Identify Your Purpose and Meaning

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What do you think your life purpose is?

Richard Leider believes that "The key to acting on purpose is to bring together the needs of the world with our unique gifts in a vocation-a calling." The power behind our purpose, according to Leider, is knowing and using our natural gifts.

What vocation are you drawn to at this time? What are your gifts?

To explore the questions of life purpose and meaning, you need to listen and find out what is beneath the surface of your busy life. Below are some ways to explore.

Reflect and Listen

Contemplative practices, such as those listed below, can help you identify where you find meaning and energy in life and provide a way to connect or heal.

• Reflection: Review the day's events each evening for five or ten minutes to determine which experiences were life-giving, and which were life-draining. This could help you discover where you find purpose and meaning. Click for exercise [2].
• Meditation [3]: Meditating can be another path to self-knowledge and it has numerous other benefits. Modern technology actually shows positive changes in the bodies and brains of meditators. 
• Journaling: A journal can be a good way to reflect. You might write about some basic questions: What experiences give me life? What experiences drain life? Considering these questions can help you find purpose and meaning.
• Dreams: Dreams are a way for the unconscious mind to work on issues that people may or may not yet consciously acknowledge. While very few dreams are prophetic, they can provide precise insights into personal needs, desires, and concerns. They are also compensatory and healing. Click for exercise [4].
• Prayer [5]: Research shows that prayer, in whatever form you use, benefits health through the physiological effects of positive emotion. You might select a daily reading (for example, a psalm or an excerpt from a book of meditations). To enter a contemplative state more quickly, it helps to do this at the same time and place each day. Click for exercise [6].

Go on a Retreat

Retreats present a unique opportunity to slow down and listen. There are many kinds of retreats - silent retreats, retreats that are entirely unstructured and retreats that are structured and based on a particular theme or topic.

Talk to Others

Many people find that the best way to explore life issues is by talking and listening to others. Sometimes hearing other people's useful questions and insights can illuminate one's own life purpose.