Since graduating from University in 2018, I’ve asked myself many questions to get to the bottom of my vocational calling or life’s work that aligns with my broader life purpose here on the planet.
I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, what my ‘purpose’ was, and I felt really lost (which isn’t actually a bad thing).
What is ‘Life Purpose’ anyway?
Life purpose in my view is an ever-evolving fluid process. It isn’t one particular thing. It certainly isn’t one particular thing that once you “find” it it’s set in stone. I see life purpose more as something that unfolds and is gradually discovered as you go through life and the different stages of growth and development throughout.
I see life purpose as sort of guiding principles and how one lives their life, an overall ‘north star why’ for navigation and an aim and reason for being here on this planet at this time.
Career, vocation, mission or life’s work, as I like to call it, is specific. Life purpose, ‘north star why’ or vision (whatever term you’d prefer to use) is more general.
I’m not promising that you’ll have your life’s work and purpose sorted by the end of this post. What you will hopefully have is some food for thought generated by asking yourself and considering the following questions.
Asking questions allows you to pause, tune in and listen to the part of you that doesn’t have the same round and round conversations in your mind that you have every day when you think mostly the same things and mentally ask the same questions, whether you’re aware of this or not.
Considering the following questions allows your heart and soul to speak to you.
I asked myself and journaled on these questions (among others) to uncover my life’s work and broader purpose, as well as having conversations with people, reading books and articles, attending webinars, looking into astrology and numerology, listening to my heart and soul speaking to me, and some good old trial and error.
So these are the first 7 of 14 questions that may help your life purpose and work unfold.
The Questions:
1) What did you enjoy doing as a kid?
This requires thinking back to childhood, and for some, it’s been a while or may be emotionally difficult. As with this question and the other questions, go gently and skip them if necessary.
So now, think about what you really enjoyed doing as a kid – and I mean really enjoyed doing, not what you thought you ‘should’ have enjoyed or any other unhelpful influences – things that just made you genuinely come alive and feel full of joy and enthusiasm.
For me that was being outdoors on our hobby farm, drawing and colouring in, writing (bad poetry about nature), singing, learning (at my local library I remember borrowing, repeatedly, DK Eyewitness videos – yes, VHS videos), reading when I was at reading age, anything to do with fairies and flowers, and I loved animals.
These were clues to what I was and am here for.
2) What was the first thing you remember wanting to be when you grew up?
Here’s an unusual theory for you: it’s possible that before we incarnate as souls on this physical planet, we’re given divine assignments to carry out. When we’re born and with all the trauma of birth, we forget what this is. Despite this, the knowledge of what we’re here for is a lot fresher in the mind the younger we are.
Even though what we’re here for has been traumatised out of us at birth, I believe we still have an inkling, and that inkling is felt most strongly in us as children before the world and external influences shape us out of them.
Before the world and external influences got to me, I wanted to be a writer, artist/illustrator, or veterinarian working with animals.
As well as identifying as a child what you wanted to be career-wise when you grew up, it’s important to consider what it was specifically about these careers that appealed to you.
For example, being a veterinarian appealed to me because of the working with animals in a healing capacity aspect – as I grew up I realised I’m probably way too sensitive and squeamish for veterinary work, and that there’s a lot more people-involvement than I was really interested in. I’ve heard vets say that specifically one of the things they love above their job is meeting and having that vet-client relationship with people, in addition to working with animals. Definitely not my thing. Therefore, working out the why and specifics of a career’s appeal can be really important, as different people will be drawn to different aspects of the same career. The clues are in the specifics.
3) What were your favourite subjects at school?
The next clue is thinking about what subjects you either excelled at or just really enjoyed whether you were good at them or not throughout your whole schooling career (however long that lasted).
I really enjoyed art classes, even though I was told I wasn’t very good at it and I should (one of my least favourite words) probably not pursue this. Nevertheless, at the end of school I still put down my six tertiary education preferences on the form they made us fill out, with the last two preferences for art school. I didn’t end up going to art school, but instead chose the safe and socially acceptable (and “sensible-going-to-get-a-real-job-out-of-it”) psychology option.
