Happy New Year!

In the previous three posts I listed three different methods for determining your purpose in life. Now it's time to begin examining how you can manifest your purpose. A key point to recall is that there is more than one way to manifest your purpose. While I hope that over the last three months you have become clear on your purpose, I also hope that you haven't defined it too narrowly. Another point to recall is that it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Give yourself time to grow fully into your purpose.

In this post I am going to summarize my final suggestion for figuring out your purpose. This method is the most structured and comprehensive of the three methods I am suggesting.

In the last post, I summarized a 20 minute exercise to discover your purpose. In this post, I will summarize a similar approach that takes a bit longer.

If you want to live a more purposeful life, you have to be clear on what your purpose in life is. Discovering your purpose in life is an extremely popular topic on which to write and many people have given their ideas on how to go about doing this. In the next few entries I will summarize some suggestions I have encountered.

Some of you may have heard of Steve Pavlina. He blogs on personal development. One of his blog entries, written January of 2005!, describes How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes. You can read the entire article at

In the last entry I said that it is not a requirement to engage in radical action to live your purpose. Any step, no matter how small, that you take in the direction of living your purpose brings you that much closer to fulfilling your purpose. So, instead of presenting yourself with an all-or-nothing option, choose to do whatever you can.

The first step is to become clear on what your purpose is. This is no small task. I'll talk about it more in the next entry.

Are you clear on what your purpose in life is?

In love, peace, and true purpose,
Coach Marc

Don't get trapped by the notion that one must make disruptive life changes to live one's purpose. You don't need to quit your current job or engage in any other radical action. Some people may choose to jump off the cliff and figure that they will learn to fly on the way down. But, it is not a requirement.

In the last blog I said that I believe that every one of us is meant to accomplish something in this lifetime that will have a beneficial impact on the world. If we are providing benefit, then we are entitled to be paid for providing that benefit. The question is how much value others place on the benefit you provide by living your purpose. I propose that when you find the people you are meant to serve they will value your purpose highly.

I believe that we all have an intuitive understanding that our lives are meant to have purpose. Think back to when you were young. Did you ever ask questions like, "Why are there mosquitoes?" Asking those types of questions illustrates the fact that you inherently strove for a sense of meaning and purpose. So, why as adults would we begin to question whether believing that our lives have purpose makes sense?

To answer the question posed in the subject line, many people would resort to the tactic of first looking up the definition elsewhere, such as in the dictionary or using an online search. Some might refer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Either of these options could potentially yield a perfectly acceptable definition. However, this type of approach completely misses the point. After all, we are considering "self actualization."