Finding your purpose can become a life long journey of rediscovering yourself. You may have had a purpose you didn’t recognize at the time and by the time you realized it, you may have a whole new purpose. Understanding that your purpose may change over time is the first step to discovering what your purpose is now.
Your 20’s fly by and many are still trying to figure out who they are so they can become the person they want to be. You may not have a purpose in your 20’s because you’re too busy trying to understand your station in life. For many in their 20’s their focus and purpose may be to save the world or chasing a cause they really believe in. For others, they already knew their purpose in their teens and they have a passion that drives them to chase it.
Regardless of when you find it, it is important that at some point you do. Then you have to find the fuel to drive that passion and it won’t always come easy.
I have felt that I have had several different purposes during my short time on this planet. What was once more family-focused has become something else. In some, my serial entrepreneurism stems from something far greater than just making money. In fact, the most satisfying thing to me right now is creating jobs. Those jobs help people start their lives, buy their first new car, buy their first home and start a family. My purpose at this point in my life is to create as many jobs as I can and help as many people as I can help start their lives.
But that is my purpose now. I cannot say I always knew my purpose or if I did, that I did everything I could to live up to that purpose. What I have realized is that over time, you get complacent. It is so easy to fall into that trap of the familiar and start thinking everything is good enough.
Familiarity breeds contempt, right? We have all heard that a dozen times but we sure do fall into that snare even if we see it as we stuck our leg in it.
So that is why we must always be reinventing ourselves. Not from a core values perspective, something more simple. The version 2.0 of you should be better than the old you. With that 2.0 version, your purpose may change or be refueled as the newness drives something inside of you.
As you get older, having that purpose that drives you will mean more and more every day. You won’t have to light a fire if it’s always lit, you will just need some fresh air and fuel to stoke it.
Go to bed tonight thinking about your purpose and wake up tomorrow more driven than ever.