How To Find Your Purpose and Start Living In It

If you have been wandering around life doing a whole bunch of this and a lot of that, but still feel like you are not fulfilled. Or, if you have been working on a job, side hustle, or your own business to make sure you have enough money to live a comfortable life; but you still feel like you’re lacking. Maybe you’re getting up everyday with a million things to do, but none of those things are the things that you WANT to be doing. Or perhaps you’re just doing what you were taught (or expected) to do but it just no longer feels right. If any of this describes you, you may just be going through life with no purpose.

Lots of people experience one or more of those scenarios that I described above, but most do not understand why they are feeling that way. They assume that it’s because they are going through an identity or mid-life crisis (and maybe you are, but more on that shortly). People close to you will look at you like you’re crazy and tell you that those feelings will pass. Listen here Queens, I’m here to tell you that these feelings are NOT just some random fluttering of emotions because you’re overwhelmed with life or just going through a little phase. These feelings are your soul crying out for help and trying to get your attention. What others call an identity or mid-life crisis is actually your soul attempting to snap you out of the comfort zone that you’ve created. You were not given life on this earth to just wake up and do random shit everyday. Your soul was given a life on this earth to come here and fulfill a purpose… and with each passing day that you live your life without doing what it is that God put you here to do, your life will feel more and more incomplete. Slowly but surely, your dissatisfaction with what you’re doing and who you have become will increase. If you don’t do anything to change things, you will reach a breaking point. And that breaking point is what many refer to as identity or mid-life crisis. Bottom line, if you want to feel happy, fulfilled, and enjoy your life… if you want to do what you love everyday (as opposed to working a job that are just working because you needed a job), if you want to live your life the way YOU WANT to live your life - then you need to figure out what your purpose is, and LIVE IT!

So, how do you do that? How do you uncover your purpose if you don’t know what it is, or if you do know what it is, how do you start living it while you have all of these other responsibilities getting in the way?

Glad you asked!

Part one is for people who need help to find their purpose. Here are proven steps to help you find your purpose. And for those who already know your purpose but need to figure out to start living/doing their purpose, you can scroll down to Part two.

Part One: 7 Things to do to find your purpose.

Do some self reflection to identify what you love to do, what you are passionate about, or what your natural talent is. If you’re a regular here in the Queendom, you know what self reflection is (you probably even knew that I was going to suggest it). For the newer Queens - self reflection is an intimate time with yourself, where you allow yourself the quiet and space to go inside to see, feel, and experience who you are and what is going on within you. It creates a moment for you to focus on you and explore how you feel and what you want. I suggest self reflection to assist you in identifying your passions, talents, and things you love to do because sometimes, the things you love to do get drowned out by your responsibilities and the things that you have to do. Lots of us women bury our wants and prioritize what’s best for our kids and others as part of our nurturing nature… this is why so many women lose their identities, thus not being able to identify what you truly want to do or who you truly are or aspire to be in life. Self reflection is an exercise that you do alone. All it requires is a pen/pencil, notebook or writing pad, a quiet space, and approximately 30 minutes. I created a step by step guide to show you how to do the self reflection successfully, if you’d like to use it, you can download it here. While you are completing your reflection exercise, here are some of the things about yourself that you’ll want to explore and uncover.

1. What do you enjoy doing? Identify 2-3 things that you love to do. These would be things that you already naturally do in your spare time or things that you wish you were doing but don’t have the time.

2. What gives you energy? Ideally, the answer to this will be the same as at least one of your items above. But, if not it’s no big deal. To identify what gives you energy, think about the thing you love to do that you get fulfillment from just doing it. Like, if sleep wasn’t physically required, you could do it all day and all night. What is it that drives you like that?

3. What do you do that you love doing without getting paid or getting acknowledgement or recognition? This is another question to ask yourself (this is actually the one that helped me uncover my true passion).

4. What would you do if no one was watching, you didn’t need to make money, and there were no accolades, winners, or losers?

5. What would you wake up and do everyday that would make you happy?

6. Identify injustices that make you passionately angry or upset. This one is specifically for people whose passion may be embedded in a specific cause, organizing people for a purpose, or leadership in some sort of social or cultural mission. Identifying worldly issues that get your blood boiling may also get you to identify another way that you can make a difference if that's the direction of your passion.

7. Listen to what others love, appreciate, and look to you for. This is a really good one! Typically, your purpose is something that comes naturally to you that you are likely doing without realizing it, but other people realize it and are drawn to the quality within you. So, think about the compliments that people pay you and think about what people come to you for, it could be that your purpose is wrapped in it.

Part Two - So, you know or have just discovered your purpose. Next, follow these steps to start LIVING your purpose and putting it into action.

1. Just start doing it in your spare time. Volunteer, write about it, youtube it, train it, do it! It doesn’t matter what it is, just do it.

2. Get out and find other people in the industry/field. Find a community of people who also share an interest in doing what you do and get involved, make friends, network!

3. Actively learn more about it and study it. This is the ONE! You should become a student of your purpose or passion. Learn more about it. Buy books, read blogs, find YouTube videos, go to training sessions, just learn more about in whatever way you learn best.

4. Give your knowledge about it away for free. If it’s truly your purpose (for one you’re probably already doing this without even realizing it) then it’s something that you love to do and would do it for free anyway if money was no object. So, if that’s the case, go ahead and do it for free. Happiness and fulfillment isn’t always about money. Being able to do what you love creates a richness in your life that many will never experience. So, give it away, do it for free (of course not to a point where you’re compromising yourself or your mental, physical, or financial well being), share it with the world. It will make you happy.

5. Be consistent. Even if you can only give it 30 minutes to an hour a day or per week, just be sure to give your purpose some sort of consistent time. And if you truly dedicate the time to working on, doing, or sharing your purpose; eventually you can get to a point where you’ll be compensated. Remember, you don’t want to tie the things that bring you joy into revenue (well, at least not when you first start) because that takes the love out of it and immediately turns it into a business. If you go into trying to make it a business, you will create pressure for yourself and no longer be able to do it because you love it.

The steps above that I have shared with you are proven to work, and I know they work because these are the steps that I took and the questions that I asked myself when trying to find myself again. The crazy thing is, at one point, I knew who I was and I knew what I loved. But, somewhere in the throes of life, career, parenting, being a spouse, being a “good person, etc, I totally lost me. I lost my identity and inevitably lost knowing and understanding what I loved to do. Most of me feeling lost was because I was conforming to life standards and working a job just because it paid well. And while I was living what our society considers to be “happy” and “successful” on the outside, on the inside I was miserable with my life. But, once I was able to get back in touch with ME, found my purpose, and reignited my passion; I began to realize how much of myself I was actually sacrificing.

So, now it’s your turn Queen. Take the time to do a self reflection exercise and ask yourself the above questions. Take your life back. Live it for YOU. Do what you love and fall in love with living. Do what you’re passionate about and increase the joy you feel and experience everyday. Don’t wait, start now. You deserve it.

Love ya! Mean it!

Breezy Phoenix