If you are like most people I meet, you most likely yearn to know your purpose in life. “How can I find my purpose?” is the question that I am asked most often. The questioner often elaborates on his or her dilemma by saying, “I would be happier if I could be living out my purpose, but I just don’t know what my purpose in life is.” My response is that you come into this world with absolutely nothing. You will leave this physical world with exactly the same. All of your acquisitions and achievements can’t go with you. Therefore, the only thing you can do with your life is give it away. Today, we’re going to discuss how you’ll come to feel purposeful by discovering a way to always be in the service of others.
Purpose is about serving. It’s about taking the focus off you and your self-interest, and serving others in some way. You build because you love to build. But you build to make others happy. You design because your heart directs you to. But those designs are in the service of others. You write because you love to express yourself in words. But those words will help and inspire readers. If you don’t yet know your purpose, you’ll continue to seek it throughout the various stages of your life.
There are many different models that describe the stages of life. Here, I’m using the four archetypal stages of athlete, warrior, statesman, and spirit to briefly show what your purpose is in each stage.
In the athlete archetype, the focus is exclusively on the physical body and how it looks and performs. The warrior archetype wants to compete, defeat, and collect the rewards. The statesman archetype emphasizes fulfilling the desires of others by asking, “How may I serve?” At the final stage (and the highest that we know) is the archetype of spirit. At this stage, you realize what is meant by being in this world, but not of this world. The spirit part of you knows that neither the body nor this world is its exclusive domicile. This spirit archetype invites you to minimize your material-world concerns and to put more of your energy into the essence of life, which is love and service.
As you progress through these four archetypes, you’ll find yourself thinking less and less of your own self-interest and more and more about how you can make the world a better place for all. In this way, you discover a great truth. The more you chase after your own goals and pursue your self-interest, the more these aims will elude you. But when you turn your thoughts and then your activities, regardless of what they are, to serving others, those things that you used to chase after will follow you wherever you go. When you get yourself out of the picture completely, the forces of the universe will seem to conspire to provide all that you previously sought for yourself. And then, because you’re not attached to them any longer, they’ll flow in and out of your life freely.
In essence, I’m urging you to stop taking your life so personally. You can end any and all suffering by reminding yourself that nothing in the universe is personal. Of course you’ve been taught to take life very personally, but this is an illusion. Tame your ego, and absolutely free yourself from ever taking anything personally.
One good way to serve is to practice being generous as often as you can. Promise yourself to extend some kind of unexpected generosity to someone, preferably a stranger, every single day for two weeks. This will not only help you develop a habit of giving, but you’ll also discover how wonderfully inspiring your generous nature feels. The more you practice being charitable, the more you’ll impact others and encourage them to help and serve others, too. By letting others know that you’re willing to give of your time as well as your possessions, you’ll serve as a great role model. Who isn’t inspired by those who’re willing to share their time, money, and possessions? We name cities (San Francisco) for such people and we nominate them (Mother Teresa) for sainthood . . . you, too, can make a difference by being a benevolent soul.
You can also practice tithing (giving 10 percent of what you earn in a given period to support teaching that provides you with spiritual uplift) and see if it doesn’t return to you tenfold. This has worked for me my entire life, and continues as I practice my natural instinct to be generous.
In an exceptional book titled Season of Life, Jeffrey Marx, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, chronicles a high school football team in which a former player with the Baltimore Colts named Joe Ehrmann is on the coaching staff. His coaching philosophy is to “help boys become men within the context of sports”—that is, without threats, screaming, or violence.
“I expect greatness out of you,” the team’s head coach tells his players, “and the way we measure greatness is the impact you make on other people’s lives.” As the ten coaches and assistant coaches huddle with the team on game day, one of them asks, “What is our job?” “To love us!” the team yells back in unison. “And what is your job?” the coach asks. “To love each other,” the team responds. This is the philosophy that these boys were exposed to every day—at practice, on the field, and during and after the games—and so it goes for all of us who wish to serve others. We must love all others and teach them to love each other.
Keep these thoughts in mind, particularly when you feel lost or are unsure of your purpose: “My purpose is about giving. I’ll direct my thoughts off me, and spend the next few hours looking for a way to be of service to anyone or any creature on our endangered planet.” This will bring you back to a realization that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re able to give. In order to fully give and be of service and ultimately feel purposeful, you must be able to say, “Yes,” when you ask yourself, “Do I really possess what it is that I wish to give away?”