7 Questions To Help You Find Your Life Purpose

Most of the time, we don’t know what we want to do with our lives. Even when we are done with school. Even after we get a job. Even when we have money. Most likely, you don’t know what you want to do. Almost every adult has trouble with this. “What do I want my life to be about?” “What am I really interested in?” “What don’t I stink at?” I hear from many 40- and 50-year-olds who still don’t know what they want to do with their lives.

The idea of a “life purpose” itself is part of the problem. The idea is that each of us was born for a higher reason and that our cosmic mission is now to find out what that purpose is. This is the same kind of reasoning that people use to explain things like spirit rocks or the idea that your lucky number is 34 (but only on Mondays or during full moons).

Here’s what’s real. We live on this planet for an unknown amount of time. We do things during that time. Some of these things matter. Some of them don’t matter. And these important things give our lives meaning and happiness. The ones that aren’t important mostly just waste time.

So when people ask, “What should I do with my life?” or “What is the point of my life?” what they really want to know is: what matters to me? This is by far the best question you could ask. It’s much easier to deal with and doesn’t come with all the silly baggage that the “life purpose” question does. You have no reason to sit on your couch all day and eat crisps while thinking about your life’s meaning in the big picture. Instead, you should get off your behind and figure out what matters to you.

I’ve come up with a list of questions that will help you figure out for yourself what is important to you and what can give your life more meaning. These questions are by no means all there are or the only ones that matter. In fact, they’re just a little bit silly. But I made them that way because I think it should be fun and interesting to figure out what our lives are all about, not a job.

1. What kind of shit sandwich do you want? Because, in the end, we all get one.

Ah, yes. The all-important question. Because here’s the sticky little truth about life that they don’t teach you in school: some of the time, everything stinks.

Now, you might think that sounds very negative. But this is a freeing thought. Everything costs something. Everything has a price. Nothing is always fun or makes you feel good. So, the question is: what kind of trouble or loss are you willing to put up with? Ultimately, whether or not we stick with something we care about depends on how well we can handle the bad times and keep going through them.

If you want to be a great tech entrepreneur but can’t deal with loss, you won’t get very far. If you want to be a professional writer but aren’t ready to have your work rejected hundreds or thousands of times, you’re done before you even start. If you want to be a famous barrister but can’t handle working 80-hour weeks, I have bad news for you.

You have to eat a few shit sandwiches to find your life’s meaning. What bad things have you been able to handle? Can you stay up all night writing code? Are you willing to keep getting laughed off the stage until you get it right?

And the best thing you have going for you is your favourite shit sandwich. By definition, anything you’re willing to do that most people aren’t willing to do but that you enjoy doing gives you a huge advantage.

So, find your best shit sandwich. You might as well choose one with an olive on it.

Ask yourself: How much trouble are you ready to put up with to get what you want? What are you probably better at than most people?

2. What youthful interest did you lose as an adult?

We all tend to forget what we liked when we were younger. Something about the social pressures of being a teenager and the work pressures of being a young adult makes us lose our passion. We learn that the only reason to do something is if we get something in return. And the fact that everything in the world is about making deals makes us feel stifled and lost or stuck.

Ask yourself: What’s a fun thing you could do again just for fun?

3. What keeps you up all night?

Look at the things that keep you up all night, but also at how your brain works when doing those things. Because they are easy to use in other places. We’ve all been so involved in something that minutes turn into hours and hours into “Holy crap, I forgot to eat dinner.”

It is said that when Isaac Newton was at the top of his game, his mother had to come in and tell him to eat because he would work so hard that he would forget to eat.

Maybe for you, it’s getting things in order, getting lost in a fantasy world, teaching someone something, or fixing technical problems. No matter what it is, don’t just look at the things that keep you up all night; look at how your brain works when you do those things.

Ask yourself: What do you really like to do? What are some other things to try that you might also like?

4. What scares the crap out of you — and why?

Embrace embarrassment. Feeling stupid is a part of the process of doing something important and worthwhile. The more a big life choice scares you, the more likely it is that you should be making it.

