Components of a Life Purpose
I first discovered that blending together three basic components
results consistently in a life purpose with those qualities, not
just for me but for many people. I later recognized a fourth
component. They are:
* Vision The first component is a unique vision of what you see
to be possible for your life, your community, and ultimately the
world. Often times, determining your vision of what's possible
is more of a remembering process, since we all begin life with a
sense of possibility. Unfortunately, many of us lose that sense
of awe and wonder as we grow older and are repeatedly told to
"get real."
* Values Each of us has a set of core values, those intangibles
of life that matter the most to us, that we'd be willing to give
our lives for. Perhaps we're not quite ready to stand in front
of a firing squad for them, but we are willing to give our life
in service of having these values be more present in the world
in which we live.
* Being Who we are at the core of our being, our very soul, is
the third basic component that makes up our life purpose. It's
the essence of who we are, that part we know of ourselves that
we can count on and which others can count on as well.
* The Glue When we blend these three components together, we get
the makings of a force that can shape our lives in each moment
as we do whatever we're doing. But the mixture isn't complete
yet. We're still missing a key ingredient: the glue that holds
it all together. We can think of that glue in several different
ways. One is to view it as the universal, attractive force of
love that binds us all to each other and to the rest of the
universe. Or we can think of it as our relationship to God or a
Higher Power, or call it our spirituality or our spiritual
nature. Whatever the description, this fourth ingredient when
mixed with the other three results in a powerful, long-lasting
force that can shape our lives and all we do, while still giving
us plenty of room to express ourselves fully.
Why aren't more of us allowing our divinely-inspired life
purposes to shape our lives? Because there's a second force that
has been shaping them for so long we're mostly unaware of it. In
fact, it's because we are unaware of it that it continues to
have such a strong influence in our life.