Welcome to the first Ask Away question!

Each week I will choose one of your questions and do my best to offer guidance and support to help you along your journey.

I also encourage everyone who is reading this to offer their words of wisdom as well by leaving a comment at the end.

Please click here to learn more about this feature.

And now for the question:

I am struggling to find my life purpose. Can you offer suggestions for how I can go about figuring out what I was born to do?

(This person chose to be anonymous.)

Thank you so much for asking this powerful question. I believe that if we are able to answer this question for ourselves, we are on the path to true emotional freedom and continued happiness throughout our lives.

So what is a life purpose anyway?
It’s something that you feel with every part of your being. It’s who you are and what you are uniquely called to do in this lifetime. It’s something that flows out of you without even the slightest bit of effort. It’s something that comes from your core – your very essence.

What your life purpose isn’t:
Something that you feel you HAVE to do. Something that feels like a constant struggle. Something that doesn’t flow for you. Something that others tell you to do. Something that just doesn’t feel right – doesn’t feel like you.

Our life purpose will never be a struggle. It will never be a drain.
To put it positively, our life purpose will always give us energy and flow easily out of us. We will know that we are living on purpose if we wake up excited to just be in our lives. We are thrilled to get to share our gift with others. We can’t wait to offer our unique purpose to the world.

Our life purpose is synonymous with getting back to our soul – our pureness, our love, and our wisdom. It’s what makes us unique – no two life purposes are the same. And that’s why finding it has to come from within. You truly already know the answer to this question, it’s just buried underneath a bunch of “shoulds” and “have tos” and “can’ts.” Once you start releasing all of these limiting beliefs and recognizing your innate ability to soar into your calling, the answers will begin to flow.

Start Gathering Clues:
To start, I would suggest that you get out a piece of paper and write down everything that you like to do. Take at least 15 minutes (longer if you can) and just write down whatever comes. Please don’t censor yourself, and keep your pen to the paper (or your fingers to the keyboard, if you prefer).

Start with writing down things that you like to do now – in your current life. Do you enjoy reading books, having stimulating conversation, or playing with your cats? Write it all down.

Then write down things you used to enjoy doing when you were younger. Go back all the way to your first memories. Did you like to play outside? What were your favorite games? What were your best subjects in school?

And then fast forward to the future. How do you see yourself spending your time? What are some dreams and goals that you have set for yourself? How would you like your life to look?

And now go back through each section of your list and circle 3-5 things that have a bit more energy to them – by this I mean that they stand out from the page more than the others, you feel yourself being drawn to them more than the others, you want to explore them more.

So now you have between 12-15 things that tell you a bit about what you like to do.

You are on your way to finding your life purpose! There are all big hints and puzzle pieces to help us find out what we were born to do.

Putting Together the Puzzle:
I believe that one of our main purposes of being born is to get back to our core – our soul – and to align our human self with our soul self. To live on purpose means we are living from our soul. It’s like we are putting together a puzzle, but we aren’t given all of the pieces right away. So we get to put together part of it at one point in our lives, and then we are given a few more pieces later on, and so on…

And putting together pieces that don’t quite fit isn’t a bad thing. It’s part of learning and growing. So if you feel that you are off track in your life – if your inner wisdom is telling you that you aren’t living on purpose – it’s okay. Just shift gears and try another puzzle piece – see if this one fits. If you spend your time doing something that you truly don’t love, you’ll constantly hear your inner voice asking you to get back on track. That voice is helping to lead you toward your purpose – definitely pay attention to it.

Carve out some time each day to be still – to go within – to connect with your soul. Ask it to guide you toward your purpose. Write down anything that comes into your mind after asking. These will be clues to being to put together your life purpose puzzle.

Remember how much fun we used to have playing games and make believe when we were children? If you see your life purpose as a puzzle that you get to put together, you can begin to have fun with it instead of seeing it as something that you need to figure out – something that you must learn. Do you see the difference in energy that is attached to each way you can go about finding the same outcome?

Soul searching is enlightening and eye opening and provoking – but it can also be fun and playful and filled with inner wonder.

It is never too late to delve in and figure out what your life purpose is. This is possibly the biggest question of all, and while I know that this post is just a short answer to a lifelong pursuit and journey, I hope these suggestions help get you on the path toward your purpose. Remember that the answer is already inside of you – take some time each day to go within regularly through meditation or writing. Ask your soul what it already knows, and I believe the answers will begin to flow.

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For everyone who is reading, please offer your words of wisdom as well! Let’s all chime in and offer guidance and support for this brave soul who went first!

I would love to answer your question in next’s week’s post!
Please email your question to: info@soulfuljournals.com. (Please put “Ask Away” in the subject line.)

If your question is chosen for that Friday’s feature, I will let you know if I need any additional information. It’s completely up to you if you would like your question to be anonymous or public. If you would like to keep it anonymous, please make sure to leave out any identifying details.