You have to be bad at something and have no idea what you’re doing before you can get good at it and do something important. And to be bad at something, you have to make a fool of yourself in some way, often more than once. Most people try not to embarrass themselves because, well, it’s bad.

So, because awesomeness moves from one thing to another, if you avoid anything that could make you feel bad, you will never do something that feels important.

Right now, there is something you want to do, think about doing, and dream about doing, but you don’t do it. You definitely have your reasons. But why? If your reasons are something like, “I can’t start a business because spending time with my kids is more important to me,” then that’s fine. But if your reasons are “My parents would hate it,” “My friends would make fun of me,” or “If I failed, I’d look like an idiot,” you’re probably avoiding something you really care about, because caring about that thing is what scares you, not what mother thinks or what Jimmy next door says.

Great things are always one-of-a-kind and don’t follow the rules. So, to get there, we have to go against what most people do. And it’s scary to do that.

Ask yourself: What should you stop making bad excuses about and do instead?

5. What big problem do you care about that has nothing to do with you?

You can’t solve all the problems in the world by yourself. But you can help and make a difference by what you do. And that feeling of making a difference is eventually the most important thing for your own happiness and sense of fulfilment.

I’ve said this before, and research backs it up: to live a happy and healthy life, we need to hold on to values that are more important than our own happiness or satisfaction.

So, choose a problem and start fixing it. There are a lot of options. Our bad school systems, poor economy, domestic violence, poor mental health care. Start by fixing a problem you care about. That feeling of making a difference is eventually the most important thing for your own happiness and sense of fulfilment. And importance equals meaning.

Ask yourself: How can you change things?

6. What would you do if you had to be out of the house all day, every day?

Finding out what you’re excited about and what’s important to you in life is like a full-contact sport. We can’t really know how we feel about something until we actually do it. Many of us see our enemy as just plain old laziness. We fall into our habits. We distract ourselves. The couch is nice to sit on. No new things happen.

This is not good. Most people don’t realise that action causes emotion, not the other way around.

So, ask yourself what you would do if you had to leave your house every day except to sleep. And no, you can’t just go to a coffee shop and look at your social media accounts. Take yourself back to the 1990s, when social media didn’t exist. What would you do and where would you go?

Sign up for a class in dancing? Join a reading group? Go get another degree? Make a new kind of watering system that can save lives? Find out how to hang glide?

If it sounds interesting, write down a few solutions and then, you know, go do them. Bonus points if you have to make a fool of yourself.

Ask yourself: What were you always excited about? What should you do with your time?

7. What will your obituary say?

In the end, death is the only thing that shows us how important our lives are. Because you can only figure out what’s most important about your life by thinking that you won’t exist.

Most people don’t like to think about their own deaths. We’re scared by it. But surprisingly, there are a lot of good reasons to think about our own deaths. One of these benefits is that it makes us focus on what’s important in our lives and what’s just a waste of time.

What are you going to leave behind? What stories will people tell about you after you’re gone? What will your obituary say? Does anyone have anything to say? What would you like it to say if it doesn’t? How can you get started on that today?

Again, you’re failing if you imagine that your biography will say a bunch of things that will impress a bunch of random people. When people feel like they have no direction or purpose in life, it’s because they don’t know what’s important to them or what their values are.

And if you don’t know what your ideals are, you end up living other people’s priorities instead of your own. This is a sure-fire way to get into bad relationships and end up unhappy.

Finding your “purpose” in life comes down to finding one or two things that are bigger than you and bigger than the people around you. These values will help you set your goals and decide what to do. It’s not about doing something great; it’s just about making the most of the time you have. And to do that, you have to get off the couch and do something. You also have to take the time to think outside of yourself, to think bigger than yourself, and, oddly enough, to imagine a world without yourself.

Ask yourself: What matters most to you? What should your decisions be based on?

If you liked this and are ready to get your act together, dig deep to find out what really drives you. Then you’ll come up with a step-by-step plan to get off your behind and start going after what you want in life. I’m glad to help.