Having a purpose in life can benefit you in more ways than you can imagine. The benefits can be as simple as a new hobby or as extreme as a life-changing transformation.

 

The former changes the contents of your life (the day to day details), but when an inner transformation happens, the entire context of your life changes permanently.

 

This means that it changes:

• How you see yourself
• How you see the world
• What you want for your life at the deepest level
• And how you interact with the world around you. 

 

Your purpose and your “why”

Your purpose comes from your “why”. And your “why” is the starting point of everything else. It’s the foundation. In other words, your “why” is what your life gets built around.

 

A strong “why” answers internal questions like:

• What do you want your life to be about?
• Why are you doing what you’re doing?
• Why are you becoming who you’re becoming? 
• Why do you have to do this?
• What’s at stake if you don’t?
• Who will benefit the most if you do?

 

Life goals and personal growth journeys need a strong enough “why”. Not just to get started, but to stay on track, stay focused, and to keep going when obstacles pop up.

 

Life-changing transformations will help you figure out your “why”. I talk more about it in this self-awareness post.

 

 

Why is it important to have a purpose in life?

 

Have you ever wondered whether having a purpose would positively change all areas of your life?

 

No? Yes?

 

Or how about this one…

 

If it does improve your life in all areas, wouldn’t that make finding your purpose worthy of your time and energy? 

 

Of course it would, right?

 

Well you’re in luck then because having a purpose in life and following it can benefit every area of your life.

 

Having a purpose in life and following it can benefit every area of your life. Click To Tweet

 

Since you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already read a few articles on this subject. And if you have, some of the benefits you’ve learned about so far are:

• Improves your health
• Relationships deepen
• You become happier 
• Increased productivity 
• You’re more motivated
• Less chance of cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s in old age
• Life becomes more meaningful
• A career change that’s more aligned with your passion
• Better decision making skills
• Purpose helps you define your values

 

I could go on and on with this list. And they are all important areas of life. But apart from the typical, generic life changes you’ve already heard about, you could experience benefits that are life-changing and transformational at a soul level.

 

In other words, benefits that are much more intimate to you.

 

Did that get your attention?

 

Good. We’ll get to those benefits in a moment. But first we need to talk about….

 

 

What happens if you don’t know your purpose in life?

 

If you don’t find a sense of purpose in life, nothing will change. At least not for the better. Most likely, your life will stay the same and you’ll continue to feel the same way about your life as you do today. 

 

I’m talking about the same problems and same struggles. The same wishing for solutions to ‘magically’ show up.

 

Most likely you’ll continue to hope for a better future while lacking any kind of plan on how to make that happen. 

 

Not fun is it?

 

When you don’t have a purpose in life you might start to feel empty inside, incomplete, or disappointed in yourself. Some people grow angrier and angrier with the world, projecting their inner problems outside, taking them out on their families, jobs, and communities. 

 

When you don't have a purpose in life you might start to feel empty inside, incomplete, or disappointed in yourself. Click To Tweet

 

Do you know anyone like that? Has it already happened to you?

 

Personally, I’ve been through every one of those scenarios. And most of the time, I was stuck in an overlap of a few of them!

 

The good news is that I eventually had enough … and since you’re reading this and researching self-improvement topics, I’m guessing you’ve had enough as well.

 

So if you’re tired of:

• living the same way you’ve always lived
• feeling like your life will either never change or get even worse
• feeling like life is meaningless and hopeless
• feeling incomplete and purposeless
• not having big goals you feel passionate about
• feeling like you need to do SOMETHING to make yourself happy, but not knowing what it is
• not believing that the world will let you change
• not believing that you can change your life for the better even if you do try

 

 …but the generic benefits of finding your purpose just don’t motivate you enough…

 

Consider these 4 life-changing benefits.

 

 

4 Life-Changing Benefits of Having a Purpose in Life

 

1) Having a purpose gives your life back to you

Before finding a purpose in life I went years at a time where outside situations made my inner world a living hell. The main period happening during my college years. During that time I got to the point where I hated myself, didn’t have hope for the future, or even want to be alive. 

 

Went dark fast, I know! It goes to show how painful living without a sense of purpose can be. But I’m sure that more people can relate than usually feel comfortable admitting it.

