Five Weird Questions to Determine Life Purpose

What’s your life purpose — and are you pursuing it?

Your true purpose is a “calling” that will most likely reflect your unique set of gifts, talents, abilities, passions, personality traits, and life experiences. It can be a career calling, such as being a motivational speaker or emergency room doctor, or it could be a role you carry out, such as being known as the mother on the block who opens up her home to all the neighborhood kids, or who takes in neglected foster children.

When you are in the zone and carrying out your purpose, you feel like your life makes sense and that you are contributing to the world. The problem is that most people have been on the conveyor belt of life for so long, they have forgotten to reflect on what makes them truly feel fulfilled.

Here are five weird questions that will get you closer to discovering your life purpose:

1. What career would your eight-year old self choose for you now?

If I sat down with my eight-year old self and asked her what career I should do next, I know she would tell me to do one of two things. Be a novelist and/or psychologist. The reason why she would say that is because that’s what I knew I wanted to do when I was eight. The problem is that I lost touch with my childhood passions as I grew older. My parents and society pushed me to toss aside my dreams and embrace a predictable, financially-stable career in the corporate world.

Fortunately, I jumped off the corporate bandwagon in 2010 and became a certified professional life coach and now I am pursuing a Masters in family therapy. Several decades later, but at least I am back on track with my true purpose. My eight-year old self would be proud.

What career or role in life do you think your eight-year old self would tell you to pursue now?

2. What activities make you forget to eat?

Have you ever been so busy doing something fun that you forgot to eat? Video games, surfing the internet and/or shopping in the mall can pre-occupy us so much that we don’t even notice that it has been six hours since our last meal.

Artists are known to paint all day without interruption. Writers write. Entrepreneurs make plans. What activities can you do for hours at a time that occupy you so much that you forget to eat and you delay going to the bathroom?

What do you love about these activities?

3. What embarrassment would you willingly face if you knew success was guaranteed soon afterward?

Let’s face it. Trying something new usually brings pretty dismal results at the first get-go. After we have put in our 10,000 hours of practice, however, we are at an acceptable level. So what activity would you tolerate struggling with for a while, if you were guaranteed that you’d be great a short time later?

For example, if I knew that I would one day create a literary masterpiece, I wouldn’t mind releasing some poorly written stories on the way to glory.

What activity would you start this week that you can tolerate stinking at in the beginning, knowing that one day soon you will be amazing at?

4. What problem makes your blood boil and drives you to take action?

Where does your passions and ability fit into solving some of the problems you see on TV

and in your community? Is there a specific cause that gets you upset every time you hear about it? What could you do to make a difference?

There are a lot of issues in America that need addressing, such as poverty in inner cities, domestic violence, drug trafficking, and rising obesity rates. What issue would you love to get your hands on to fix? Nothing is more rewarding that knowing that your efforts are making a difference in the world and that your life has meaning that extends far beyond yourself.

5. Where would you go everyday if you were locked out of your house every day for 12 hours?

Imagine that you are unemployed but still collecting enough money to comfortably meet all your expenses. The only problem is that you are locked out of your house every day, so you have to go somewhere. Where would you spend your days? Would you go to the gym? The library? The mall? Take an art class? Go back to school?

What places would give you the greatest joy? What would you do all day? Why are you happy there?

Take the Next Step

You have been created for a unique purpose. Pursuit of your purpose will positively affect every aspect of your life — career, finances, family life, emotional and physical health. Now is the time to get serious about pursuing your purpose. Get out a pen and paper and write down the steps you need to take to make it happen.

Lindis Courtney is a strategic life and business coach who helps clients set and achieve their most important goals. Click here to read more about Lindis Courtney's life coaching strategies or for information on how to schedule a private consultation.