One of the most common things that people ask me is “What is my purpose?” Today, I want to explain some things that you might not know about purpose and offer you 8 questions that you can ask yourself that will help you to find your purpose. 

There is a reason, usually many in fact, for why you incarnated into this life as a human and as the person that you are. This reason accounts for why you came to those specific parents and to that specific place and why you came when you did and the entire story of your astrology etc. So many things were set into motion by this pre-birth intention. A pre-birth intention reflects something that was important to your non-physical consciousness. 

We have the tendency of “careerizing” the idea of purpose. Not everyone’s life purpose was about some job they were meant to do here, some career they were meant to have. Or some grand act they were meant to carry out. Some beings incarnate only for a very short time into the womb and then withdraw their consciousness. So, if you can imagine that there can be purpose even in an incarnation like that, you can imagine how complicated the picture of pre-birth intention and life purpose is. And how simple a life purpose can be.  

When most people talk about life purpose, they think of it in terms of trying to figure out and live up to some pre-determined grand master plan for what they are meant to do on this planet. They feel it is their cosmic mission to find out the cosmic significance of their life, the purpose for their existence and to live it out. And this is the wrong way to go about doing it.

The right way to go about doing it is to find out what is important to you. And live according to what is important to you. Because nested within what is important to you, is that pre-birth intention. To feel good in life, you do have to be in-alignment with your pre-birth intention, to be in alignment with your prebirth intention, you must be doing what is important to you. You could say that your pre-birth intention is reflected through that feeling of living according to what is important to you in this life. And sometimes in life, what is important to you changes. When this is the case, you are still on the path of that pre-birth intention. You are often simply taking the next step on the path of it. 

To feel like you are living your purpose, you need to ask yourself: What can I do with my time that is important? Some of the things we do in life are not important. And some of the things we do in life are important. They have meaning. They matter. They cause us a sense of fulfillment. To have that sense of having purpose in life, you need to do those things, whatever they are. And what is important for each person, is different and unique. What’s more, no one else can tell you what is or isn’t, should or shouldn’t be important to you.   

Now that you understand this, here are 8 Questions that you can ask yourself in order to find your purpose.

