Your Purpose: Finding, Defining & Changing – Tina B's World
post title image 10.28.21

Your Purpose: Finding, Defining & Changing

Leave a Comment / Business, Entrepreneur Tips, For Bloggers, For Small Business, Work From Home Tips / By

Let’s talk about purpose.

  • How do you find it?
  • How do you define it?
  • What happens if you have difficulty accepting the change that comes with it?

Let’s discuss.

confident and beautiful woman walking down a sidewalk

Do you know how to find your purpose? The majority of people would likely say no.

Why? Because there’s a world of possibilities, but people suffer from fear of the unknown. That makes it difficult to go about looking for what you should be doing.

Finding

Ignore the Money

Put aside your paycheck and bills for a moment.

  • Think about what you’re doing?
  • Are you satisfied with it all?
  • Do you enjoy getting up and going to work?
  • How do you feel on Sundays, knowing your work week starts tomorrow?
  • Do you suffer from a “Case of the Mondays”? 
  • Do Mondays excite you?

you might feel stuck

It’s a problem if you feel stuck attached to a job in which you don’t believe in what you’re doing. 

Say you work for a company who does work in their community, but ignores employees that are being sexually harassed. You stick it out because it pays well and what they’re doing may be legal, but it just feels unethical or wrong. 

You might like your coworkers, but what if she company sells something that makes your stomach turn, like chewing tobacco or cigarettes? 

Can you continue working in an environment that doesn’t fit your ethics or just doesn’t sit well with you? 

what's it gonna take?

What will it take to make changes to get out of your current situation and into an environment that you will enjoy being in?

  • Do you need to go back to school?
  • Is there any training available online? 

Luckily, there are several online options available, and many of them are cheap or free. 

You can do a simple search for the specific skill you’re looking to obtain. 

So the path isn't easy

You find the path is well laid out. 

Ask yourself: are you willing to put in the time and effort?

If not, you probably haven’t found your purpose. 

At this juncture, you have two choices:

  • keep doing what you’re doing until you find something worth the effort
  • find another path with your true calling 

make a decision

It’s time to evaluate your current situation and decide if you need changes or not. 

If you’re with a company, see if there are other positions open in different departments that you can explore or apply to. If there are, offer to help your old department while they find your replacement. Yes, this might require some overtime, but don’t let them take advantage of you and keep you working both positions because they are too lazy to hire someone new. 

Yes, this will require extra work, but at least it gives you options while you’re figuring out your purpose. 

Defining

your obstacles -> Your Purpose

If you don’t know your purpose in life, look back on the obstacles you faced.

Some gave you have no choice but to work through. For instance: if you don’t pay your taxes, the tax man will eventually find you. It’s rare that people get away with this. These are not the obstacles that define you. They are just annoyances that you must sort out.

You have two choices when it comes to obstacles you face:

  • handle them
  • ignore them

choices -> Purpose

Keep in mind that your choices help define your purpose.

If you come across a problem at work that requires a skill you don’t have, you can either let someone else handle it or learn how to do it yourself. That experience just might get you a promotion.

On the other hand, if you let others handle the problem because you’re not qualified, you weren’t meant to find a solution. It is not part of your purpose.

You may believe that you can learn any skill, and to some degree that is true.

Just know if it is something you aren’t passionate about or isn’t something you desire to learn, it’s going to be difficult. You won’t have a passion for everything that comes your way and quite frankly, you may feel the exact opposite about several of them. 

it's a process

When you are willing to do what it takes to overcome certain obstacles, note the process you followed to do it. 

Having the determination to overcome a barrier helps define your purpose, but the steps that led to the solution can also be telling. Don’t underestimate this as there may be hidden clues to understanding yourself better.

The obstacle itself may not have defined much, but it’s possible that somewhere along the process, you learned a whole lot more.

defining Moments

Obviously, the bigger the obstacle, the more defining it will be for you.

Small obstacles and everyday problems are not going to make much of a difference about your purpose, but how you go about overcoming them can be a defining moment.

If your obstacles are too overwhelming, try to figure out why.

When you break this down, you may find the reasons are no longer valid. You may have had a stigma about something and made assumptions that you can’t handle it.

New experiences and the wisdom of age help you see things are not as difficult as you once believed, which is also a piece of what defines your purpose.

Changing

it's inevitable

It’s no secret that people have difficulty accepting change.

It’s also the one aspect of life we know will happen, whether we like it or not. If you don’t do well with change, you should reverse your aversion to it.

Think of this: maybe you haven’t yet found your purpose because you have resisted change.

That is a common affliction with many people because they simply refuse to accept that something different is happening in their lives.

Adapt

The good news is people can adapt with relative ease.

After a while, you’ll have no choice but to accept most of the changes that happen in your life.

People close to you will move on (one way or another).

You will go through stages of life.

In the end, you will cherish the memories that you have.

collateral consequences

There are always unintended consequences in most changes that occur for you.

Example: years ago, I was at a job where we all loved our boss. He was great with customers, fun to work for and (best of all) he knew what he was doing (I’ve been in jobs where I had to train bosses). Lo and behold, he was transferred to a new store and his replacement was absolutely horrible. 

She didn’t know what she was doing. She took multiple smoke breaks an hour so she was always gone. She came up with mean nicknames (which we embraced, joke’s on her) for us and would tell me I had to do my job (changing prices/labels) AND had to be a backup cashier as well (which meant I kept being pulled up front). Needless to say, I could never got my job done and then I would get in trouble for that. She hired two of her friends, one of whom ended up being handed my job. Every single one of us ended up leaving because of her. 

Yes, your boss could leave the company and you know there will be a replacement.

It never worked out in my favor, but it’s possible you might benefit you in the long run.

It’s possible you and the new boss think along similar lines, more so than your old boss. It could be the best thing to happen to your career. 

personal changes

You will absolutely need to deal with changes in your personal life.

Your kids are going to move out of your house eventually (THE HORROR!) and you might end up taking care of your parents one day (actually that’s the job of the first grandchild – sorry, Davina! haha).

When you are young and first starting out on your own, you don’t think of these situations because they seem so far off.

The most significant benefit of any change is that it could be just what is needed to find your purpose.

If you are used to the same routine and it doesn’t seem right for you, change may give you the boost and desire to find something that is better for you.

more change can help

You should try to expose yourself to change more often.

Granted, some changes you cannot plan, but there are still many that you can.

Speak with people who have differing opinions than you and welcome civil discussions about them. Try to keep an open mind when doing this and ask them how they chose that point of view.

By exposing yourself to change, you will become better at accepting it.

When you become better at accepting change, you just might be closer to discovering who you are and what your purpose is.

Life-Biz-Income Journal

life biz income journal product photo

Click here to buy!

Rant or Rave here: