I like to visualize life like a pile of important and unimportant things. Since we already did most of the heavy lifting by taking away all the unimportant stuff from the table, we find ourselves in a good position to concentrate on finding our purpose amongst the things that really matter. You cannot decide about your reason for living, you can only work on discovering it so that you can organize all your activities around it. Now, let’s empower ourselves by finding out what is the why behind everything we are doing.

#1: A practical exercise to discover your purpose:

1. Find privacy when distractions are around: set aside at least 10 minutes before you start and arm yourself with focus, paper and pen.
2. Try to answer the following questions:
   • How can you make your childhood version proud of what you’ve become today?
   • What do you think about that really gets you excited?
   • What are these things you do that make you feel so engaged that you lose track of time?
   • How can you save your world?
   • If you had an infinite source of income, where would you go every day, and what would you do?
   • If you knew you were going to die six months from now, what would be your wish list and how would you want to be remembered?
3. Write down everything that comes to your mind as it comes: Do not judge your thoughts. Do not repress them. Let your soul reveal itself to you through ink and paper.
4. Keep writing all your answers until you get the one that gives you chills or makes you cry.

#2: Honesty towards yourself is the secret path to freedom

When I did this exercise some years ago, I remember I had to write more than a hundred statements before I found my ultimate purpose. Some of them were very common:

– Being able to provide for my family.

– Surrounding myself with positive and successful people.

– Traveling around the world.

– Taking a selfie on top of Mount Everest.

– Swimming with tiger sharks.

– Feeling loved.

– Doing a full ironman.

– Running an ultra-marathon.

And even if I did my best to take money out of the equation, I couldn’t stop my thoughts from coming up with the following:

– Becoming a very successful investor.

– Making a lot of money ‘so you can change the world.’

As I said, the process of exploring your subconscious should be completely free. And you should be honest with yourself about what you like and what you want. So, it’s fine saying you like to make money. But ‘being successful and having a fortune’ is still a poor purpose. Imagine you realize that, but you are diagnosed with cancer, or you have no one around to love, would you really be living a fulfilling life? An unhappy billionaire is indeed a very poor person.

“No man or woman is an island. To exist just for yourself is meaningless. You can achieve the most satisfaction when you feel related to some greater purpose in life, something greater than yourself.”

— Denis Waitley

#3: How do you know you finally discovered your purpose?

I already achieved a lot of the goals I wrote during this exercise and I enjoyed very much doing so. But a purpose must be timeless and infinite. You can’t really achieve it – you live your life according to it. But you can find it if you dig deeper into your goals. Now, how do you know you finally discovered your purpose? When does this exercise end? First of all, your purpose is very specific to who you are, so there is no right or wrong answer.

A lot of people know they’ve found their purpose when they feel deep down that they’ve reached some sort of point of resonance, where they usually cry tears of joy.

When I found my real purpose, which could be summarized as ‘Learn, teach, and help’, I felt somehow fully connected with my deepest self, as if I discovered the secret of my universe. That’s how I knew that was my purpose. So, it’s not just about listing the activities that you specifically enjoy, it’s about looking at the cognitive principles behind them – because they can easily be applied elsewhere.

For me, ‘learn’ means satisfying my insatiable curiosity about the mysteries of the world. And since I sincerely believe that one who thoroughly knows something must pass it to others, I like to share my findings by ‘teaching them’. Eventually I find a great satisfaction and inner joy in being compassionate and ‘helping’ those in need.

This is my purpose. What’s yours?