Purpose by Design: Finding Passion for Living

Once you discover your purpose and engage it, it’s like the turbo button on a sports car. You really start to live life on the fast lane. Decisions become easier to make in the context of purpose. Discipline and focus are easier to achieve. There is no greater travesty than a man who makes it into his coffin never haven lived in his purpose. A man or woman outside purpose is the stuff horror movies are made of; a walking, talking corpse.

Your very make-up; the biological, physiological, psychological, emotional and genetic structure that makes you up is a dead giveaway as to what your purpose is. Just like a car was built to be driven, you were built to do something. And the first step to discovering and fulfilling purpose is to discover identity. By identity, I don’t mean what you want people to think about you or who you would like to be. I mean who it is that you are.

A note of caution here. I don’t mean that you nitpick every single thing wrong with you and then conclude that you’re a nutcase! I mean a good look into who it is that you are and what makes you up. What are the deepest longings of your soul, what makes you cry, whose enemies are you willing to confront, what problems of humanity tear at your heart more than others, what messes can you not bear not to clean up. All these tell a story about your true identity.

Your identity is critical because your purpose will be a direct consequence of your identity. The purpose of providing shelter is a direct procession from the identity of a house. Building a correct image of your identity requires a great deal of self-awareness and is not something that can be done overnight. I like to say that the discovery of purpose is a journey not an event.

Everyone of us will have numerous identities e.g. father, husband, colleague, boss, subordinate, traffic offender, vegetarian etc. As you can see the identity automatically dictates the purpose in each of the above examples. There is however one umbrella and ultimate identity for every human being. For instance as a Christian, I believe my ultimate identity is to be an expression of the image (character, wisdom, power and wealth) of God. Most Christians (including myself) do a very bad job of this but it is something I strive to everyday.

As a result of my understanding of that identity, certain decisions automatically make themselves for me; e.g. don’t kill, don’t curse at people, be forgiving, help others, don’t engage in illegal activities, love people, don’t engage in drunken excesses, etc. My purpose in that area of my life has been set on auto-pilot as a result of my understanding of my identity.

I challenge you today, spend the next few days actively thinking about the question of your identity. Ask yourself, who really am I? What makes me tick? What are my driving forces? What paradigm do I see life through? Whose pain do I feel most? Whose troubles keep me up at night? What would I die for? These questions will unlock the keys to discovering your purpose and like I said, there is nothing that can compete with a person walking in the correct pursuit of their purpose.

When you find what you would die for, then you have found what you should live for. Enjoy this journey of discovery and see you next time as we explore purpose in more detail.