Find Your Purpose In Life | Jack Canfield

Hi there. I'm Jack Canfield, co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and co author of the Success Principles. And if you've been following me for a while, you probably know I talk a lot about the importance of finding and living your purpose in life. But what if you don't know exactly what your purpose is? Or what if you've been doing a lot of personal growth work in order to find your purpose and you think maybe you've discovered what it is, but you're not quite sure? Well, if that sounds familiar, you're not alone. A lot of people often struggle initially on their journey to discovering their purpose, and that's why today I'd like to share some tips with you on how to gain deeper clarity into your purpose, no matter how young or how old you are or whatever your life currently looks like, so that you can be confident that you're living your life in full alignment with your unique life purpose. Now, the first thing I suggest you do if you want to know if and when you've discovered your true purpose, is to work on cultivating a regular meditation practice. Because when you clear your mind of the normal thoughts that are constantly running through it, you will find it much easier to hear your intuition speaking to you and telling you things like this is the way. Meditation is so important because it allows you to quiet the constant chatter of what meditation teachers, they call your monkey mind and become more aware of your deeper thoughts. And as you develop this awareness, you'll discover that many of your thoughts aren't necessarily real or true. Just because you think something doesn't mean it's true. And as you cultivate greater awareness and mindfulness, it will become easier for you to discern which thoughts are true and are guiding you to show up as your highest self and which thoughts are based simply upon limiting beliefs and are going to weigh you down with uncertainty or paralyze you with fear. Now this clarity that can come from a regular meditation practice will make it so much easier to recognize the inspired thoughts that are aligned with your purpose and those that are not. The good news is, meditation doesn't have to be difficult or time consuming to have a big impact on your level of mindfulness and discernment. Even just five minutes a day of a simple meditation practice, like focusing on your breath or simply sitting and observing your thoughts without being letting them capture you, is enough to lead to powerful results over time. The most important thing is to practice consistently so that state of clear head of mindfulness becomes more easily accessible to you now my next tip is to think about what you're really good at and what you love to do. You see, your life purpose usually lies somewhere in the intersection of those two things. Living your purpose means using your unique talents and gifts in a way that brings you pleasure and brings you joy. And it's important to take the time to really assess what those are. What are you uniquely skilled or talented doing, and alternatively, what is something you are fascinated with and you could happily spend time doing or learning more about that all day long. Now, for you to truly live your purpose, it must involve doing something that you find truly enjoyable and rewarding. Otherwise, you won't be motivated to put in the time required to develop the necessary skills and expertise that might be required to become a master at it. And even if you have natural music ability, for instance, you still need to practice your instrument or develop your voice. My son Christopher is naturally talented music, but he was constantly taking guitar, piano and voice lessons and even went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston to further develop his music skills. I was born with natural teaching skills, but to become a master at what I do, I spent thousands of hours learning, developing and practicing new skills like gestalt therapy, neuro linguistic programming, eft tapping, guided visualization, meditation, speaking skills, and so on. But I've enjoyed every minute of it. Now my next tip for you is to get really clear on what kind of world you actually want to live in. Because living your purpose often means using your unique gifts in such a way as to help create the world you want. But first you need to get really clear on what what that world looks like. So I encourage you to spend some time meditating on what your ideal world looks like and then figure out how you can use your unique skills to help make that world a reality. Another way to approach this is to pay attention to what kinds of things upset you and then ask yourself how can you use your skills and talents to address that issue? Perhaps you'd like to see a world where there is less violence and more peace. I remember meeting a woman a few years ago that is a dancer and a dance teacher, and she decided to conduct dance workshops for both Israeli and Palestinian women together so that they would get to know each other as people rather than only as religious and national stereotypes. So you can do what you do and make a difference doing it. Now, as you're doing this important self exploration, I also encourage you to cultivate a deeper connection with your own intuition. Take the time to discover how how your intuition communicates with you because it's different for all of us. Maybe your intuition communicates by giving you a strange feeling in your stomach, or a shiver up your spine, or goosebumps. Maybe it communicates in images that flash across your mind. Or maybe you literally hear a voice in your head saying, do this, don't do that, pay attention to that. And as you become more aware of how your intuition communicates with you, put in the effort to listen to it more carefully and more often. Notice when it's trying to tell you something, and pay attention to what it's saying. Also notice what happens when you act on what it's telling you, as well as when you don't. By learning how to listen and respond to your intuition, you're going to develop more discernment about what is naturally leading you in the right direction of living your life. Purpose now one of the things I've learned over the years is that when I'm acting in alignment with my purpose, I'm experiencing joy. I truly believe, after working with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of students around the world, that the feeling of expansion and joy is your body's way of letting you know you're on purpose. And a feeling of contraction or unhappiness frustration is its way of telling you that you're off purpose. It's as if you're getting constant, on course, off course feedback about whether or not what you're doing is in alignment with your true purpose. I've also noticed that when I'm on purpose, things start to become easier, and when I'm off purpose, things are harder to accomplish. There seem to be more obstacles and roadblocks that show up in my life. Now this doesn't mean that every moment in your life is going to be totally joyous. Changing diapers, cleaning up dog poop, changing the cat box, and dealing with a broken water pipe. These aren't always the most enjoyable things to do, and yet they're still sometimes necessary. But what I'm talking about is the overall tone of your life, your experience of your job, your career, and your relationships. Now here's a couple of final thoughts about discovering your purpose. Your purpose may come to you more as a quality like My purpose is to express love and joy to everyone that I come into contact with. Or My purpose is to be a beacon of safety and hope for those who've lost their way. Or it may come more as a specific form of work like my purpose is to write children's books that delight children of all ages. Or My purpose is to be a lawyer, working to exonerate those who've been incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit, where my purpose is to entertain people with my singing and acting skills. My purpose, by the way, is to inspire and empower people to live their highest vision in a context of love and joy, in harmony with the highest good of all concerned. Now I've developed a number of resources that can help you discover your life purpose. One is an exercise called the Life Purpose Exercise, which you can find in the second chapter of my book, the Success how to get from where you are and where you want to be you. Now. The second is a more profound guided visualization, also called the Life Purpose Exercise, which is contained in my audio program called Awakening power, which contains 11 guided visualizations and guided meditations. And finally, we always do a life Purpose exercise in my Live Breakthrough to Success program, which we offer a couple of times a year. And you can find out more about all of these by going to my website, jackcampto.com now here's one last thought. Remember that your purpose will likely evolve over time as you move forward on your journey through life. Certain things will become clearer to you and you'll have new experiences and gain new insights that will help you refine your understanding of your purpose and become even more clear and more effective in living it and fulfilling it. So those are my tips on how to find your purpose and know for sure whether or not you're living it and acting in alignment with it. Now, what I'd love for you to do before you leave is is to share in the comments. One action that you'll take to gain deeper clarity into your purpose. If this is not something you're already 100% certain of, and again, one thing you might want to do is check out the resource page on my website@jackcampfield.com there's a ton of great information there, much of it free, on how to find your life purpose, as well as activities you can do right away to more fully live it. And finally, if you found this video helpful, please take a moment to like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to this channel for more videos like this one. Thanks again for watching and have an amazing rest of your day.