A life of purpose is about the creative expression of self in a way that brings value to the world around you. But there are several stages anyone goes through before you get to live your purpose in life that truly brings you joy, happiness and the fulfillment that you desire.
There are practical aspects to living a life that is on purpose. For all intents and purposes, you will need the basic necessities of life. You will still need clothes, food to eat, a place to rest and other material substances to live in our modern world.
Regardless of what you want to believe, fulfilling your purpose in life requires you to make the most of what you already have right now where you are. Even if you wanted to live out in the wild, how many people actually have the requisite skills to survive out in the wilderness, hunting and trapping game for food? Or even the ability to manage and cultivate a farm to grow crops for food?
Life Purpose Evolves According To Where You Are
It is nice to think that your purpose in life takes on an unchanging form of material expression. But the truth is probably quite different. The intent and drive of your Life Purpose is eternal, but the form in which it is expressed evolves to meet the environment that you are in.
For example, if your purpose in life is to help people “wake up” to see the larger picture, it can take many different forms. You can be a writer of self-help books, a producer who creates life documentaries of the world around us, a singer who serenades the world with inspiring songs or any other channel of expression.
Your Purpose in Life can take on any shape that it needs to express its desire to be heard, seen and felt in this world. The message and intent remains the same. But the channel that you express your purpose in life can vary greatly from one person to the other, from one culture to the next.
Living Your Purpose In Life Isn’t A Random Event
The truth is that if you want to live a purposeful and meaningful life, it has to come about through deliberate and conscious actions on your part. That’s the very essence of purpose, isn’t it?
You are doing something deliberately with the intent of achieving a specific aim.. which in this case is to have a more joyful, happy and fulfilling life.
While there is an odd chance you might randomly fall into your dream life, the majority of us will need to take a good hard look at ourselves and who we are. You have to make trade-offs between what you think you have now and what you strongly desire to have in your new life.
There are practical aspects to consider when you want to fulfill your purpose in life, ya know?
Embracing Practical Spirituality
It might seem a little hard-nosed and calculating, but we need to embrace and live a practical spirituality that is actually of some value to others. If your purpose in life has no value to the community around you, then what purpose does Life and the Universe have for you?
There’s no difference whether you exist because you make no difference in Life.
The first step is of course clarifying your authentic purpose in life. If you don’t know how to go about doing that, then this life purpose coaching video series might prove helpful to you. Another option you can look at is reading Life on Purpose by Dr. Brad Swift.
The other practical aspects of living your purpose in life is to review your finances. When you look at your finances and your lifestyle, ask yourself what is the minimum that you really need to live the life you desire.
Are you already at that level, or do you still have work to do?
Calculating Your “Get Free” Number
Perhaps the majority of your finances come from doing the work you dislike, which means that you need to find alternative channels of income. In order to do this, you need to crunch some numbers to get the amount you need to pay for your desired lifestyle.
Many people find an excessive lifestyle exhausting and wearing on them after some time. Just keeping up appearances and the work schedule to maintain a lifestyle they don’t really need does takes its toll eventually. Which is also a reason why so many people start searching for their real purpose in life.
A great approach is to simplify your life and required material needs. Get it down to a comfortable level and calculate how much you actually need to pay for that life.
That’s your “get free” number.
Do you really need such a big car? Or a big house? How about other fancy gadgets and stuff that just lie around the house taking up space? If you didn’t have all the stuff you don’t need, perhaps you don’t really need that big a house?
What is the basic stuff you need to really live your purpose in life?
And if you are shifting away from your current lifestyle, would you still be splurging the kind of money on social functions that you no longer enjoy?
You might be very surprised at the real “get free” number you need to live your purpose in life. True, it may seem a little extreme. But this exercise helps you to identify what you really need in life financially. You may find that you truly don’t need a lot after all.
Living Your Purpose In Life Requires Hard-Nosed Decisions
It sounds great… all airy fairy type of happy goodness when we talk about living a purposeful life of joy, happiness and fulfillment. But as long as you have a physical body and responsibilities to take care of, we need to make clear decisions on the things we need in this life.
It also requires you to be clear on what your purpose in life is. You also need clarity on what your strengths, passions, and value-creating abilities are. If you can’t create value fulfilling your purpose in life, it’s going to be difficult for you to make a living doing what you love.
Creating Cash Flow To Support Your Purpose In Life Activities
Some options you can consider are investing into cash flow generating assets like businesses, stocks that pay solid dividends, buying investment property for rental income or other types of cash flow generating assets.
Or if you have the ability to create value from your passion and life purpose, consider the options of building a business around your purpose in life to make the income you need.
A key element to living your purpose in life is to create value through doing what you love and are passionate about. In exchange for that value, others are more than happy to pay you what passes for equal value in this economy.