 

During that time, all I could envision was more pain and suffering ahead. In other words, that my life wouldn’t change.

 

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

–Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

I was embarrassed by my failures and who I was as a person. I felt like I had let my family and friends down, over and over again … to the point that I rarely answered phone calls and avoided most social gatherings.

 

Sometimes I would make commitments on  better days, but would make an excuse and stay home if I was having an emotionally low day when the event came around. That behavior destroyed long-time friendships and pushed family away … as you can imagine.

 

And I felt it happening but couldn’t stop. It was like I was sitting outside of my body watching it all play out. I didn’t feel like my life was my own any more.

 

Have you been there before? Why do we let our lives continue to fall apart even when we know it’s happening? 

 

Purpose through self-awareness

I just couldn’t deal with people or questions about my life because of my feelings and beliefs about myself.

 

That’s what it ultimately came down to. My beliefs. Beliefs about who I was, who I was supposed to be, what my life was about, and my relationship to the rest of the world.

 

Beliefs that I needed to break away from.

 

But in order to break free, I had to realize that there was a bigger picture to life. And to understand my part in it. In other words, to find myself, my connection to the universe, and find my purpose in life.

 

Once I found myself and my purpose (which wasn’t easy), I was able to move from passively reacting to the world around me to actively creating my own future.

 

Actively create your future by finding your purpose in life. Click To Tweet

 

A future that didn’t look anything like the one sold to me while growing up. The future that I envisioned was a result of a life-changing transformation.

 

 

2) Having a purpose gives you hope for a better future

 

Despite how my past had gone, once I discovered a sense of purpose and an inner power inside myself, I became hopeful for the first time since early childhood. In fact, I became at peace with my past and even grateful for it.

 

Grateful because I realized that the pain and suffering that we overcome can put us into a unique position to help others with similar problems.

 

The suffering we overcome can put us into a unique position to help others with similar problems. Click To Tweet

 

It was all worth it if I could give them hope and help them do better than I had done.

 

And it was that newfound hope that inspired me to help people transform their lives the way I had …. but reach them before they had to suffer for as many years as I had.

 

And hopefully before they’d made as many mistakes.

 

To sum it up, feeling hopeful:

• Can give your life meaning
• Can lead you to a mission to focus your life around
• Can boost your self-esteem and self-respect
• Can make you feel like you fit into this world again. You might find your place and your people

 

New passions, hobbies, and interests

In the process of pursuing your purpose, you’ll find new passions, interests, and hobbies that you would’ve never thought to research, experiment with, or explore before.

 

You might even try some things that you had zero interest in before. For me it was spirituality, psychology, creative writing, and eventually photography.

 

 

And touching back on finding your place and your people, chances are you’ll meet new people who share your new interests and passions. It’ll be more likely to happen if you find groups on social media, forums, or meetup groups. 

 

Taking classes, courses, going to seminars, or joining a nonprofit organization (for causes you believe in) would be some other ways to meet like minded people. Meaning they’ll be people who are more likely to be aligned with your purpose or new passions. 

 

 

And if you were temporarily closed off to people like I was, don’t worry about not having anything to say. Because once you start developing new hobbies and passions, you’ll have plenty of new ideas to talk about and interesting topics to bond over with your new friends.

 

 

3) Having a purpose gives your life a positive direction to go in

Once I felt a sense of purpose in my life, I stopped seeing life as completely “random”.  For me, this meant I didn’t feel like I had to keep on drifting aimlessly from one job to another, one school to another, or from one pleasure to another. Life became more than that to me. It took on a new direction. And it was a direction that I chose for myself.

 

You can choose what life means to you and what you want to focus on. Your life doesn’t have to be about the stereotypical life path that you’ve chained yourself into or about what the people around you see as ‘normal’. 

 

You don’t have to do ‘what you’re supposed to do’. 

 

 

In my situation, societal norms and social conventions went out the door for awhile. For example celebrating holidays and traditions that were based on lies. I even stopped saying “bless you” every time someone sneezed once I found out that it originated as a superstition. 

 

People believed that the soul left the body when someone sneezed and they were at risk of being possessed. So they needed to be blessed immediately. 

 

Now if I choose to say it, I just say it to make the person feel better. The same goes with other social norms and celebrating whatever I want to. It always comes down to choice and not obligation or tradition.

