Answer:
So here you are. You have a purpose “to become a successful and rich person with a huge positive impact on the world”.
You’ve written it down in your journal as one of your goals, and off you go.
Fast forward 10 years:
Let’s imagine you’re now successful and rich and have a huge influence on the world. You have spent your early years building a company that develops – say – portable toilets, that people in poor countries can use. Your company makes a nice profit, and people all around the world look up to you because you seem to be successful, rich, and have a positive influence on the world.
You now check all the boxes of what you thought your purpose in life was 10 years ago.
But are you happy? No. Because in the process of fulfilling your life purpose, you’ve had to sacrifice other things, like:
Dating and finding a loving partner.
Spending time with your family.
Going on holidays with your friends.
Getting kids.
Traveling the world.
Running a marathon.
Etc.
Even though your purpose in life wasn’t necessarily a bad purpose, there’s one problem with it: it wasn’t YOUR purpose in life. Maybe your purpose in life was to simply build a loving family and to be happy?
That’s why it’s extremely important to discover your own purpose in life!
People don’t wake up one day and have a “eureka” moment and suddenly know what their purpose in life is. No, you have to discover your purpose by trial and error.
So how do you discover your purpose? Not by sitting in a chair by the window. You find it by doing things and taking action.
What’s important here is that you try new things. If you haven’t yet discovered your purpose in life, then you are not going to find it by trying the same things over and over again.
It’s also important to know that your purpose in life and your job are not the same things. Too many people look for a job that is simultaneously something that can fill their purpose in life. A very small percentage of people find actual purpose in the work they do.
For example, I personally have a very simple purpose in life, and it has got nothing to do with my work! That’s not to say that I hate my work, I just don’t regard it as something I’m passionate about.
Long story short: you have to discover your purpose in life by trying out new things. If you feel like you haven’t yet found your purpose in life, that means you need to try something new that sparks your interest again.
