Having a purpose for your life is essential to leading a happier and more satisfying life. Without purpose, you are simply existing and that’s no fun at all — even if you have all the money you need and can afford to live a life of leisure.
An article in Psychology Today noted that living purposefully and infusing purpose into your work and daily life, has multiple benefits that go beyond happiness and satisfaction. It creates more value for your business and, I’d like to think, more value for your life as well.
The article cited a study in 2018 which found that nine out of ten people are willing to earn less money if it means doing more meaningful work. If that many people are willing to earn less when they are of working age just to have a sense of purpose, imagine what that means for retirees who often have more time and more money to invest in themselves.
Written by Megan Dalla-Camina, the founder of Women Rising, the article suggested five steps you can take to help build meaning and purpose in your life. They are:
Discover your passions — Megan noted it is disheartening when you don’t have an answer to “What are you passionate about?” To help you inch toward discovering purpose, she offers five follow-up questions to ask instead. I liked her suggestion of simply creating a “love to do” list off the top of your mind.
Discover your core values — At the end of the day, what holds the utmost importance to you? By brainstorming 16 different areas of your life, you can often identify the Top 3 things that genuinely matter most. From there, it’s a matter of understanding how to apply action to those values to infuse purpose into your daily life.
Identify your strengths — By asking yourself three questions about what you really like to do, you can leverage your strengths to bring about a sense of purpose.
Discover a problem to solve — Let’s face it, men especially like to solve problems. We have solutions for everything, real and imagined. Fortunately, as Megan notes, there are a multitude of problems awaiting solutions from inspired men and women. By asking yourself four questions, you can choose one problem which deeply resonates with you and take small steps toward creating a solution.
What legacy do you want to leave? — This question is often foremost in the minds of people over 50. Megan wrote, “If you’re lacking a sense of meaning and purpose, zooming the lens out and shifting your perspective toward what you want to be known for and how you want to be remembered can be highly motivating.”
So, spend some time exploring all those steps and diligently thinking about answers to the questions Megan posed in the article. From that exercise, you’re likely to find one or two areas for you to passionately pursue.
Yet, sometimes it takes coaching to help break mental log jams or, more likely, address the excuses you keep telling yourself for a long time, such as you’re too old to be doing this or that. “Who would take me seriously?” is another very common lie your spiritual enemy frequently whispers in your ear.
If you’d like some help combing through the plethora of opportunities available to you right now to bring more purpose and meaning to your life, I’d like to help. Send me an email to schedule a powerful coaching session to unlock those options.
It is so important to me that people over 50 have purpose and meaning in their lives that the first session is complementary. So what are you waiting for? The clock to your life is counting down. Make every moment count!
Megan’s full story can be found at Psychology Today.
After closing his business and enduring several painful years of uncertainty regarding what to do with his life, Greg founded Forward From 50 to help men and women over 50 to live more purposeful lives by pursuing things they are passionate about. A Wisconsin native, Greg currently lives in Arizona.