HOW TO FIND  YOUR PURPOSE FORMULA

Being an experienced life and relationship coach have so many clients who wonder what their calling or purpose for being here on earth is.

I recently read Noble Purpose by William Damon and this is what he says…

“The idea of a ‘calling’ has religious roots meaning a ‘task set by God.’

Everyone has their own particular calling based on these 3 realities:

(1) their own God-given abilities
(2) the world’s need for the services their callings provide
(3) their enjoyment in serving society and God in their own special ways.

Like any noble purpose, a calling should be both meaningful to ones self and important to the world beyond the self.

Christian theologian Frederick Buechner writes, ‘The kind of work God usually calls you to do is the kind of work that…

(a) that you need most to do

(b) that the world most needs to have done. . . . The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.’”

There is a slight variation of the same wisdom in The Road to Character where David Brooks tells us: “Don’t ask, What do I want from life?

Instead you want to ask a different set of questions: “What does life want from me?”

“What are my circumstances calling me to do?”

“What are my values?”

In this scheme of things, you don’t create your life; you are summoned by life.

The important answers are not found inside, they are found outside.

This perspective starts with an awareness that the world existed long before you got here and will last long after you have gone.

And that in the brief span of your life, you have been thrown by fate, by history, by chance, by evolution, or by God into a specific place with specific problems and needs.

Your “job” is to figure out:

“What does this world, environment, home need in order to be made whole? What is it that needs repair?”

“What tasks are lying around waiting to be performed?”

As the author Frederick Buechner put it, “At what points do my talents and deep gladness meet the world’s deep need?’”

So, if you want to find your calling or purpose, look at your “God-given abilities”, what the world’s needs, and your enjoyment in using those skills in service to the world.

In short: where what you most love to do meets what the world most needs…where is that for you?

I love to do this: ________________________________.

This is what the world needs from me: ________________________________.

It is important to remember that ANY job can become a calling. It’s all in how you approach it.

In his book Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman puts it this way: “any job can become a calling, and any calling can become a job…

A physician who views the work as a Job and is simply interested in making a good income does not have a Calling, while a garbage collector who sees the work as making the world a cleaner, healthier place could have a Calling.”

Have you figured out  your calling?  If you would like some help click on the image below.