The Power of Purpose in Life

Importance of finding the purpose of life

What it is like getting into a car, fully dressed up, with tank full of petrol, but do not know where to go?  This kind of journey will take the passenger nowhere but keeps him on the road, taking him through the twists and turns to eventually bring him back to where he started the journey.

Human life is synonymous to a vehicle on the move. Like a conventional car driver having full control of the car while it is moving, one also has to have full control of one’s life to direct him towards one’s set of desired objectives. Like any journey begins with the knowledge of the destination to be reached, life also has to have a clear knowledge of its destination. The destination in life is nothing but what one wants to be in life, like a doctor, a surgeon, an astronomer, a scientist, a bio-technologist, a businessman, a musician, and many more and above all a good human being.

When one’s higher purpose is known and is clearer, then the most crucial activities like framing the road map, or preparing a concrete plan to achieve what one aspires to be, would begin. The road map needs to be divided into short and medium term plans with the expected end results and the time domain.

When we have the plan with clear end results and dates ready, it is like having a Google map in our hand to reach our destination. So, like our physical journey, life’s journey also will be that much easier.

Though the above facts are not something unknown to people, then why is that we see a majority of the people of our society struggle and wander around with no aim in life? 

It is partly because we have been brainwashed by everyone around us, from our childhood days to put an effort to survive in life. Surviving in life is akin to walking on a tight rope with a pole in hand. There is always a risk of falling. When we are in college, all our hard work, night outs, sweat outs are just to get good scores, so that we get jobs in good companies. Our only purpose to study is for a degree certificate and good scores, nothing beyond that. It is just learn to earn.

Once we join any company, our daily chores and struggle is only for getting good performance rating so that we qualify for appreciation and salary hikes. We call this as progress. The purpose is very shallow here, and it doesn’t inspire us. When we tend to lead a pocket to mouth life like this, one day we suddenly realize we are redundant for the company, and may get laid off. Inspite of this, if we continue leading life in a similar way further, we may end up becoming redundant in life too, making life very problematic and troublesome, littered with fear of failures and all adversities of pitfall in life.

The solution to this life’s problem lies in finding a long-term, meaningful and, yet demanding purpose. It should be strong enough to inspire and engage us with the purpose passionately.

So, why is “finding purpose” in life so important?

Answer to this question is that, our happiness, which is so precious, is tied to this and our much- required self-esteem is hinged on the purpose of life. Anyone who has no purpose in life, there is a high probability that he/ she will suffer from low self-esteem, which is one of the main reasons for sadness, depression and may eventually trigger suicidal thoughts.

The purpose is like a ‘mission statement’ for the individual, which in turn states why that individual exists. It also states the objective behind one being alive. This is similar to the mission statement of any company. The mission statement conveys the objective behind the starting of a company.

For example, mission statement of Face book says “Face book’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”. Similarly, for Google it “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. For Microsoft it is “Microsoft’s mission is to enable people and businesses throughout the world, to realize their full potential”, etc.

The higher the purpose in life, higher is the self-esteem resulting in higher level of happiness and joy.

To explain a bit more in detail, we know that most of the people in modern societies work day-in day-out from early morning to late in the night like machines. When we ask them the reason behind their work, most have either no answer, or give some vague answers like payment of housing mortgages, repayment of loans or even educating their kids etc. The purpose behind their work seems to be too shallow, as it is not positive enough to give them the happiness.

When compared to the above case, consider someone who is working hard doing day-to-day chores, but with higher purpose. Consider this.

For example, if one’s purpose in life were to become a leading scientist, experimenting on the future technologies, he would make sure that his daily chores include something that takes him near his goal. He would generally be joyful. This is because; he is enthusiastically visualizing himself approaching his life’s goal on a day-to-day basis. He too may work as hard or harder than others but the purpose to work is not to payback his loans, educate his kids, etc. but to work towards turning his dream into a reality, and his hard work fetches him good returns like name, fame, money, etc and hence it is joyful.