Maria Gonzalez Blog
Mindful Leadership

Discovering One’s Purpose in Life

Discovering one’s purpose in life is one the greatest concerns people express.  I have met many people who are extremely successful by external standards, but for them something is missing.  They don’t feel fulfilled, as if there is something they are “meant to do”, but they haven’t discovered it.  This can cause great angst and create a sense of incompleteness.

I too had that experience.  In my late twenties and early thirties I had a strong sense that I was on this earth for a purpose.  But, I had no idea what that purpose was.  I had great concern that I would come to the end of my natural life and that I would not have discovered why I was here.

This issue is so prevalent that I wrote a chapter in Mindful Leadership to address it.  It is incredibly satisfying when we start to have a sense of what we are “meant” to do.  In my view, we are all here to fulfill a Divine purpose, something only we can do.  And the way we can begin to uncover and discover what that might be is quite simple.  It requires some reflection and a lot of stillness.  It’s in that stillness that the insights arise.

The answer for each of us lies in the connection between our gifts and our passions.  We all do some things really well.  Some of these things we may not particularly enjoy. But, we do them anyways.  Yet, there are other things we do very well and we love to do them.  These are the things we are passionate about.  When we discover those things, it seems as if we can do them tirelessly.

The last piece of the puzzle is that as we use these gifts that we are passionate about, we feel tremendous joy.  Our work becomes effortless effort.  There is a rhythm to the way we complete the act of whatever we are doing.  And we do it in the service of all, for its own sake.

This is what it is to “discover one’s purpose”.  We do it for our sake.  And at the same time, our purpose becomes a gift to everyone.