If you are searching for your life purpose, you are in luck. The search stops here.
It's become commonplace in our culture to try to "find your purpose." It's thought of almost like finding a soul mate: you discover your one true purpose and then you and it ride off into the sunset. Now you've got career direction, a sense of meaning, and a kind of serenity about finally knowing what your purpose is. You can tell your purpose, a la Jerry McGuire, "You complete me."
Except I've never seen it play out this way. More often I hear people talking about searching for their purpose with angst. They feel like they are missing something, and get caught up in the illusion that life will be different only when they finally find it.
Here's the truth: Your purpose is to bring more love to this earth. It is to heal where there is brokenness. It is to bring light where there is darkness. It is to restore sanity where insanity reigns, kindness where fear has taken over.
That's your purpose.
That's my purpose.
That is the purpose of every human being here on earth.
If, in the morning, you find at least one minute -- 60 seconds -- of silence to close your eyes and humbly say to life, the cosmos, God -- whatever you choose to call it:
Please allow me to be an instrument of love today.
Please allow me to serve.
Please allow me to heal.
Please use me for the good.
...Or your own form of that sentiment, then life will take care of the rest. Life will place in your path the most remarkable, tender, perfect, interesting set of opportunities to do just that.
Yes, there's this other, secondary thing -- the thing we normally call purpose. A calling or resonance with a specific project or a particular way of bringing light into the world. That's actually the manifestation of your purpose, the form it takes at any given time. That form will change, and if you are open to it, you'll begin to feel the wonderful fluidity in how your purpose shows up in different ways in your life, over time.
There is your consistent purpose - embodying love, bringing light, bringing healing -- but it flows through the unique prism of your changing circumstances -- your time, place, resources, personality, personal experiences, sources of inspiration.
When we focus our attention on wondering about the manifestation, looking for the concrete details of how our purpose will be realized, we get off track. It's as if we are trying to grow petals of a flower, instead of planting a seed, and then watching as the flowers grow.
Planting the seed is dedicating yourself to be of service, to be an instrument of love. If you do that, humbly, every morning, you'll feel in your heart the call to specific acts of love and healing. Ideas for how you might spread light and change the world will start showing up, vividly, with a sense of calling attached to them.
Center in your big purpose -- spreading love, bringing light, healing -- and the specifics will take care of themselves.
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer, coach, and personal growth teacher. To sign up to receive her free Goals Guide, Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want), click here. Visit http://www.taramohr.com for more.