Do you find it difficult to live your purpose? How often do you stop to ask what’s driving your daily actions? What about your plans for the future?
We all have similar goals—we want to be more productive and have time for the things that we deem essential. We’d like to peacefully balance work and life, but how often do we feel like we are in control of what truly matters? We intend to do so many things, if only we had more time.
In this article, we’ll address common issues that can hold you back from living your purpose. By the end, you’ll have a fresh perspective on discovery and decision, which will bring insight into how to live your purpose.
Here’s the points we’ll cover if you want to skip ahead:
- The Reason Why We Lack Purpose
- We Are Powerful When We Decide
- We Decide How to Live Our Purpose
- Why We Become Indecisive About Living Our Purpose
- We Need to Become Day Designers
Why It’s Hard to Live Your Purpose
The way we approach our day—creating to-do lists and working as much as we can before our brains are exhausted—doesn’t bring us closer to understanding who we are.
Reality check: an unclear identity makes it impossible to nail down a purpose worthy of devotion.
Most of us think that we know ourselves, but as Peter Drucker said in Managing Oneself, we are often wrong.
Instead of sorting the things that weigh on our hearts, we run down the conveyor belt without stopping to ask why we’re there in the first place.
The Reason Why We Lack Purpose
Our responsibilities are more complicated than ever before. Running a business, developing relationships, raising children, improving our health, paying rent—the list of things we need to accomplish is overwhelming.
What about happiness? Fulfillment? Questions that once seemed fundamental to our future have turned borderline absurd.
It’s easier to keep going than taking time away from our busy lives. Grinding it out seems the only way to succeed. But stopping to figure out our purpose? Does anyone have time for that anymore?
The combination of a global market and 24/7 machine keeps us moving but not going anywhere in particular. We’re distracted by flash and have forgotten how to go inward to decide what we want.
Going inward is our opportunity to take back control of our day, week, and ultimate direction.
We Are Powerful When We Decide
With Day Design, our goal is to define the purpose of each moment. We design each day intentionally, making use of our most potent tool—TIME.
Achieving our goals comes from our ability to make effective decisions and use our time to take meaningful actions. Instead of waiting for the Universe to align with our wishes, we can align ourselves to it.
Wherever you are right now and whatever you may be doing, can you answer this question: what is the purpose of this moment? If you’re not sure how to answer, don’t worry.
Day Design will show you how to get better at knowing the purpose of each moment. You’ll have a better understanding of what you want and how to get it.
Spoiler alert: You’ll never be able to live your purpose if you’re always trying to discover it. Your purpose isn’t a matter of discovery, it’s a matter of decision.
We Decide How to Live Our Purpose (But We Often Let Others)
In certain ways, we’re more productive than ever. We’re successful at our business, or maybe have a great relationship, but how does the picture look as a whole? Is our productivity balanced?
As Day Designers, our goal is to balance all areas of our lives that bring us fulfillment.
The five areas of 360 Productivity are:
- Relationships
- Health
- Spiritual
- Work
- Community
Many questions run through the river of our thoughts when we start something new. Is it the right time, can we handle this, do we have the right skills?
Instead of waiting for a breakthrough discovery, we can decide what we want and go after it. It’s up to each one of us to decide what kind of life we want and work towards it through actions.
It’s not luck or financial status that creates purpose—it’s purely a decision that we have the power to make.
We are at a crossroads—instead of making a deal with the devil for fame or fortune, we are making a deal with ourselves. It’s us and us alone who decide the meaning of our lives.
A strong purpose will act as the glue to hold all 360 areas together.
As a Day Designer, we are at this wild junction between fact and fiction, ideas and reality—it’s our job to create what we imagine. We can be Leonardo Da Vinci in our own way.
The purpose we decide will evolve and adapt as we generate more actions. We’re experimenters of ideas, not observers. We’re scientists that generate actions across each 360 area. This is how we get closer to fulfillment.
Why We Become Indecisive About Living Our Purpose
Indecision is what stands between us and what we want. It’s not a lack of skill or ability that keeps us from reaching our goals. If we don’t yet have the skills we need, we can learn anything we choose.
When we act, we get feedback from reality that helps us refine our next action—we replace indecision with open-minded experimentation.
This is what we strive for as Day Designers.
We know that it’s actions that will take us closer to what we want. We delay because we are not sure where to begin. We get stuck thinking about our goals, doubting if what we’re doing is correct.
Our goals to get in shape, start a business, or find a partner are too far away from where we are right now—we’re not ready, we don’t have enough information, or it’s not the right time are a few things that we say to ourselves.
Instead of taking action, we turn “figuring it out” into an excuse for being indecisive. We get lost in the mechanics of our goals—the new diet, proper exercise shoes, workout schedule, marketing plan, or timing for a difficult conversation.
We’re procrastinating because we are afraid.
The problem is that years have gone by, and we still have the same goals. We’ve grown exhausted thinking about what we want instead of testing. Our goals are dusty and distorted, crammed on a shelf.
It’s time to bring them out to the light of reality.
We Need to Become Day Designers
There’s a reason why the wisdom of the Greeks to “know thyself” has survived for thousands of years—it’s the foundation you need to live your purpose.
Living your purpose takes effort just like anything else. No matter who we ask, even if they’re the wisest person on earth (like the Oracle of Delphi), no one can tell you what your purpose is.
The Day Design Course is a free video series that walks you through how to be productive in the important areas of your life. My hope is that it will help you decide your path, instead of waiting to discover it.
Jason Dzamba
