I have a question for you. Are you the kind of person who wants a magic bullet to solve all of your problems in life or are you the kind of person who’s willing to do what it takes to find solutions to your pressing problems.

And there’s a reason why I’m asking this question. Because in this presentation, I’m going to be taking you through a very important step to discover your Life Purpose.

Hi, I’m Vatsala Shukla, Chief Encouragement Officer at Karmic Ally Coaching and this is the second part of my series on finding your life purpose.

Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript of discovering your Life Purpose easily with one simple step.

So just to make sure we’re all on the same page, in the first post in this series, what we did discuss were three things.

Firstly, I told you about the meaning about being self-driven and how to tell if your purpose is self-driven as well as 3 simple ways with which you could increase your self-drive.

Now, I’m going to keep my promise of helping you to discover your life purpose easily with one simple step, but before that, I want you to know that everyone feels flat and unmotivated sometimes.

And in fact, no matter how energetic and focused you are, there are going to be days when you’re just not feeling the vibe.

And, when that happens, I don’t want you to be too hard on yourself.

Now you can give your motivation a kick-start by reinvigorating your life’s purpose. And this of course doesn’t mean that you need to do a course or take on any of those online quizzes that you find through Google or Facebook or take yourself off to some motivation boot camp.

In fact, you don’t even need to do a bunch of things to get back on track. You need one simple thing. Or rather you  need to do one simple thing.

And that is you need to pick yourself up and take a big step out of your comfort zone.

The Ins and Outs of Your Comfort Zone

Now it might sound simple but actually being willing and able to step out of your comfort zone can be quite scary.

I remember in the early days when I started my coaching business and I was working towards my certification and getting hours to clock in for that certification, there was a wonderful lady who became a client of mine and she would show up for every session.

It was wonderful, we would discuss all sorts of things. I would give her all sorts of tasks but by the time we came to the next session, she hadn’t taken any action.

In fact she used to find every excuse under the sun why she hadn’t taken any action.

I ultimately realized that she actually was un-coachable or rather not coachable at that moment and I told her we would pick it up when she was ready.

But there is something else and that is you need to understand the ins and outs of your comfort zone. And you know, in my opinion, the lady was not willing to step out of her comfort zone and there is a perfectly good reason for it.

And that is because it’s comfortable! It feels good to be surrounded by like-minded people who won’t challenge your view of the world.

And you know, you can just stay exactly where you are.

In fact, your comfort zone is a cozy place. Online or in the real world, it’s full of messages that reinforce the status quo. It’s okay to miss your gym session or to be a couch potato.

You know, what amazes me is the number of emails that I receive about just doing affirmations and the Universe is going to respond. You read articles about it. Now isn’t that the message that seems to be out there?

That, you know, sit in one place. You don’t have to step out of your comfort zone and just do this, like a prescriptive medicine and you’re going to be fine.

I beg to differ because staying in your comfort zone is a one-way street to not taking on any challenges, not growing, not developing, or achieving.

In fact, comfort zone living encourages procrastination, which is what was happening with this lady client of mine.

It makes you defensive and frustrated when your instant gratification needs are not met, or when someone disagrees with you.

In fact, I have had consultations where people thought that oh, you know, in a Discovery Call, they’ll find the solution to their problems. It doesn’t work like that.

If you’re not willing to step out of your comfort zone, not much is going to happen.

But then, what are the benefits of stepping outside of your comfort zone?

The Benefits of Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone

Let me be honest.

When you decide to step outside of your comfort zone, it’s going to feel scary, but the benefits soon outweigh the fears.

You can start to see that trying different things will stretch you and help you become a better person. Challenges can lead to success, which can lead to your achieving things you would never have dreamed of.

Now I’m not saying, you know, just take a big leap of faith and do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do but you know, a few baby steps wouldn’t hurt you.

And you can start to dream bigger and better dreams—your attitude toward success changes. Suddenly you know you can do it. You can see your deep desires begin to become a reality.

