Many of us are drifting through life with no real sense of purpose. It’s easy to allow other people to influence you and tell you what your purpose is. Generally, people are projecting their purpose on to you. They may project things they accomplished or the things they wished they had accomplished. In my time working with college students, I used to interview them and talk to them about their majors. I could always tell the difference between the kids that chose their major because they discovered what they loved and the students that chose majors that they thought would make them money. It was in their eyes. The eyes light up when someone is talking about something that they love. The eyes are dead when someone is choosing something for money unless they really love money.

I always tell people who there is a difference between a job and a career. A job is something you do, a career is something you are. The goal of a job is to make money. A career is when you must have a goal, a drive and motivation to ascend. But, even with that, I’ve met people who have incredibly successful careers but find that they still aren’t happy. They’ve accomplished everything they set out to do. They have achieved financial status and are admired by others, but still aren’t happy. The reason is that there is an absence of purpose.

“If you have life, you have purpose.”- Caroline Myss

As spiritual beings having a human experience, we are incredibly powerful in crafting and creating the life that we dream of. When we focus, we have the ability to succeed and apply genius in an area of our life even when it isn’t in our heart. We have an incredible ability to create and endure suffering as long as we think that we are accomplishing something. If you allow other people to tell you what your purpose is, you will create and endure suffering trying to be that thing. But, we are all born with a purpose. Each of us has a reason why we are on this earth and a calling that it special to us. It doesn’t mean that you won’t do something that someone else is doing, but it means that you bring your own experience to it and no one else can duplicate it.

The reason why you have a purpose is because it is an act of service to the rest of the people in this world. I wouldn’t be able to type this blog if not for the purpose of the founder of Dell, WordPress and my internet service provider. If they didn’t live their purpose, then I couldn’t live mine. What are you denying the world because you are not living your purpose? I’ve found that people who aren’t living their purpose had someone tell them that they wouldn’t succeed or wouldn’t make money? The truth is that jobs pay the bills, but purpose pays the will. When you are living your purpose, the Universe will conspire to help you continue. It’s not hard to find your purpose. It’s the thing that you are denying yourself and distracting yourself with material things to forget it. If you peel back the layers of denial, you will find your purpose.

“The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The question to ask yourself is: Why am I not living my purpose?