In Part One of this article, we took a look at why finding your life purpose was so important.

Indeed, everyone who has ever accomplished anything great has done so as a result of a focused sense of purpose.  Today, let’s take a specific look at how to evaluate your strengths, talents and skills to get an idea of your life’s purpose.  We will then look at how to begin to craft a personal mission statement that accurately reflects your purpose in life.

Evaluate Your Strengths and Talents

Or better yet, ask a trusted friend to evaluate them for you.  While they are doing so, ask them to identify your greatest weaknesses as well.  This way, you have an additional way of identifying your strengths by contrasting them with your weaknesses.

So, go ahead and write down what it is that you really love to do.  What do you spend the bulk of your free time doing?  What are you good at?  What do others say you are good at?  What do others come to you to help them?

These are all indicators of your strengths, skills and talents.

Evaluate How Your Strengths and Talents Can Help Others

How can the strengths and talents that you identified above be used to help other people?  How are others affected (positively or negatively) by your actions?  If you can do something you really love and make the world a better place for others, you have moved significantly closer to finding your life purpose.

Reduce Your Results To A Mission Statement

Reduce your findings to a single mission statement.  Here is my personal mission statement

Need help drafting your own?  Try the following template as a starting point.  Once you have something on paper you can continue to revise it until you get that knot in your stomach.

My life purpose is to use my (strength talent) to help others by (product, service or benefit to others).

My life purpose is to use my financial talent to help others save and invest wisely for retirement.

Write this mission statement on an index card and place it where you can access it many times per day.  I like to use the perforated sheets used to make computer generated business cards.  Simply repeat the mission statement on the template and print out several cards bearing your mission statement.  Place one by your bed, one on your bathroom mirror, one on your steering wheel, and one at your workplace.

Read Your Mission Statements Repeatedly Throughout The Day

To be effective, you have to repeat and remind yourself of your life purpose (mission statement) many times throughout the day.

By all means make sure to review and contemplate your mission statement immediately upon waking up in the morning and before going to bed at night.  Each morning quietly review and contemplate what, if anything, you will do that day to fulfill your life purpose.  At night review the actions taken that day to live a purpose filled life.

From Mission to Vision

In order to build upon the preceding exercise, I want you to go further in contemplating your life purpose.

I want you to create a vision of the ideal life in full and exact detail.

• What will your house look like?
• What will it smell like?
• Can you hear the crackling of logs in the fireplace?
• Can you smell the fesh coffee brewing in your kitchen?
• What will your bank statement look like? (I mean literally – I have gone so far as to Photoshop a bank statement with the amount of money I desire to have).

Your vision must be clear and exact.

It must literally be a place that you can go, in your mind, each day.

Live there.  Spend time there.

Your life purpose represents your “big picture”.  But, it is the detail placed in your vision that fills the canvas with paint.

From Vision To Decision

You must decide to act to fulfill your life purpose.  The most gifted pianist cannot play the first note until he decides to take that first piano lesson.  The tallest building begins with the laying of a simple cornerstone.

What will you do each day to move yourself further upon your life path to fulfilling your own life purpose?

If you only do one positive thing each day to move toward that life purpose, you will have accomplished seven items the first week, thirty items the first month.  In a year, you will have taken 365 steps toward the purpose filled life that you always knew you wanted.  That is a prescription for how to find happiness.

So how about it?  What is it going to take to step out, in faith, and begin that journey toward fulfilling your life purpose?

Return To Finding Life’s Purpose: How To Know Your Life’s Purpose (Part One)

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Related posts:

1. Living Your Best Life: Tips For Finding Your Life Purpose
2. Finding Life’s Purpose: How To Know Your Life’s Purpose (Part One)
3. Discover Your Life Purpose: Let’s Play 20 Questions

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