Share Your Life Purpose Success Stories

[soos_mite_ah]

I'm curious to hear about the accounts of people who found/created their life purpose and aligned themselves with it. Of course, you don't have to be  at the point of a glorious end game where all of your hopes and dreams have already come true rather I want stories of people who discovered their life purpose, put themselves on the right track, and now are content with being on the journey they are at. You don't have to take the life purpose course to answer this question but if you did take that course and can tie it into your answer, that's all the more better. I have a few questions to start the discussion off:

What was it like when you uncovered your purpose? 

How does consistently aligning yourself with your purpose play out for you internally? (did you really have to force yourself initially or did things naturally fall into place, or was it a combination of both)? 

What is routine like and how does it reflect your purpose? 

How intimidating was committing to your purpose? Why was it intimidating and what did it feel like? 

How long did it take since committing to your purpose to gain traction towards what you were trying to achieve? 

How has your life changed since then (both emotionally as well as tangibly)?

[Yarco]

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

What was it like when you uncovered your purpose? 

There was a subtle a-ha moment but not like a lightswitch that suddenly flips on. It's something I gradually contemplated and experimented with and it built momentum until I hit an inflection point

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

How does consistently aligning yourself with your purpose play out for you internally? (did you really have to force yourself initially or did things naturally fall into place, or was it a combination of both)? 

It followed the hero's journey model where the protagonist rejects the call but it keeps cropping up. Eventually there's a point where I answered the call, and started to commit.

Just as strongly, a feeling that what I was currently doing didn't feel right or good, or align with what I wanted to do. When you get desperate and hate your life enough, you start reaching out to consider alternate options. So it started as being repelled away from what I was currently doing, and then I had to find something to get pulled toward to replace it.

I felt very aligned initially and a lot of things just kind of fell into place. Now my interest is somewhat waning and I don't love it any more and have to force myself slightly. I'm possibly at a transition stage where I'll start pursuing a new life purpose and gradually transition out of this one. Or at least, I'm going to need to pivot away from working with other people on my life purpose and do it entirely by and for myself, along with a potential change of my ideal medium.

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

What is routine like and how does it reflect your purpose? 

I try to find and stick to the routine that allows me to most optimally and efficiently live out my life purpose. I think consistency is necessary to accomplish any large task.

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

How intimidating was committing to your purpose? Why was it intimidating and what did it feel like? 

It will depend on how misaligned your current lifestyle is with your life purpose.

For me, my life purpose was totally unrelated to my education and career at the time, so it was intimidating to give up a stable job and render 5 years of college/university education relatively worthless. I suspect this will be similar for most people.

The most intimidating threshold for me was sitting down with my boss and giving my notice, and I think it will be the same for most people. In my case I knew I had a chill boss who would be supportive and that I'd likely transition over several months. I still cried in that meeting, as a very stoic dude, in front of my male boss. It's a very hard conversation to have. Some people their boss might be mad and fire them immediately rather than have them work their 2 weeks notice. Either way, for most people once you have that talk there's no going back. The majority of places probably won't even be willing to hire you back if things don't work out.

Telling my parents was intimidating. A big part of why I probably didn't pursue my life purpose earlier was making them happy and getting their approval.

For coworkers it's a slight concern you're letting them down but not as significant. A lot of younger coworkers will give you the "wow, that's so cool you're pursuing your dream, I could never do that." Older coworkers just won't understand. One older coworker asked my friend if it meant I was just going to be unemployed collecting welfare, they literally couldn't wrap their head around the idea that you could just start doing something for yourself and earning money.

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

How long did it take since committing to your purpose to gain traction towards what you were trying to achieve? 

Ideally you can gain traction before you fully commit, if that makes sense. I was taking online courses, taking small $10 jobs for 6 months or more before hitting the point of no return.

Once I fully committed and no longer had a job, I had a plan to get my website set up within the first week, and was lucky enough to get my first client within the first month. I was making about $1,000/month by Month 2 of going fulltime toward my life purpose.

I had a whole Trello board of various tasks I would need to complete before my last day at my job, so I was able to hit the ground running on Day 1 of my new life.

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

How has your life changed since then (both emotionally as well as tangibly)?

So many little micro-events contributing to anxiety that I no longer need to worry about. Whether I'll get a seat on the bus, making small-talk with coworkers, whether the phone on my desk will ring, constantly looking over my shoulder for my boss and flipping back to look productive.

I basically designed my life as a very introverted and avoidant person to avoid all of those things. Which you could argue maybe limits my potential for growth but whatever, I gave the real world a try for enough years and now I can live in my self-contained little bubble where I literally never need to leave my house if I didn't want to. That's basically the best life I can imagine designing for myself.

Instead of having a mandatory 40 hours per week where I need to sit in the office, but really I'm stretching 2-4 hours of work per day into 8 hours.... now I give my work 100% effort for 2-4 hours and the rest of the day is mine to do whatever I want with. Previously it was mentally exhausting... you work all day and all you can muster the energy to do is watch some TV, go to bed, and do it over again the next day.

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

You don't have to take the life purpose course to answer this question but if you did take that course and can tie it into your answer, that's all the more better.

I already had a strong idea of what direction I wanted to go in. Taking the life purpose course was more of a sanity check to make sure I was on the right track, as well as refine more specific details of my life purpose and make it all real. I would strongly recommend the course. I re-do it every November/December since 2017 to set goals for next year and make sure my priorities are still right.

Feel free to ask whatever else you want

Edited November 14, 2021 by Yarco