Hints to The Purpose of Life

People ask Brendan, how do I find my life's purpose? I'm like, you know, gosh, I can't find a good haircut. It is not an easy question, but I get it on stages around the world when I'm speaking, we get it. So many submissions here to the show, Brendan, talk about life's purpose. I mean, how do you find it? And first and foremost, I'm not sure that you ever find it. I'm not sure that you wander outside of your house one day and the piano of purpose falls on top of your head and suddenly like, oh, that's why I'm here. I think that purpose is more self defined than just discovered. Suddenly one day where the sudden answer emerges upon us. You know, I think that we have to decide what it is for ourselves, but I think that we have been given some clues. You know, I don't pretend to know the answer to what your life's purpose is or anybody's life's purpose outside of even my own. And honestly, my own has shifted and shaped its way throughout my life to emerge into what it is today. And I'll share what I think mine might be with you, but I got mine just, I think the way everyone else gets theirs, it's through that process of just asking what are we about? What do we want to serve and give to the world? What is it that we want to stand for? What do we find meaningful in our own lives? We can ask a series of questions that might get us closer, but we shouldn't miss the hints that are right in front of us every single. I don't think that you have to be, you know, operating just from a place of religion or spirituality to find that answer. And often people go to those two realms to find the answer. And I think that's vital and it is important. And I found most of my inspiration from this categories of life. But I think just as a realist looking around the world, you can observe that something is unique about the human species, about who we are and about maybe that might give us some indication into what life's purpose might be for many of us. And you know, at first thing, if you look around the world and you start paying attention, you start to notice that, you know, we're all alive. You know, you're alive, I'm alive. If you're watching this, you're alive, right? And so maybe there's a little hint there, a hidden sort of joke, that if we are alive, maybe part of life's purpose is to be fully alive. How simple Is that. What if that was your day? You just say, you know what? Today I'm gonna be fully alive. I'm gonna feel an incredible sense of vibrancy and joy and real zest and presence to my life today. Because you know what, what a gift it is that I'm still here, that I'm alive. You know, to really fully sense an aliveness and to cultivate an aliveness in our body and in our mind and in our spirit so that we exude life to other people. You know, you want to learn how to be sexy or attractive to other people, be alive, right? Isn't that the people that we're most attracted to, those who are just joyous and they have something about their spirit? There's a spark there, what we call a charge. You know, there's some kind of internal charge about them that just. They stand out. But you know what? They also feel differently. By cultivating a sense of aliveness and presence in our life, life feels different. And if everyone. You talk about people's life purpose, I mean, everyone wants in some way to feel, you know, alive, alert, aware, conscious, because that's what we have, we've been given. And so I just ask, what are you doing to make yourself feel alive? You know, are you doing activities that make draw out your passion? Are you exuding and giving passion to the world? Are you truly sensing the spirit and the joy and the energy of this universe that makes you animated as a human being? And maybe those aren't your things, but they are. For me, I just think, what an incredible hint. We're alive. So be alive. You know, I think it's so simple. I think the second big hint that we're given is that we're all unique. Seven billion plus people on the planet, you're different than every single one. There's a unique aspect to your personality, your style, your intentions, your actions, your habits, your beliefs. Who you are and the way that you think is unique from everybody else. We can measure it by science, we can measure it by observation. We can measure it just by simply asking people basic questions to discover. Everyone's got their own opinion, everyone's got their own worldview. And because of that, then we have to ask, well, am I living my life uniquely? Am I expressing who I genuinely am? Are my expressions genuine and authentic and spontaneous to who I am as a person? Or am I living a facade? Am I trying to be somebody else, to please somebody, else, to gain acceptance or love over here? Or am I truly being true to myself, to my unique Self to the inner side of who I really am and what I want to show to the world. Because a lot of people really, you know, struggle with this. And the reason they start setting out to look for their purpose in their life is one day they woke up and they realize they're not living their life. They're living their parents life, their professors life, their teachers life. They're living the life the society or their culture or their norms told them to live. And one day they wake up and say, whoa, why have I conformed to the point where I don't even know who I am anymore? And they start this journey sometimes to look for life's purpose because they're trying to find themselves. They're not looking for a big purpose. They're looking for themselves. And sometimes when we can tap back into that uniqueness of who we are, then the magic of life comes alive again. You know, that requires us to not only exude who we are to the world, but to genuinely express who we are, what we think, what we desire of life, what we need, how we truly feel and think about the people in our lives, the things that we are doing with our lives, the places and directions we're going. We have to do that if we want to sense that full uniqueness of ourselves. And often it is by suppressing ourselves that we begin to suffer. And we have to again ask, well, then, what is the point of all this? Is it to live as, you know, as a carbon copy of everybody else? Or to fully, with full intention and aliveness, animate the best of who we are? Uniquely, I think that you being yourself is a grand purpose. I think the third thing that we've all been also blessed with, if we can just observe and pay attention, is, yes, there are indeed 7 billion plus other people in the world. What does that tell us? Well, then, hmm, maybe we are all connected. That, you know, while we are all unique, we all share similarities. You know, all human cultures across the span of time have been found to truly value very simple, basic things. You know, love, truth, fairness, freedom, unity, respect, responsibility and tolerance. And as we recognize those, not all of them exuded great, but as a part of