How does #coronavirus helps us with finding our #purpose in life?
I don't know my life purpose and that makes me go crazy. I need to find my life purpose. Help meee...
Is this self-talk familiar to you?
Do you know your life purpose?
If not, and even if you do, you may be interested in reading this article. If not your life purpose, you will find a different perspective on the topic.
Why is it so hard for us to find our life purpose? Maybe it is simply because we believe we are looking for something mysterious and giant, something we need years and years of hard work to find. So we either are afraid or just "we don't have time" to find it now. But we don't have an excuse these days, because #covid19 and the #lockdown came right on time to give us the chance to think about our life purpose. How do we find our purpose? For our ancestors very often purpose was given from the circumstances they were facing - if there was a war, they were fighting for peace. If there was some incurable disease, they wanted to find a vaccine, if there was an invasion in their country, their purpose was to get rid of the invader. Actually the current situation with #covid19 is very similar, we have a common purpose to get rid of it, right? But what will happen tomorrow or in 1 month, or in 6 months when #coronavirus is gone. Will we come back to the old pattern of "trying" to find our ultimate #lifepurpose? Or we can use the current situation as an opportunity to crack the code of life purpose. Are you willing to explore the second option with me?
If you read this it means you are ready and I congratulate you for that. What is a life purpose? Most of our knowledge of life purpose is coming from different religious and philosophical traditions. Later or before that, I don't really know, numerology, astrology, psychics and other like traditions, came up with more scientific facts around the topic. The personal growth movements, which very often are based on the above mentioned ancient traditions, are the contemporary solutions. I am not going to dig deep into these traditions because I am not an expert in them. Moreover, you can and I am sure you already read tones of info on them. The most important insight from all of them is that we have some unique purpose in life, which we need to follow to reach our peace and prosperity. A new perspective What if there is no life purpose? I know that this statement might sound too controversial but please bear with me! What if we are free to do whatever we want? What if there is no special reason to be here? Initially, when I came to this realisation I was frightened, I felt a little bit depressed, but then I felt free, free to explore my life without the weight of the expectation of having a unique purpose? I don't say that all of the above traditions are wrong, but what if we shift our focus out of them for a bit. The generations before needed to trust that they had some inherent worth for the greater good, otherwise the suffering they were going through would be unbearable. But for us, this doesn't work the same way. Nowadays, we are blessed to be free to follow and create whatever we want. I don't say we deny the notion of purpose at all, I just say let's break it down to its components and use them in our life. Why do we need a purpose in the first place? What is purpose giving us? There are two main components of life purpose: Number 1 is #meaning. #purpose is giving us meaning in life other than eating, having sex and sleeping. Number 2 is #valuableselfexpression The second component is giving us the chance to have inherent value for society by expressing our gifts and talents. Working on developing the above two components will help us have the purpose we so crave in life! How can we find a purpose in our everyday life? If we want the answer to this question we just need to find #meaning and #valuableselfexpression every day! Let's try! How do we get #meaning? Have you read the book "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl? This is a book that can completely turn around your perspective on meaning. It is about the experience Viktor Frankl had in a Nazi concentration camp and the meaning he found even in the worst of human conditions. The bottom line of the book is how meaning can be found in the most simple things in life. Are you willing to explore this perspective? What if meaning can be found in the most mundane things like waking up in the morning, helping an old person to cross the street, being present with our kids/wife/husband without being taken away by our problems. But isn't that inherently true, don't exactly these things make our life meaningful? What if having meaning in life is not achieved by doing one giant act, but is done by doing a thousand small acts, which together make your life meaningful. How do we find our #valueableselfexression? What if I tell you are inherently valuable for the world right now in this very moment. How is that possible? Have you watched the youtube video where a guy drew a smile to a small piece of paper which he handed to another person, when the other person saw it he just smiled and handed it to another person, so in the end, a whole bunch of people was smiling out of this small gesture? We do this every day, by the way, we treat people we meet, by the way, we do the work we do, by the way, we smile. Our impact on people has even increased considerably by the introduction of social media, where we literally are interconnected. Final thoughts Knowing our purpose can be the most empowering thing in life, but way more important than that is who we are in everyday life. Getting present and finding meaning and value in every single personal act will make our existence more purposeful than ever!