"Why Knowing Your Purpose of Life is So Important to Well Being"

There is a general purpose of life that you, along with every other person on Earth, has. And that is to create the life that you want. Most often it is defined as your reason for existing or for being. Many people think of it as a great mission. Take my short little test below. Then I'll talk about what it really all means and how it affects your stress levels and therefore your health when you are living or not living your purpose of life.

All too often, people are walking around without a purpose of life. They're not doing what they want. It's really quite sad. Here's a typical scenario of how many people live their lives:

They're born.
They go to school.
They grow up.
They get a job.
They get married.
They have kids.
They grow old.
They die.

Know anyone with a life like this? Is your life like this? Are you ecstatic about it? Or resigned? Answer the following questions by using a rating scale between 1 and 10.

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I'm not sleeping!" to 10 being "I sleep through the night", how great is your sleep every night? Ideal is a 10. Write down your number.

Not sleeping 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Sleep through night
(A 6 would mean I might have trouble sleeping 2 nights a week)

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I'm almost always calm" to 10 being "I want to jump off a cliff", how stressed out are you with your life? Ideal is a 1. Write down your number.

Usually Calm 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I want to jump!
(A 5 might mean I get upset once a day over something during a week.)

3. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I'm almost never in pain" to 10 being "I want to jump off a cliff", how much pain are you in? This includes headaches, pain in the body for any reason, chronic or acute. I'm asking about the degree of pain. Ideal is a 1. Write down your number.

Almost no pain 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I want to jump!

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I'm obese" to 10 being "I look great!", how much pain are you in? Ideal is a 10. Write down your number.

I'm obese 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I look great!

5. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I'd do my job for nothing" to 10 being "I absolutely want to quit!", how much do you love the paid work you do? Ideal is a 1. Write down your number.

Do it for nothing! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I absolutely want to quit!

That's all you need. Just answer these 5 simple questions and the answers will tell you where you are as far as your stress levels are concerned. They also tell you how happy you are with your life.

When you're happy, EVERYTHING has that flavor of happiness. When it comes to the purpose of life, if question #5 had an answer in the low numbers, between 1 and 3, then you love it so much that you'd do it for nothing, because you're NOT doing it for the money, although the money is great. No, you love it so much because you have a PASSION for it. The money comes any way!

When you love something so much you know why you're doing it. You're doing it for a purpose and on purpose. Even when things aren't working 100% fantastic, you still look forward to getting up in the morning and doing it. You know what you're doing and you know why you're doing it. You created your life and this is your purpose of life. No one told you to do it, unless that person knows you extremely well and wants the very best OUT of you. That's not the same as knowing what's best FOR you.

There's a difference. And the difference is, in order to find out what's your purpose of life, you have to be free to discover that for yourself. Honestly, you're the only one who knows that!

When you hate or highly dislike what's going on in your life you're affected. If you're depressed, you really do hate your life. But you can't admit it, so you drive it deep inside. But buried or not, your unhappiness affects you enormously. When you hate your life, you become sick. You may gain or lose weight rapidly even when you haven't changed your diet. You have pain in your body. You don't sleep well. You're easily upset and get very stressed. You're very unhappy and dissatisfied.

Going back to that typical scenario of life I gave you at the beginning of this article... This is the way a lot of people are EXPECTED to live their lives. Their parents did it and so did their grandparents. But they're not living their lives. They're living someone else's lives. Do you see what I mean? What about you?

To live your purpose of life is to live your life, your way. The way you want to live it. Just like the song says (Frank Sinatra). Not copy someone else's and yet that's exactly how so many people do it. My short little exercise will tell you if you're living your purpose or someone else's dream.

But it takes guts. Because there'll be opposition. And it may be strong. It can be inner or outer opposition or both. The inner comes from loud chatter WITHIN that says things like,"That's irresponsible! You can't do that! What were you thinking? You're not smart enough! You're not good-looking enough! You're not…" and so on and so forth. That's your old mindset talking to you.

The outer opposition comes from well meaning and not so well meaning friends, family, or colleagues. They act like that because of their OWN fears. It really has nothing to do with you. They can't face their own devils so they want to keep you small because they feel small.

So again, your purpose of life is based on WHAT you want to with YOUR life and WHY you want to do it. When you are clear on these two things, then you've set yourself on the path to your purpose. Then, as long as you can hold on to that vision, because that's what it is, you attract all kinds of the right circumstances, people, and help your way.

But you've got to be very strong to stand up to your old self and you could just decide to ignore other people. And you can't wait for someone else's approval. They'll never give it to you if the change threatens them and you have no idea what will frighten them! Just give yourself permission to follow your purpose of life. That's all you ever need to lead the exact type of life you always wanted.

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