Start with a baby step towards your dream. You never know what you will manifest.

Your Life’s Purpose Lies Outside Your Comfort Zone

And once you have more confidence in your abilities, it means you can look around and see what your life’s purpose is which is where this session is about and I can guarantee you it’s not likely to be a marathon Netflix session style.

But with one simple decision, you leave your own personal safety bubble and see the world from a different perspective.

You can see how what you do in your life can help to make the world a better place. That whatever you do has an impact on other’s lives.

And, in a way, this simple decision is also known as a Wake Up Call and your stepping out of your comfort zone to create your desired change is in fact acceptance of your Call to Adventure.

And the person that you become at the end of this journey is different from the one you were at the start of the journey. I detail that as well as a road map in my Kindle ebook Wake Up Call: What happens when you accept your Call to Adventure. A link is going to be given underneath this video.

So, you can make a difference once you step out of your comfort zone and start living with meaning.

But the question is, are you willing to do what’s required or do you still want a magic wand to do the work for you?

And once you have decided on which one it is and I’m hoping that you’re ready to do whatever it takes, then your next step is to continue reading this blog post where I’m going to give you 4 ways to identify your Purpose.

4 Ways to Identify Your Purpose

There are naturals who know their purpose quite early on in life but that’s not always the case. If it was, there wouldn’t be so many people seeking out the services and guidance of Life Coaches.

You’d make headway in discovering your life purpose by asking the 5 key questions in this blog post but it requires a little more work to actually identify your purpose.

The majority of us require careful searching to find our purpose.

Since I’ve already recommended stepping out of your comfort zone, here are four ways to finding your purpose in life.

Know that at different stages of life, some things will be more important than others but the purpose will be an underlying theme.

When you look back in time, you’ll find every choice, decision and experience has brought you to the point where you finally knew your purpose and were ready to act on it.

When that happens, know you’ve completed your Hero Journey and are now in a position to guide others.

Explore your interests

Your purpose might be very different from your chosen career or vocation and that’s alright.

Nobody said your life purpose had to bring home the bacon although it’s wonderful when both match!

Giving my own example, I love to help people out and find human behavior fascinating. It’s a good skill even when you’re working as an auditor as one can learn a lot about an audit issue if you understand people and body language.

I laugh when I remember my student days in London and spending my time observing people, especially those reading the Evening Times in the subway and others trying to peek at it.

But my Mom tells me that even as a small child, people loved to talk to me and I used to listen to them intently.

I don’t remember this but perhaps the interest in human behavior might have been part of why my second innings career revolves around people, especially professionals.

Essentially, interests would be topics that you frequently talk about. It could be in the office, at the pub, on Twitter, Facebook or even LinkedIn.

Some pictures instinctively appeal to you, and there are activities that you enjoy engaging in. It could be gardening, climate change, or history.

Consider these topics your interest lies, as Psychologists say that they might reveal where your purpose in life lies.

Seek answers from within your Soul

The decision to find your purpose is the first major hurdle in finding purpose. Once you’ve made the decision, you are ready for the challenges you’ll undoubtedly face.

The first of such challenges lies in listening to what your soul is saying. To do this, you have to ask yourself some questions.

These questions help you discover your passion, hence your purpose.

• How would I spend my time if money weren’t a concern?
• What’s my definition of a perfect day?
• What activities am I passionate about?

Ensure you carefully consider these questions and write down all your answers. Fundamental are the answers that jump to your mind as soon as you read each question.

Don’t dismiss any answer as being unreasonable or illogical. Turn off your mental filters and your self-judgment and truly listen to your mind.

Once you have the answer to these questions, you can take a look at them in a bid to discover your purpose in life.

Listen to your Inner Child

Life was so much simpler when we were children. Unless there were mitigating circumstances, it was a time when we didn’t have many responsibilities other than perhaps keeping an eye on a younger sibling or our duties of looking after a pet.