their culture, there was an operating norm that valued those types of things. Something connects us. It's a human fabric of values and of beliefs that usually center around caring and compassion and love and truth with one another. Because that's what keeps us all together. And that is what not only helped us survive at one point, but more importantly, it made us feel spiritually fulfilled. Love is A purpose. Love has been argued to be the purpose. By a whole lot more smart and intelligent persons. Than the guy you're listening to right now, I can tell you that. But if that's true, if, you know, connection, love is so vital, how are we doing in those categories? Are we living purposefully with the people around us? Are we even sensing and seeing them. So that we can connect with them and live out that purpose and sense that purpose by really connecting with the people that we truly love and adore? A lot of people are so distracted today. They can barely even look at somebody in the eye when they walk down the street. You know, they're looking like this. They can't even pay attention to their spouse or their lover when they walk into the house. I mean, they're distracted, they are detached. And they are dissipating in life energy. Because they are not giving and receiving that incredible energy that can only happen between two human beings. And so we have to ask, how are we doing in our relationships? And could we give more purpose to those relationships. So that we can sense more purpose in life? And then I would say, probably the last thing that I think we can all recognize in some way or another. Is that we as a human species have been granted an incredible gift of intentionality, of consciousness. And some people struggle with that word of intentionality. But kind of think about it in two ways. First, vision. We've been granted a very unique level of vision and anticipation in our lives. Not to just anticipate and to look out to tomorrow. That's not what makes us unique, believe it or not. Look, the spider looks out to tomorrow. It anticipates that if it builds this web, something's going to get trapped in it and it's going to eat it up. Right? The bear anticipates the oncoming season. So it starts feeding itself so it can hibernate. Animals in nature already anticipate and see the vision coming of the future. But the difference for them is it's all sort of intuitive. It's an impulse to do by nature where we can actually override our impulses. We can be scared of something and still face it. We can see things tomorrow that do not exist today. Not operating on impulse or the reality of our situation, but something that doesn't even. We can't even imagine it tomorrow. We can imagine skyscrapers and men walking on the moon. We can imagine crossing the seas. We can imagine something so extraordinary for our lives. That nobody around us even believes it. That vision is what gives us intentionality. To live our days. And some people, when they're just struggling in life, they don't feel connected to their purpose anymore. Part of it is because they just haven't had a vision for themselves for so long. You know, part of people who are really struggling with sadness or the depths of despair or sometimes even depression, helping them realign and get some clarity to something compelling and magical and beautiful and important and meaningful to chase, can turn their life right back on again. And so what's your vision? What is it you see out there for yourself? Have you dreamed enough? Have you allowed yourself to dream and see something magical out there for yourself? Think if you do that, you bring in that greater sense of purpose. And now you can aim your life to a life of purpose, to accomplish at least some of your dreams, to march towards something that you find meaningful. Because the second part of intentionality, vision is there. The second part is self direction. We have a unique capability to direct ourselves into wherever we want to go. You can go against the grain or with the grain. You can choose to follow, fight your impulses and overcome them, or fall slave to them. We have the ability to direct our own will, our own mind, our aim, our attitude, our actions. And with that ability to be self directed comes a tremendous amount of responsibility. Because when we do not direct ourselves, those are the times when we often feel the most lost, right? We're just wandering around, we don't know what's going on, we're unconscious, we're not present. We're not intentional about anything at all. And not that we can't experience, you know, life in full in the moment, but over a series of moments, in a series of years and decades, without any intention or direction to our life, we often feel lost. So what is it? How intentional are you being with your day to day? How intentional are you being about this upcoming week? How intentional are you being about the next month or the next year? It's not about being obsessed with the future. We still have to live today, right? Aliveness, that was the first thing I talked about. Today, sense and feel the magic of this moment. But if we can also direct ourselves, gives our aims. The human being is driven by so much of its goals and its dreams and desires for the future. We shouldn't disconnect from any time zone, right? We should feel a great gratitude for the past, a great presence with the present mode of reality that we face right now, and a great connection to our future too. We should be happy with all of those and be moving our lives progressively forward. Because that's what intention gives us. So aliveness, uniqueness, connection and intention. Those are some of the hints we've been given. From there, it's all about self definition. It's about deciding who is it we want to be, what is it we want to do and why that gives us our purpose. We can build statements around it all day long, can't we? You know, I have. I have. My life's purpose is very simple. It's about being and doing and for a reason. Mine is to be something. The purpose of my life is to be fully alive and vibrant and then moves into doing something. To adore and appreciate my loved ones, to strengthen and share my gifts. So that. Which is the why? So that I might inspire other people to live more fully, to love more openly, and to make their difference. Today, you might not ever find a purpose. It might not land on you tomorrow. So define one for yourself. Take some hints from the universe along that journey. And no matter what you do, realize that life's purpose is entirely up to you. And with that comes a responsibility and a great gratitude that we could choose our own way, our own aims, every single day of our lives. So go do that today. What's this day going to be about? What's the purpose of this day? What's the purpose of tomorrow? Add enough of those intentionalities across the span of your life and suddenly you wake up one day and you say, I lived a life of purpose.