and talents which make us uniquely suited to contribute to humanity, just as the hammer contributes to the construction job by pounding nails. Now, a hammer can serve different purposes in different hands. It can be used to kill and destroy, or it can be used to create. Like the hammer, you too can be an instrument of destruction or an instrument of creation. The choice is yours. Unlike a hammer, your life purpose isn’t automatically clear to you. It’s your responsibility to figure out what passions and talents you have been gifted with, and then figure out how best to use those passions and talents to create something amazing.
A Quick Test to See if You’re Living Your Purpose
Here’s a very quick and simple test to see whether or not you are living your purpose yet. Ask yourself if you get stressed out each day. Do you find yourself handling crisis after crisis and seem never to get ahead? If your answer is YES, then you are not yet living your purpose. People who are living their purpose live mostly stress-free lives. They rarely blame the world for their problems, ceaselessly complain, or are continually miserable. People who are focused on their purpose discover significance in their daily activities.
The Law of Attraction
The Law of Attraction states that you manifest into your life the things, people, and events you think about the most. Your major definite purpose in life works hand-in-hand with the Law of Attraction because the more you begin to clarify, and begin to live your major definite purpose in life, the more you will begin to attract all the things, people, places and events that will help you in your journey.
Belief is a primary ingredient in the Law of Attraction. No matter how many times you repeat an affirmation or visualize something that you want, if you don’t believe that it is possible, you won’t attract it. For example, a poor person might focus a lot of their attention on money, in fact, they may be obsessed with it. If their internal belief is that they will always be poor and that wealth is out of their reach, then they will only manifest scarcity. Without belief, there cannot be any attraction. That’s where values become part of the equation.
Your values play a crucial part with the Law of Attraction because your values determine what you believe about yourself, your abilities, and the world around you. Once you understand what your values are you will begin to attract things and people that are congruent with those values.
Life Purpose as the Basis for all Goal-Setting
I try not to approach the issue of life purpose from a spiritual aspect because that’s not what I’m good at doing. I approach it from a functional, goal-setting approach. Having a life purpose is the foundation from which all of your decisions and goals are born. It’s simply pointless to design a goal without knowing with full clarity what your life purpose is. It would be like shooting arrows at a target you can’t see! Creating a goal that’s not aligned with your life purpose may leave you feeling unhappy and unfulfilled even if you successfully accomplish it.
Many people set and accomplish goals for themselves which are not aligned with their true passions. One of my close friends graduated from UCLA Medical School at the top of his class and went on to become a cardiologist. By most standards he was successful. The problem was that he never really wanted to be a physician in the first place. He was pressured into adopting a career his parents wanted for him, but that he did not want for himself. As a result he was acutely dissatisfied. After several coaching sessions my friend eventually gave up his medical license, quit his job as a cardiologist, and pursued his real passion, cooking. He’s now a very successful chef and has never been happier. My friend’s goal was to become a physician. He was successful, but his life purpose, his passion, existed elsewhere. Therefore, in order to find his happiness in life it was necessary for him to retrace his steps and design goals that were congruent to his life purpose.
Don’t Confuse Purpose With Achievement
Purpose is different from achievement. You can be successful at achieving a particular goal, but unless that goal is aligned with your purpose in life, it won’t make you fulfilled and happy. For instance, I could be successful at robbing a bank and getting away clean. That goal hurts people instead of helping them, so it’s in direct opposition to my purpose in life. Hence, even the achievement of that goal won’t bring me any sense of happiness or fulfillment. In fact, achievement is not a necessary part of living your purpose because there is nothing specific that you need to achieve in order to feel happy doing the things you feel most passionate about. When you are on purpose you are feeding yourself continual and daily motivation that makes you ecstatic about living and staying on that path.
Understanding Precessional Effects
The famous philosopher Buckminster Fuller once said, “Precession is the effect of a body in motion with other bodies in motion.” Precessional effects are the side effects of the actions that we take in life. For example, a honey bee travels from flower to flower to collect nectar to make honey, but in doing so, it cross-pollinates flowers which allows more plants to grow and in turn those plants release oxygen that helps keep most living things on this planet alive. Simple bee, simple task, important precessional effect. Fuller believed that all of us have similar precessional effects occuring in our lives. He believed that our true purpose in life works at 90 degree angles to our goals, just as the ripples in a pond are at 90 degrees to the pebble that is dropped into that pond. Fuller believed that if you pursue your goals and happiness in life, with the good of humanity in mind, then your precessional effects could be so profound that it helps support and nurture the entire world, just like the honey bee.
Why Do Some People Experience a Mid-Life Crisis?
If we don’t clearly define our purpose early in our adult life it eventually hits most of us at some point somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty: the infamous mid-life crisis. This “crisis” almost always comes from an inner voice telling us that something is missing from our lives. That feeling is the need to find and pursue our major definite purpose in life. It’s our subconscious mind saying, “Hey, you’re at the halfway point already. Why don’t you stop wasting time and start doing what you are supposed to be doing!” Why wait for your subconscious alarm clock to go off like that? Start working on it right now.
Take the Shrink Wrap Off Your Internal GPS Unit!
In my experience as a Life Success Coach, I’d venture to guess that roughly 80% or more of the people I’ve encountered don’t have a clue as to what their life purpose is, and of the remaining 20% only 3% are actually living it! Those people who don’t know what their life purpose is have been branded “wandering generalities,” bouncing from here to there, but never reaching the destination that will bring them happiness and success.
The fortunate thing is that all of us come prepackaged with a genetically-installed GPS unit that can help guide us to exactly where we want to go in our lives. This GPS system is guided by our feelings of inner joy and happiness. When we are feeling our greatest happiness and joy, we are following the straightest path towards our purpose in life. Conversely, when we are harboring negative feelings and emotions, we are the farthest away from that purpose.
So how do we activate our internal GPS unit? First, take out a sheet of paper and write down ten times in your life when you have experienced the greatest amount of happiness and joy. Take a look at that list and analyze what you were doing that produced that level of happiness. What are the common elements that run through your list? Once you figure that out you’ll be able to hone in on the things that you are passionate about.
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