I also loved English and the creative writing component of it (where I was again told I wasn’t very good at this and shouldn’t pursue it any further – I wonder now whether the universe was testing my resolve and commitment to these crafts), as well as reading and writing essays. Everything about English interested me except for poetry and Shakespeare (which took up a surprisingly huge portion of the content).
You can also think about your least favourite subjects or the ones you wanted to drop as soon as possible, as to clues about what it may be a good idea to not pursue.
For me that was maths, IT (I know I know, honestly I don’t enjoy the techy stuff that goes into running this blog but I can’t afford a proper IT person to do it for me, but I love learning so I’m coming at it from that angle), biology, chemistry and physics, and PE.
Taken together and even considering what subjects you would’ve liked to have had at school that weren’t available or offered, these subject likes and dislikes can paint an interesting picture for you of what your natural inclinations are.
4) What do you spend your money on and time doing?
A couple of years ago I started a serious inventory where I noted exactly what I was spending where, and also took a time inventory where I noted what I did and where I was spending my time.
If you’re not already doing this, I’d recommend keeping two spending inventories: one for money spending, and one for time spending.
These two things, among other aspects of how you choose to live your life and the choices within that, tie into your values. Are there things you spend your time doing that you’d rather not? What are those things and what could you do about it? Are there things you think you waste your money on that you could spend (or save!) on things that are more in line with your heart and soul?
From keeping these two inventories over time, I was able to objectively see where I was spending my time and money, some of which aligned with my values, and other things that I’ve since either stopped or delegated where possible, so that I’m mostly content with how I spend my time and money.
I spend most of my time doing things that I genuinely enjoy, and I spend my money (after the necessaries have been taken care of like food and cat care) mostly on craft supplies, gifts for people, education/courses, and books.
It’s interesting that when I got clear about what I’m all about and what I’m doing with my life, I’m not spending nearly as much money on unnecessary stuff (possibly to numb being miserable deep down about what I was or wasn’t doing).
5) What are your strengths?
If you’ve been looking into anything to do with life purpose, you’ve probably come across the very important step of identifying your strengths. Knowing your strengths is an integral part of your life purpose, because these can serve as additional clues as to what you’ve naturally been gifted with – the universe has made certain things easy for you, or at least given you the opportunity to cultivate a strength if it wasn’t a natural strength initially.
I invite you now to delve into your strengths in two categories:
1. your natural born talents and strengths that come absolutely naturally and always have.
2. your talents or strengths that you’ve struggled to attain, or that you’ve had an opportunity to cultivate.
If you’re unsure what your strengths are, it could be a good idea to ask loved ones and people who know you well. Do a bit of investigation.
If you’re interested, you can check out and do a strengths profile on the VIA Institute website (I’ve done this and the results are interesting!)
Having said that, just because something is a strength, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s part of your life’s work or broader purpose, or that you have to make that your ‘thing.’ It’s fine to be good at gardening and herb growing, but not be a gardener or herbalist. It’s fine to have an eye for colour and organising spaces and not be an interior designer. You can absolutely keep a hobby a hobby (and deal with people who repeatedly suggest making a career out of it).
I went down the path of starting a craft business, but after much soul searching and reflection and a good dose of hermit time, I decided that this was not what I wanted to be doing. I’ve since decided to keep a hobby a hobby (because I love crafting and I admit I’m good at it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I ‘should’ make a career out of it or sell my wares), and make for the joy of it, for my family and other loved ones, and to help the animals (back to values and childhood!).
There may also be things that come so naturally to you that you don’t even realise they’re strengths – this is where asking others for their input, after you’ve done as much brainstorming as you can for yourself, can be helpful.
Knowing your strengths puts you in a good position to play to those in life.
6) If you had nine lives to live, what would you do in each of them?
Inspiration for this question came from Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artist’s Way’ (I chose nine lives because I’m a cat lady and it seemed fitting) and Barbara Sher’s ‘I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What That Was’. Some people have difficulty knowing what specifically to focus on at any one time in terms of what they want to do with their life. We have trouble committing to the one career for fear of neglecting or missing out on another strong interesting contender.
There are so many options, and one life to do them in (this time around anyway).
Letting ourselves imagine having multiple lives allows us to relax a little and indulge in that lack of focus while we explore what we might like to dedicate our lives to – no need to commit yet.
