5 Steps to Figure Out What to DO with Your Life — Remember and Plan our Purpose (steps 4&5 /5)

Like we do with most of the things in life, most of us want to see results quickly.

We want to lose weight without exercising, we want to become successful without putting in the work, we want to have everything without doing … anything.

In our case, most of the people want to snap their fingers and like magic to have a fool-proof and detailed plan of what they need to do become fulfilled, happy and possible well off.

But 30 years of career coaching taught us one thing: we cannot just “figure out” without knowing who we are and without knowing what keeps us stuck.

In other words, we need to be thorough and complete Steps 1& 2 and Step 3 of this series of articles.

If you haven’t completed those exercise I advise you to do so. Otherwise, putting everything you have in this exercise might not be enough.

Why so few people find their purpose?

The #1 reason why people find it so hard to figure out what to do with their lives is that during their lifetime they accumulated insecurities and artificial personal beliefs (“social mud”) that blinds them from seeing what they are meant to be doing.

Actually, I’ll just let you watch the following clip so you can understand this better

Step 4 — Remember Your Purpose

Awareness exercise

In order to get you starting and increase your awareness, first examine, your parents’ relationship with work.

How did they talk about their jobs?

a) Work as fun?

b) A necessary evil?

c) An important contribution?

d) Or something to bring money in or fill up their time?

As a child what was discouraged by your parents?

As children, we tend to absorb the vocabulary and behaviours of others. And most of the people who are constantly around us — our parents!

For instance, my parents told me that you should never work yourself too hard and that having just an easy life was OK and without luck, you cannot do anything. So for a while, I thought I should be lucky to find my purpose and if I wasn’t lucky, I would simply not find it. (I can confirm — I have found it but I’m still not lucky)

Now let’s continue with the next questions.

In the bus, train, while walking to your job, in a coffee shop or in your home — regardless of where you are right now, pause for a second.

And really put some time in examining how your parents relate to work and whether or not you model or rebel against their views.

AT THIS POINT YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS:

1. You will just read through the following questions and finish the article thinking you might take the time later in your day to answer these questions or even forget about this article as soon as you finish it

or

2. You decide to invest a couple of minutes to read the Steps 1, 2 and Step 3 if you haven’t done that already and then really meditate on and try to answer the questions below — I promise you will thank yourself later.

Awareness Exercise (.5 min)

Think about a time when you were doing the right thing, an activity that you did that made you feel good, significant, likeable, alive, competent?

Awareness Exercise (.5 min)

What would you like to know about, understand or be able to explain to others?

Awareness Exercise (.5 min)

What is it about this world that does not make sense to you?

Awareness Exercise (.5 min)

How can you change that?

Awareness Exercise (.5 min)

Are you going to change it? Why or why not? (here you can see fears coming back to the surface — pay attention to them)

If you don’t have immediate answers for this, just take today to think about them and write down everything that comes into your mind. The best tool that I normally use is:

The end goal is to get to a simple statement about the difference you want to make to this world. Once you have that simple statement you can develop it and enrich it.

If you don’t have clarity right now about the direction where you want to go, you can use the mission statement template that I’ve created:

My purpose is to

1. serve others in a meaningful and impact way by

______________________(fill in the blank on how you want to serve, give, inspire others)

2. learn in order to be able to become an expert and provide more value and have a greater impact

3. and have looooads of fun while doing!

My own example:

The statement I had when I started chasing my purpose was very simple and at that time I didn’t really know how I’m going to do it or if I was able to do it: Love God and those around me, work hard until I find my talents and then help others find their talents.

3 years ago when I wrote mine I didn’t know how I’m gonna do this or whether I was capable of doing this? But the answers will show up? Will people get into your life to help you at every step of the way?

I realised I wanted to become a career coach but I didn’t have the experience or credibility but then I found Steve, my co-founder and his programme.

So this is the “don’t-worry stage. Everything will become clearer and more feasible. All it matters is to start somewhere, have a draft and keep it into your mind.

Step 5 — Refine and Plan

Congrats! You have created your first mission statement.

You have a draft that you can work with. Now, if you were a diligent millennial (which I have no doubts you are!) you have kept notes which will be very useful at this stage.

The most important thing about planning is that it will change. Regardless of how careful you will be with planning it will CHANGE. Therefore, the most efficient way that we found is the following:

1. Plan in 3 stages: high level (vision), medium level (stages), low level (the details)
2. For each level have a plan B, C (or as many as you feel you need) — the rule of thumb is to have more options if in the past it was hard to stick to a single version of the plan.
3. Review your plan with someone who can hold you accountable, so that in case everything f**** up, you have someone to fall back to and can motivate, inspire and keep you on your toes if you take the foot off your gas.

We’ve put a couple of tools that can help you with ALL three points along with 50 additional questions to help you clarify your purpose. You will have the chance to download it at the end of the article.

I hope this will help you create more clarity on what you want to spend the rest of your life doing. This is just a push to get you started thinking about one of the most important questions in your life.

Whether you found the answer already or you have only started to formulate it you will love the goodies pack we’ve prepared you to download and use instantly.

What’s next?

1. CLICK HERE to download the goodies pack that contains:

• 50 Self-Coaching questions to help you figure out and clarify what to do with your life
• A breakdown of the full Career Planning Strategy (see Step 5)
• E-book with checklists for EVERYTHING in this programme: Step 1 to 5
• The list of decision and payoffs that most people use to unconsciously get stuck
• Advice from fulfilled (and successful) people about building a meaningful career
• FREE 5 minute per day course to help you figure out what to do with your life jam-packed with strategies and exercises to discover, design and achieve your career goals (to be released in less than a month)
• Other secret goodies that we’ve gathered for our readers

But please don’t share it with others as this is just for our close readers.

2. Join our closed community on Facebook

This is a community of young people where you can inspire others, get advice about what’s going on around you and simply lift each other up so we can grow collectively in your lives, business and careers 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♀️ You will also get involved in the creation of the Millennial Hero programme.

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