Just like your business, purpose is not actually meant for us. It’s meant for other people around us. The truth is, our purpose is meant to fuel the passion of other people who find what we do inspiring or worthwhile.

When you make the purpose of your life finding your purpose, you subject yourself to any prevailing wind that happens to be blowing, offering you a solution to your dilemma. It also ends in bitter frustration because even when you latch on to great purpose, its still fleeting. This leaves you in a state of constant pursuit. What happens when you achieve the end of that purpose? You’ll be just as lost as you were when you started.

The point is, as I mentioned in the previous post, purpose is subjective, meaning, it’s irrational.

The point of irrationality is that it’s emotional and deeply subconscious. When you make yourself open to being easily lead by your emotions, then you can easily be lead away from your identity.

The quest for purpose comes from our perceived need to pursue a sense of greater significance, of higher meaning, of something that feels uniquely profound.

This need stems from a variety of places, a desire to fit in, a sense of rejection, and need for approval.

What we fail to realize in this process is that by looking outside and to others for greater meaning – looking to other people to tell us who we are – what we are subconsciously agreeing to is that we are insignificant and we open ourselves up to the influence of others to reshape us into whatever their image for our life might be.

Searching for purpose affirms a subconscious, false belief, which is now firmly rooted in your psyche, a belief that tells you: You have no purpose.

You are effectively saying you are not good enough, and the subconscious will tend to override anything that happens in the conscious mind, in the moment that it occurs. That’s why people will cling to a false belief even though they know its false. Their subconscious overpowers their ability to accept a reality. They engage in a willing suspension of the truth.

That’s why purpose is so elusive in the moment you are looking for it, and your subconscious fear, that your life lacks meaning, will always override your sense of satisfaction with the work you do and the person that you are.

Until you cancel the belief that you are insignificant, nothing you do will ever feel fulfilling.

Isn’t fear of inadequacy a major dilemma many people struggle with? Is this not the cause? Is it not this misplaced idea that we must strive to achieve a sense of greater meaning or higher purpose outside the natural course our life was meant to take?

Higher purpose to whom? Better purpose to whom? Whose standard are you appealing to? These are questions you need to ask. Who told you that you were insignificant? The concept is truly foreign because it goes against one of our only natural instincts, which is self-preservation, because it is self-destructive.

The truth is, when it comes to purpose, there IS NO PURPOSE to purpose. This is because true purpose is never about you. Its about how others are impacted by the life you live.

A hammer was not created to pound nails for the hammer’s sake. It was created to fulfill a purpose for the sake of the carpenter, for the sake of the family living in the house the hammer and the carpenter worked to build.

The hammer just went about doing what it loved, so to speak, what came naturally to it. It would be unnatural for a hammer to paint china.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t engage in a continual process of self-improvement and growth, but there is a keen difference between the natural process of growth that occurs through the course of you living your life, and an artificial one motivated by a fear or a belief of inadequacy.

You are in charge of your ability. That’s why we have schools, training, knowledge, and philosophy. All these things come together in their time to form who you are at the end of your life.

But that’s a key. A person is really nothing…until they’re dead. Then its final. Then other people can look back on your life and see it for the sum of all its different pieces.

So the question is, why does all of this matter beyond just mere interesting information? It matters because the reason why many people go into business is to achieve a higher sense of purpose. Some people enter this phase naturally, others enter it attempting to force something to happen – they want to show people they are pursuing something greater.

Regardless of what prompted to you choose this path, it doesn’t really matter now. You’re here and you are in charge of where you go tomorrow. It’s my goal to make sure your head is screwed on strait, that you are in control of the drivers behind what you want, and you are in control of how you see yourself, beginning with subconscious self-perceptions.

Its essential to undergo a process of self-reflection and self-assessment to determine what you are doing, what you believe, and where those beliefs and decisions came from.

If you wanted to wipe the slate clean and do a hard reset, then consider this. If there is truly any purpose that could be passed on from me to you, that guided you without violating the core of your identity, and allowed you to live under freedom rather than control, it would be this:

The purpose of your life is…to live it.

When you are no longer in conflict over who you actually are vs. who you think you should be, the energy around you synergizes and enables you to reach and live in a higher plane.

That plane is passion.