What’s your life purpose and how do I get there? These are two of the most asked questions asked when people are trying to make life changes. Have you ever asked yourself something similar to them?

The good news is you do have something very unique in your life to accomplish. Of course, the question that comes after that is, What is it? The truth is, that question is about as far as most people will ever go. When you  ask yourself this question, think about it for a few minutes, if you come up with no answers then just go on with your daily routine. Many fail to do more than just ask the question and do little to find the answer on their own. Many of us choose to wait for some sign to find what we are supposed to be doing. We hope that a message will come to us and shine a light on the path in front of us, as if it was meant to be. 

If you ever want to accomplish your purpose you have to go beyond the “What is it?” question. You may be wondering how you do that? Here are a couple places to start.

Getting beyond the question

We all need to take those first steps in finding our purpose. Asking ourselves “What is our purpose,” or something similar is where it begins. Now you want to know more but we get lost in the how tos and why fors to go much further. The good news is that there are a couple things that can help you beyond these starting blocks.

You first have to realize that in the beginning you won’t have all the answers. If you are waiting for a bolt of lightning to hit you and reveal to you what it is you’re supposed to do in life, you’re wasting your time. The universe doesn’t work like that, in fact it does require a bit of effort on your part.

The first thing you need to do is determine what you are passionate or most passionate about. What gets you so excited that you can hardly contain yourself when you think about it? Or what causes your blood to boil when you hear people talk about it? Most likely this is the starting point of your greatness.

Why do I say the starting point? Because once you finally have an idea about what you want to do you must then ask, in what direction do I go? And how do I start? Believe it or not, those questions don’t matter as much as you may think they do.

The second thing you need to do is to simply begin pursuing your passion. Don’t let the question of “What direction do I go or how do I start?” stop you from actually starting. Most likely, there is some type of organization, group, or online presence that is doing something very similar to what you have a passion to do. Get involved with these people. They have probably already laid much of the groundwork in developing what you are passionate about. You can then jump right in and start helping them.

By being around these people you will begin to develop and fine-tune exactly what your purpose is. As a matter of fact, your initial purpose for getting involved may change somewhat as you begin to develop your greatness.

Finding Passion

Finding your passion should only require you to look in front of your face. If you are spending a lot of time and effort trying to “find” what you are passionate about then you’re probably not that passionate about things. The good news is, you don’t need to “find” your passion.

Picture it, you are a kid and it’s summer. When you woke up each morning, did you lay in bed trying to think of what to do? More than likely you did what every other kid did, you got up and started doing things. Whether that was chasing butterflies, playing catch with your cousins, or trying to dig up that stump at your grandmother’s house that never seemed to want to go away. You just did things and had fun. Curiosity and excitement guided you. If you grew bored of what you were doing, you went on to something else.

Here is a secret for you… Not knowing is the whole point of life. When you are born, you aren’t given a guide on how to navigate life. Your only guide is you and what you learn along the way. Life doesn’t get any easier either. It may seem like it but that is more due to learning how to navigate things and deal with them as they come along. 

Acting on passion

Everyone, at some point in their life, asks what they are passionate about or how to find it. A simple truth is that you have already found what you are passionate about but are probably just avoiding or ignoring it. 

You may be avoiding it because people will tell you things like, “you can’t make money off video games.” Or just because you love drawing anime doesn’t mean it is worthwhile pursuing. 

The problem isn’t passion, the problem tends to be priorities. Face it, that life gets in the way and sometimes you have to sacrifice what you love for what needs to be done. We don’t have to love what we do to make money, we just do it. A bigger truth is that every job you have will not be fun all the time. Even if you did the thing you are most passionate about, at some point it will lose its luster. You will get tired of doing the same thing day in and day out. I love writing for my blog but there are times that I get stressed out trying to find content and keep up posting. It’s a fact of life. 

Here is an example. Steve wants to follow his passion of starting an online business selling miniatures he has made using his 3D printer. His business hasn’t really been working, in fact he hasn’t even launched a single product yet. But Steve insists that he is going to get it done – despite not even starting. 

An ex-coworker, Tim approaches Steve with a design he needs for a campaign Tim is getting ready to run. Steven stops what he is doing and offers to help. He spends all day and late into the night working on the design. He loves getting lost in the creation process. After he finishes up the design for Tim, he is back to trying to figure out how to make his passion work. 

What Steve doesn’t see is that he has already found his passion. He chooses to overlook it for this dream that he doesn’t know how to actualize. He is simply afraid to pull the trigger on a design business because he thinks it will fail and isn’t worth the investment. Or he has been told he won’t make him happy or money.

Knowing isn’t half of the battle

We hear it all the time, “Knowing is half the battle.” The premise of that statement implies that knowing as much as you can about a situation should give you about half of what you need to know to act on it, in some way. It sounds logical, in some respects. If you are diagnosed with an illness, you research what you have to see what has been done and how it will affect you, you research more about possible treatments, and then you formulate your attack plan. It just works, right? What if that isn’t always the best course of action?

Why it is not so important to know everything about what you want to do before you start doing it. It’s kind of like this: Imagine you are in Los Angeles and you want to drive to Florida. You are not really sure where you want to go in Florida, but you know Florida is where you need to go. You have two options:

1.  You can research, study, ask people, look at maps, and all kinds of things to try and find out the best way to get to Florida. You are not going to leave until you know exactly how to get there, the dangers involved, the speed traps to watch out for, where the best rest stops are. The problem with this is that you will never know everything about how to get to Florida.
2. You can just start driving. You may ask one or two people you meet along the way which road to use and then just go. On your journey you will meet people who will help you with the best routes, and they will even tell you of places they went to and experiences they had on their way to Florida. By the time you get there, you will have gained so much knowledge that you now know exactly where you want to go in Florida.

The point is this, you can sit around and wait for the perfect opportunity to fulfill your purpose or you can simply start out on your journey and, along the way, you will discover and fulfill your purpose. My suggestion is: just start moving!