We engaged in activities because we genuinely enjoyed them. We had direct access to our purpose and passions. This is because our dreams had not been molded and shaped by the outside world.

We gave up on most of the things we loved to do as kids for the sake of practicality. To discover your purpose, you should connect with and take a clue from your childhood wisdom.

Questions to consider:

• What brought you enormous happiness as a child?
• What activity do you lose track of time when doing?
• What did you truly love before a sense of responsibility required you to get real?

As before, it is best to keep your mind open when considering the answers to these questions. Research recommends looking at a childhood picture to help jog your memory.

Listen to Feedback

Listening to your soul and searching your childhood memories can help you discover your purpose.

However, it can sometimes be challenging to recognize what you feel passionate about. Most times, you might love to do many things, or you’ve done a particular thing so many times that it’s second nature to you.

You do not recognize when you do these things anymore or how important they are.

Fortunately, you can ask people for their insights. You probably are already displaying your purpose, and people around you have noticed it.

Like the feedback I got from my Mom about my compassion and understanding of people. Maybe you don’t want to talk to a parent.

In which case, reach out to a few trusted friends and ask some questions.

The three questions below is an excellent way to start:

• What reminds them of you?
• What comes to their mind when they think of you?
• How will they describe you to someone asking?

If you feel skeptical about asking direct questions, you can listen to their actions. It can be a particular compliment everyone pays you or a comment regarding you.

If you spot a pattern in a specific observation or compliment, the odds are that you are passionate about that.

For example, if they all say you’re “a great giver” or “you have a passion for helping the poor,” you’re passionate about those things. You can reinforce these passions and make them your purpose in life.

Finding purpose in life should never be rushed. For some, this can be a lifelong journey. However, life becomes infinitely clearer once you discover your purpose. You’ll experience a new level of possibilities and opportunities around you.

And if you still need more help, Life Focus in 7 Days is a great place to start.

It’s my firm belief that each one of us is put on this planet with a Life Purpose and has a Destiny. It isn’t simply the domain of the famous people who make it into the pages of History.

Believe it or not but each and every one of us has a Life Purpose. Some of us know it from the very beginning of our lives. Others have it imposed upon them by family and elders or even circumstances.

There are also some of us who find it along the way, often noticing that our life purpose changes as we go along.

This isn’t due to any whimsical reason. As we grow and develop, new facets of our personalities and new avenues for contentment arise.

Sometimes the discovery can be attributed to a wakeup call

This starts us off in a direction that leads to new experiences and transformation. The old way of life doesn’t suit us.

We start afresh, with purpose on a new road where we are of service to others while finding fulfilment in a new avatar and fulfilling, what I would describe, our true Destiny.

I’ve been told by my circle of successful career professionals who started a completely different vocation in later life (no it wasn’t mid-life crisis) that their decision to change tracks wasn’t an idea they had over a morning cup of tea. It was a nagging feeling that something was ‘missing’.

The feeling kept building up but they ignored it because they were in good careers and not ready to change the status quo.

They didn’t want to step outside their comfort zone– until they had no option but to follow their call to adventure.

Guess what? Each one of them has told me that they wish they had started earlier!

Autobiographies of famous people are full of wakeup call and crisis moments and overcoming them.

The message at the end is that of triumph over adversity and a transformation that brings with it a gift to help others or make a difference.

If you read the Meet Your Coach page at my website, you would see one of my wakeup calls, my response to the Call to Adventure and the successful completion of that Hero’s Journey.

My coaching and consulting business has strong links to the transformation that took place in that journey.

Visit any well-known coach or consultant’s website. The wakeup call with Hero’s Journey will be there in their About Me Page. Maybe even in their content because they want others to benefit from the lessons they have learned.

The phrase Hero’s Journey was coined by an American professor Joseph Campbell who studied the myths across different world cultures. He found common patterns of story woven through them in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: departure -initiation—return.

