The Search For Life Purpose

Usually the search for purpose and meaning in life comes at a point in time when you realize that what you’re doing seems pointless with no end in sight.
Life has become empty, lost its color, and almost everything that you partake in seems superficial. You could also be running a race for riches, fame and glory but with no end in sight. It feels like you’re the rat in the proverbial rat race. The search for purpose is a good thing. It actually signifies the awakening of your consciousness that there is more to life than what you’re experiencing. At the beginning, you probably feel terrible and really lousy, but take heart that practically everyone who started searching for their purpose started out the same way you did.
The Inward Search to Discover Your Self
Finding your purpose is a journey not only of the external, but of your inner world as well. If you try to look to society for your sense of purpose, with the amount of conflicting messages today, it’s more likely that any information you find will confuse you even more. You have to go within to find out what your likes and dislikes are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, how you relate to people, what causes emotional resonance and dissonance within you. As you start to discover more about yourself, you start to discover more about the world, and you start to discover more about life.
As you journey inwards, your awareness of your external world also starts to expand. You start to uncover how your talents, strengths and abilities can be of value in your society. Things that didn’t make sense before start to make sense now and as you begin to comprehend your abilities and talents, you start to find congruence both within and without.
The Outward Search for Purpose
As you begin to understand and discover more about yourself, the outward journey of life starts to accelerate. With the inner sense of knowing who you are and what you’re capable of, you gain confidence, calm and poise to interact with the external world. Acting and moving from your center (your inner self), making changes and handling the issues of life become easier. This is where the often quoted phrase about “having the courage to change the things you can, accepting the things you can’t, and having the wisdom to know the difference” comes in. This wisdom is only truly possible when you know what you can and cannot do.
Summary
The search for your purpose of life may be short and simple, or it may be longer and not so easy. It ultimately depends on where you currently are in life. If you know yourself pretty well, then you would already have traveled the inner journey for some distance already. If you’re just starting on the path of self discovery, then it might take a little longer. When you finally truly know yourself, that’s when you will most likely be able to establish a meaningful life purpose.