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How to find your life’s purpose
Life’s a journey.
And some of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself during your journey are:
Why am I here?
What do I really, really want in life?
Where am I going?
Successful people spend the most time thinking about these questions, then constantly evaluate and re-evaluate their progress in light of who they are and what they really want.
Let me tell you a quick story about the Acres of Diamonds philosophy…
Based on a talk by Russell Conwell, this philosophy tells the story of an African farmer who sold his farm to look for diamonds, only to later discover that the farm he sold was literally covered with acres of diamonds.
He’d gone off to seek wealth elsewhere without ever looking under his own feet.
The problem was that diamonds look like chunks of rocks that need to be cut and shaped to bring out their beauty and value.
So much like your own life, there are diamonds or “opportunities” under your own feet, but they may be disguised as hard work or something else entirely.
In our fast-paced, unpredictable, cluttered world, finding your purpose may not always be easy. But it’s central to everything you do and become. You may feel that you are controlled by external circumstances. But the fact is that your life is largely determined by your own personal choices and decisions.
So make the decision now to find your purpose and throw your whole heart into it. The worst way to go about your journey is spending years scrambling up the ladder of success only to find that it’s leaning against the wrong building.
Your purpose is usually the one goal that will help you achieve more of your other goals than anything else. So it must be…
- Something that you personally want – The very idea of achieving your purpose should excite you and makes you happy.
- Clear and specific – You must be able to write it down and define it in words with such clarity that a child could read it.
- Measurable and quantifiable – Rather than “I want to make my own money,” your purpose must read more like, “I will own a profitable business that makes $250K/year by July 2018.”
- Believable and achievable – It cannot be so big or ridiculous that it is completely unattainable.
- A reasonable probability of success – Your purpose should have an 80-90% probability of success so that you can be assured of winning right from the start.
- In harmony with your goals – You cannot have a purpose of helping people with a goal to play golf by yourself most of the time.
You were put on this earth to do something wonderful with your life. Your job is to find out what that is — you may have found it early on in your life, or you may have to cut and shape some diamonds of your own.
Let me tell you another story about a 14-year-old girl from Switzerland who recently met with me…
After a rough turn in her pursuit to be a gymnast, she found her purpose and achieved so much for her age already.
I’d like to leave you with this quote:
To be truly happy, you need a clear sense of purpose in life.
To your acres of diamonds,
Brian Tracy