For some reason, these patterns of story are so prevalent in our human psyche that even today, movies and novels of our time still follow it.

The hero or heroine is an ordinary person who wouldn’t have thought their destiny was so extraordinary. Think Harry Potter, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

Or the 4 students in the movie Rang de Basanti who die trying to clear the name and reputation of a dead friend who has taken the fall for a crashed air force plane.

It’s almost as if this story pattern reflects our everyday lives and journeys so much that we build it back into the stories we tell.

I go into details about the Campbell’s monomyth and guidance to help if you believe you are in the process of your own journey to self-discovery, including one of my own experiences, in my Kindle book Wakeup Call: What Happens When You Accept Your Call to Adventure.

Contrary to any popular belief, there is nothing esoteric about one’s life purpose although popular schools of thought do exist to consider life purpose to be based on fate and destiny on the one hand and free will on the other.

Either way, I believe that our life purpose is within us – we just need to look inside, and we will discover it. If you know your life purpose, then you instantly know what your highest goal is.

We all know that if we know what our goal is, it is easier to strategize and make our game plan to achieve it.

Knowing your life purpose also helps you to live a meaningful life, adding joy to all around you rather than living and dying in your private silo.

How do you go about finding your life purpose, if you haven’t already?

This is similar to what a life coach would ask you to do though it may not be at such a macro level but limited to one goal at a time. For starters, look at yourself with honest and clear eyes. Do a brainstorming session on the following areas of your life with these 5 key questions.

What am I passionate about?

Passion for something and what you do for a living are not necessarily the same thing. Although your vocational skills can be used to further an area that you are passionate about.

For example, I have been passionate about education from a very young age. Back in school, I used to teach less privileged children English as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.

In later life, during my corporate career while targeting jobs, I would check their Corporate Social Responsibility Statement asking about it in interviews.

Looking back, there was always an element of education and learning involved in my job as an extra activity and using my finance skills to create business plans for charities that further my passion. Even if it was on the periphery of my passion.

What about you? What’s your passion? Is it technology, animals, fashion, Formula 1, cooking?

It can be anything!

What motivates me?

What are my trigger factors for action and inaction?

If something speaks to your heart and inspires you to take action at a grass root level, that is a strong motivator. It’s an indicator that you are meant to pursue a path that enables self-expression and ultimately self-realization.

What am I really good at that I enjoy doing?

What are my inherent and acquired talents? Is it singing, writing, stock market, cooking, Sunday morning time spent looking under the bonnet of the car? The choices are many.

Think of your natural abilities, maybe you are great with people, even babies or senior citizens. What about your talents? Maybe you are creative, analytical or logical.

Consider your life experience to date and the skills you have acquired along the way. Maybe you are good at problem solving or mentoring. You may be a great networker or communicator. You can be good at so many things without having ever acknowledged your strengths!

What makes me happy and complete?

These are tangible activities that give you a buzz of satisfaction either when you are doing them or after completing them. Have you noticed how many Master Chef Contestants are from different walks of life with complete careers who love to cook and are competing?

So many of them get eliminated but continue their dream. They dared to step out of their comfort zone and conditioning that they can only be good at one thing.

They look content and happy cooking even when they are competing and under pressure tests where elimination is around the corner. They are hearing the sound of their own distant drummer.

In the priority area, what ranking do I give it?

Here, focus on the big picture, the world around you and not yourself. Would a change of path make a difference that is bigger than the change it would bring to your life? (This resource provides a starting point. Click here or on the below image to learn more)

Once you have a clearer understanding of these elements, it will be easy to put the puzzle of a purposeful life for you together.

The things that are important to you are your end GOAL. Things you love to do will be your vehicle to reach your end goal.

Your talents and abilities will help you to get there. Your passion will motivate you through your journey, especially when the road gets bumpy!

And before you know it you will be living your purpose and creating your own Destiny.

Are you living your life purpose?

Written by: Vatsala Shukla