 

This was also when I started researching financial literacy and began to look at money (and what I had been taught to believe my entire life) in a different way. I officially made my decision to become an entrepreneur and an investor.

 

Since I had already experienced the “rat race” (working for someone else) before and during college, I didn’t want to go back to it except to learn new skills or save money to put into my future business.

 

Choosing your own path

With purpose comes new interests and new subjects to research. This will help you find new ideas, values, and goals for your life. Not just for the direction that you want to go in but goals for who you want to become. 

 

With purpose comes new interests and new subjects to research. This will help you find new ideas, values, and goals for your life. Click To Tweet

 

My new path introduced me to subjects like:

• Mindset and how it affects our lives
• Limiting belief systems and how to change them
• You become what you think about most
• Changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts 
• Meditation and objectively watching my thoughts
• Relaxation techniques
• Speedreading and photoreading
• Energy healing techniques
• Metaphysics and philosophy 
• Quantum physics and how all of the universe is energy and interconnected
• That no one is an island and everything affects everything else
• The aura, chakras, energy bodies, and all other layers of our spiritual energy systems and how they work
• Entrepreneurial philosophies and Rich Dad Poor Dad financial literacy concepts

 

What new subjects, passions, and areas of interest will your new path introduce you to?

 

 

4) Having a purpose motivates you to become your best self

It might sound redundant but you won’t be able to fulfill your purpose without becoming the version of yourself who is capable of fulfilling that purpose. In other words, your mindset and skill sets have to be aligned with it. 

 

You won't be able to fulfill your purpose without becoming the version of yourself who is capable of fulfilling that purpose. Click To Tweet

 

Pursuing purpose takes courage because it requires you to confront your weaknesses. You have to develop the self-awareness to look at yourself honestly to determine what you’ll need to improve on and in what areas you’ll need to grow. 

 

Change isn’t easy. 

Mindset was (and still is) a big hurdle for me. Once I started to make changes, I was confronted with thoughts of not being good enough to make the changes I wanted. Not only that, I didn’t see myself as good enough to accomplish new goals or become my ideal version of myself.

 

I found out that the old me couldn’t see himself as capable of any of that. Not after so much stagnation and so many “failures”.

 

Self-efficacy and self-confidence have to develop first. But it takes courage to start. So you need a strong purpose. And a strong reason “why” you are willing to take the risks and make the sacrifices. That kind of commitment is neccessary if you want to change your life and make your dreams come true.

 

According to Success.com:

“Having a purpose makes it impossible to merely exist. When you have a definite reason for living, a “why” behind every action, your passions and talents will drive you toward a happy, fulfilling destination.”

 

To be completely honest, I’m still afraid that my life won’t change for the better as much as I want it to. And it’s because of the mindset reasons.

 

What I’m saying is that even after everything I’ve learned. I know that I’m the one holding myself back.

 

I know it’s not “just my luck” or the world sabotaging me … but I still have to stop myself from blaming:

• other people
• my responsibilities
• the world
• situations outside of my control.

 

In reality, it’s my own habits and behaviors, my lack of self-discipline and other negative traits that slow me down. For example if my mood is low, I can always find an excuse or something I need to do “first” before I get to work on a blog post or some urgent housework.

 

Can you relate?

 

It just goes to show that change is an ongoing journey and there will always be obstacles to overcome along the way. The most important thing is just to keep going. 

 

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.”

—Alexander Graham Bell

 

The purpose of life is a life of purpose

 

In conclusion, some life changes are only situational. Meaning, they only change the contents of your life. This might mean a new job, a new relationship, a new hobby, or a move to a different city.

 

But when there is a complete context shift, or an inner transformation … there’s no going back to who you used to be.

 

Inner changes happen from the inside out. They colour how you experience and interact with everything else in your life.

 

When transformational changes happen to a beginner, you can expect:

• A sudden transformation from rock bottom to feeling like you’re on top of a mountain
• An inner shift from deep pain to a deep sense of purpose and hopefulness
• Both inner and outer life changes 
• A new view of yourself with new goals, values, and beliefs
• Or as an inner calling that urges you to go in a new direction in life and possibly take on a mission or solve a societal problem

 

My hope is that these are the types of transformations that you experience in your life. 

 

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