Member Articles

Do you know what your life purpose is?

Are you wondering why you should care?

Life purpose may not be a term you're attracted to (too spiritual, too cliched, or too whatever), but I believe that knowing your life purpose is a basic and central key to finding career happiness.

A way of defining life purpose is the core theme or message of your life. What’s the common thread that can’t help but weave its way through the different areas of your life? What is the quality that you believe you are here to develop? What is your calling or mission in life? We’re talking way beyond career skills and more about an overarching theme to your entire life.

When you choose work that relates to your life purpose, your chances for sustained and lasting fulfillment are much higher than if you have no idea what your life purpose is, or if you know that your work has absolutely no relation to your life purpose, or if your work is in opposition to your life purpose.

This is a huge topic. You will not uncover your life purpose by the time you finish reading this article. But here are a few questions to get you started discovering what it might be, based on an exercise from Marcia Bench, a leading expert in the career coaching field:

Also, there are many wonderful books and programs that help you realize and articulate your life purpose, including Laura Berman Fortgang’s book, Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction.

Ideally after you’ve spent some time on this you’ll be able to state your life purpose in one or two  sentences. Whether you’ll be announcing your life purpose at your next staff meeting or mom-baby playgroup is up to you.

Next time I’ll write about what keeps us from delving into discovering our life purpose, because I'm sure you just thought of a few reasons!