Purpose is a big subject to approach. It might be common for people to seek it, yet it is too much of an abstract concept for us to understand without having experience with it. People that are more familiar with it might say that “we don’t choose our purpose, it chooses us”. In this article, we’ll discuss this idea and take a look at how exactly purpose chooses us.
Our Purpose Now
As with many things in life, having a purpose is something that is part of the experience as a human. Every action we take leads us into something, has a purpose somehow, even if it is subconscious. Our habits are driven by cues that lead us into a routine to get an expected reward. Even if we don’t think much about our actions, there is the purpose of finding a reward for it.
We can also be running from pain and reacting to fears that might just be shadows in our minds. Vishen Lakhiani has an interesting talk on the subject, a crash course on spirituality. In it he discusses the 4 levels of consciousness. The first one is the victim state, in which we mostly react to things.
Tony Robbins used to say that “reaction is weakness, proactiveness is strength.” When we react, we are already a step behind, when we are proactive, we have the chance to determine the outcome of the scenarios we experience.
Getting Clarity
When we find ourselves without a clear purpose, we might be acting in cycles of unconscious reactions to our environment. It may trigger us to ask ourselves what might it be. We are not deciding the outcome of our actions, only flowing through the path that is offered; we are living without consciousness of our purpose.
This is both obvious and possibly uncomfortable to reflect upon, depending on where we are in life. These are the types of hard questions we do at Elevate Your Best. Because when we start to take a look at this dark corner of our lives, it is dark because it is unfamiliar, unknown, or unseen. We shed light onto it, and give it the time, practice, and exercise to better understand it.
We all have a purpose. The most common challenge can be found in what Jim Rohn said:
If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
Jim Rohn
Lets not drift without purpose in life. If you are struggling to find purpose yourself, take a look at our full conversation about it on Elevate Your Best Podcast Episode #021. You might have some personal questions to ask about it. Feel free to comment in this article or on the YouTube video. You can also send a direct message to Michael Danklefs on LinkedIn to introduce yourself and ask him your questions.
Finding Purpose
There are processes and tools which can help us find our purpose in life. Bruno and Michael talk about their personal journey into finding purpose on the podcast episode above, and both of them had the help of the Mindvalley community to do so.
There we learn how language and culture are important to opening perspectives on what is possible for us to manifest in our lives. If someone asks us to produce something and we don’t understand what they wish clearly, we will never deliver on what was expected. So when we talk about purpose, we need to understand what it is, and there is a journey to that.
Both Michael and Bruno had more than one moment in which they expanded their vision on what purpose means to them before feeling sure about what their personal one is. Through concepts of the Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) we expand the work within several quests, exercises like the 3MIQ, and the Lifebook Process.
Rituals in our life
Those are rituals through which a person can go through. We mostly forgot about rituals in our culture. This is not a criticism, yet the rituals we still maintain are mostly related to religious cultures, music events, work, and food. The sports community tends to have interesting rituals. Even so, we can design more rituals for our culture focused on developing our consciousness and the power of living an intentional life.
Imagine the young member of a tribe from the Amazon rainforest who needs to put his hands into gloves with bullet ants attached to them. It is simply the most painful sting in all animal kingdoms. They don’t pinch you with their fangs, not this kind of ant. They are huge ants with poisonous stings like wasps. In the tribe’s culture, this ritual strengthens the will of the person and helps them to become fiercer warriors. This is probably true.
We can design our own rituals:
- Discover our Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP)
- Do the 3 Most Important Questions (3MIQ)
- Experience the Lifebook Process, a life-changing event
These are like learning to leverage information management with Notion in our lives. It is something that after it is done, we will have left some of us behind, and a new exciting chapter will open for us; One where we have a better perspective of ourselves and our lives which excite us moving forward towards it.