In my nine lives I may want to be a teacher, a writer, a hermit cottage witch in the woods, a magician’s assistant, a ski jumper, a fairy, a florist, a life drawing model, and a rabbit walker or rabbit sanctuary rescue founder (and trust me I have many more that I’ve considered, you don’t have to limit yourself to nine).
Go crazy with this exercise – nothing is off limits.
For one person I asked, she would be a stage actress, detective, forensic scientist, cat cuddler, and musician among others. For each of her lives, I asked her what specifically about them appealed to her enough to dedicate her entire life to. The responses were interesting and held many clues to the topic of life’s work.
It’s also useful to take this question a step further and ask yourself why a certain life would be worth living and why you would want to live it. Investigate (I’ll use this word a lot when talking about life purpose) what it is specifically about the life you might want to live that makes you want to dedicate your life to it.
For example, me wanting to be a hermit cottage witch in the woods is appealing because of the self-sufficiency aspect, while also having that much needed alone time in nature attuning myself to the natural cycles and the magic of nature.
Why this question is so important to me is because it taps into my fear of missing out. That mentality of “if I choose x then I’m missing out on y.” For example, “If I become a writer then I’ll miss out on fully committing myself to being a veterinarian” (I mean I could totally do both, but I’m just giving an example). Or “If I spend all my time working on being a tarot card reader, then I’ll be neglecting all the other things I could do that I’d like to do.”
What this exercise allows me to do is to get closer to a life that will truly light me up no matter how unusual and patch-worked together it is. It also allows me to envision a life where I can have multiple lives and do anything.
I’ve come to realise that I actually can do and be all of these things, just not all at once or at the same time. Having one (or two or three) to focus on at once is enough for me. I can get to the others at other times of this life.
You can take this exercise however you like and be and do whatever you like with your nine lives. Have fun.
7) If you had magic, what tasks would you use magic for, and what tasks would you just do without it?
This may be a weird one, but while I’ve been knitting cat blankets for shelters, I’ve been watching the TV show Once Upon a Time where there’s magic abound. I noticed how clean and orderly their houses always are, unless the whole point is to show how derelict and abandoned it is. There doesn’t seem to be an in-between – I feel like the rule is, unless the writers and directors are making a point of a house being messy to reflect character or for a particular illustrative purpose, house interiors are always spotless and well kept (no matter how many people live in the one tiny loft…).
Then I thought, well of course in this show their houses are always spotless and tidy, they’ve got magic! That certainly would simplify things.
Then that got me thinking… if I had magic, would I use it to clean the house? And then I thought, what would I use magic for if I had it?
I decided that for cooking I’d hands down use magic 100% of the time. But for cleaning and tidying, it brings me joy sometimes, so I’d only use magic when I felt overwhelmed by it. I remember going into my neighbour’s house a couple of years ago and thinking, how does she keep it so tidy?? But then I thought, well she does live alone, and I have two cats and a live-in partner sharing the house with me so there you go.
My sister and I would definitely use magic for transportation, but for my brother, he actually enjoys driving, and so – and I haven’t asked or verified this – he may only use magic for transportation some of the time.
Watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and reading the series of books, there’s a scene in the movie and mention in other books of knitting needles being bewitched to knit things for you. I decided I wouldn’t use magic for that, I enjoy the process of knitting. Same with gardening; I wouldn’t use magic because I enjoy it, but my neighbour who would often lament and procrastinate about gardening would probably use magic.
My point is that everyone has things that they enjoy, that might be what someone else strongly dislikes. Individual differences make the world interesting.
So, what would you use magic for? What would you do manually because you enjoy it on some level?
I invite you today, and days to come, to go about your day being curious; when engaging in a task ask yourself, if I had magic, would I be doing this manually or would I be whipping out my magic wand or waving my magic hands right now to get this done?
Question Time!
After that series of questions how do you feel?
What have been some of your personal insights?
Did you have fun or was it challenging?
Please leave your comments (or essays!) in the comment section below, or email me at [email protected] to have a chat with me.
Stay tuned next week for the second instalment where we bring some other very important questions into the mix to help you get closer to your life’s purpose and life’s work.
Keep being curious,
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