1. If I were literally forced to be active in that I had to go spend every minute of my time, except for sleep doing something, or there would be a consequence, what would I occupy myself with that matters to me? Make sure your answer to this question isn’t something that serves as an escape from life for you, like scrolling Instagram might be for some of you. Or playing video games might be for some of you. Or reading books might be for some of you. Or slot machines might be for some of you. And when you get your answer, look at WHY that is your answer and WHAT you find so enthralling about that thing. This question can show us what activity we might choose above all the others.
2. If money or time or current responsibilities were not an issue at all, what would I like to do with my life, more than anything else in the world? We are often kept away from an awareness of what our true passions are by the feeling that we don’t have enough money or that we don’t have enough time or that some responsibility we have will not allow for it. But because of this, we are full of resistance to the very things that make our life worth living. And the very things that hold the most passion for us and the very things that are most important to us.   
3. If I knew I was going to die in 2 years, what would I do with those two years? Viewing your life from the perspective of death is incredibly valuable. Death shows you the value of your life. Most people live their lives like they have all the time in the world and so, they don’t make the most out of their lives. Suddenly, if we have very limited time to make the most of our life, we prioritize what is most important to us. We do the things that are the most important to us. Our true values rise to the surface. And we have more willingness to be urgent and active about living according to them. This question serves as a window into what is most important to you about your existence. In a roundabout way, it shines a light on what you want your legacy to be. And this has a way of putting you back into alignment with your pre-birth intention quickly. Values are essentially what is most important to you. And so, figuring out your values is such a crucial part of finding a sense of purpose. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: The Secret to a Happy Life.                 
4. What makes me forget time and basic necessities? When we are in our purpose, we are so in the present moment, that minutes turn to hours and hours turn into days without us noticing how much time has gone by. We become so immersed, that we forget things outside of it, like other things going on in our life or going to the bathroom or needing to eat or drink. So, answering this question, is a good way of finding out what truly puts us in the flow state where we are in alignment with our purpose.  
5. What negatives can I say yes to? People have a totally unrealistic expectation that when they find their purpose, they will know because it will feel good. The truth is not so simple. Just look at someone like Martin Luther King. He and the rest of us can agree that he was living his purpose. But did it feel like Joy? Not a lot of the time. Some things did. But a lot didn’t. Would he have rather just avoided conflict and become a preacher, or focused on playing billiards where he could have felt a lot more ease? It is important to follow your joy, because that sensation of joy is an indication that you are doing what you love. It’s very valuable to follow your joy. What you love doing is in alignment with your purpose in some way, otherwise you couldn’t face the challenges on the path of your purpose. For example, Martin Luther King loved to communicate. To speak and write. He felt joy doing it. But for many people, on the path of purpose there is something that is stronger than joy. And that is a sense of importance. When you have that, even when the road gets really hard or you face serious pain on the path of your purpose, thinking about just changing course and doing what would feel better rather than facing all those painful elements feels wrong, because you lose that sense of doing what is most important to you.
   This means, you need to know what negative things you can consciously choose, no matter how much they suck, in order to do what is important to you. To give you an example, someone who has decided it is important to be a professional skier, has to be able to say yes to the risk of injury and vicious competition and difficult travel and politics of sponsorship. Someone who decides it is important to be a full-time mother has to be able to say yes to being in the vulnerable position of her partner being the one to provide and control financial security and dealing with throw up and potty training and focusing the vast majority of her time and energy on other people’s desires, needs and success. Depending on their situation, someone who decides it is important to spend their life traveling and exploring new places and cultures may have to deal with being judged as irresponsible by other people, the feeling of not having the cozy stability that comes with a ‘home’, their naivety getting them into dangerous situations because they are foreign. Or living out of a suitcase or backpack and as a result, not being able to build up any assets in life. Your ability to stick with what matters most to you and what you care about is determined by your willingness to face and deal with the negatives that come with it. The reality is, everything sucks some of the time. And expecting the right thing to feel different, is out of reality. Believe it or not, accepting this can be liberating if you let it be. To understand more about this, watch two of my videos. The first tiled: Want to Succeed? What Pain Will You Say Yes To. And the second titled: Why You Should Consciously Choose Consequences. 
6. What problem in the world would I pick to start solving? This isn’t to say that every person’s purpose is about a world problem they are meant to solve. But you will find that this question will point to values that are more important to you than your own personal pleasure and satisfaction. And these are the things where you will have what it takes to face the negatives inherent in what is most important to you. It will also point you in the direction of the feeling of making a difference, which is an important part of life fulfillment.   
7. What did I love to do when I was a child? When we are children, we often instinctively gravitate towards living in alignment with our pre-birth intention. We are not yet fully socialized and the process of socialization often pulls us away from our joy and innate calling. Children are masters of play, which means they do things for the sheer joy of doing them. Not because they earn money for doing it or because they get some other reward for it. Their intrinsic motive has not yet been compromised. There are hints as to someone’s purpose in their childhood aptitudes, affinities and behaviors. Behaviors that are not a strategy to get something else they want. So that you can understand this, I’ll give you an example. Mark is an architect. He feels this is his purpose. When he looks back at his childhood, he realizes that he loved Legos more than anything in the world. He was a natural planner and wanted everything planned out before doing it. He loved geometry. He never stopped asking why things were built the way they were built and remembers that a friend of his had a house with a fake window on the outside and it used to absolutely perturb him. When something is important to us, it involves passion. And that passion can often be rediscovered by revisiting the activities you loved and aptitudes you had as a child. Another variation of this question that can provide insight is: What about your adult life, would make your child self-cry? The things that would make your child self-cry are an indication of places in your life that you have sacrificed your passion, joy and potentially what is fundamentally important to you at a soul level. Areas where you can get back on track. There is a fabulous movie called The Kid starring Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin that you should watch, not only because it is an awesome movie, but also in order to understand this whole concept. 
8. What gift do I have to give to this world? We very often make a mistake when we are searching for our life purpose because we look for what we are supposed to do or to have in this world when, in fact, our purpose comes instead in the form of what we are supposed to give to this world. Giving this gift should not feel as if you are losing anything or becoming depleted by doing so. To the opposite, it should instead feel as if you are gaining more by giving it. It should be something that you love giving. It is a gift to the world when an athlete performs a great jump shop during a basketball game. Their gift to share with the world might be the expression called playing basketball. It is a gift to the world when a writer releases a new book. For the novelist, their gift to share with the world is the expression called writing a book. For the professor their gift to share with the world is the expression called teaching. For the chef, their gift to share with the world is the expression called cooking. If someone is really organized and loves to help other people organize, their gift might be organization. If someone is really inventive, invention (maybe even a specific invention) might be what they are meant to give the world. What can you offer, that you love to offer? If you are completely stumped, you can ask the people in your life to tell you what they get from you or from being around you. You just might start to see some themes! Contribution is a human need. And no being incarnates without there being some place they fit into within the picture of contributing to this world. And it is through admitting to the gift we have to give that we discover how we fit into this picture of contribution.   

Answering these questions is the way to answer the question that everyone is really asking when they want to find their purpose… What should I do with myself? Just remember, stop looking for your purpose by trying to figure out what the universe thinks is most important for you to be doing with your life. You will discover that the feeling of cosmic significance that you have been looking for by trying to find your life purpose, happens to you somewhere on the path of living according to what is truly important to you.