[di meliora]

The more you infuse your thoughts, emotions and behavior with life-affirming energy – love, kindness, compassion, generosity, justice – you keep your self-interest at bay, and you're more able to find and achieve your true purpose.

Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., begins by telling us:

Like many of us, you might feel that there’s a true purpose to your life but you haven’t yet found or discovered it, especially when trapped within a life that’s unfulfilling or feels out of synch with your true purpose for being. Teachings of Eastern mystics say each of us have a particular purpose in life, though we might not know how to recognize it. Interestingly, some new research suggests ways to discover and pursue your true purpose. Moreover, having a purpose in life is found to protect yourself from mental decline – not a bad bi-product. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-lifes-purpose

I have taken many aptitude tests and have scoured career manuals to help put me on to the purpose that would make my life more meaningful. The process was interesting, but simply told me I had no overtly discernible purpose that I was aware of.

As with many things, whatever purpose I have found was distinguished by trial and err.

Is purpose maybe getting confused with a vocation? I'm not sure if what I think of as purpose has as much to do with ones career choices as somehow finding a peace with ones existance.

That said ones day to day occupation can go hand in hand with ones inner purpose.

An inner purpose eludes many....me too.

Nailing down a method to inner peace in order to find acceptance of self and surroundings seems to be the thing. If part of that is a choice of lifes work or direction then I'm guessing perhaps that can be part of it. Not all perhaps but to degrees certainly part. Yoik!...it's a tough knot to unravel Di Meliora.

Now to get to your link...I should have checked it out prior to writing here but being the impulsive type just went ahead with my thoughts.

Thanks for the post. I often wonder about this.

[HappiestGirl]

I'm an artist trying to make it in a corporate world. It's hard to love something and also make it your life vocation. Pick up hobbies that you think you might be good at. Crafts, gardening, restoration, writing, drawing or painting. Work with your hands and you'll find your working with your head too. Everyone has a talent but you need to try different things to find out what it is.

[Nicks_Nose]

I want to make a difference in life and I think society's protestant work ethic has definitely influenced me in life, however I am in a life rut and have not moved anywhere in a career path or made any roads in social changes in society as I have wanted to. Now, at the age of 47, I feel no purpose and as if I have no identifiable skills.

While I know that this is logically not true, our society, especially the labor force, has been telling us constantly how to improve, how to add, how to correct, how to strengthen etc, etc,....constantly indicating that we are never good enough. Constructive criticism has rarely told us what we have done well. This has lefft many people wondering what, if anything, can they do well. While this mostly applies to the work force, it does get taken home into other environments.

Schools tell us what we do wrong and what we should aim to achieve. Strive for better all the time. At home, parents are being told they should be raising little einsteins or gretzkies, or trumps. It is easy to lose direction in life as the world around us is telling what we must be or should be.

.......de mello

........this is were I started.....it took me around two years to read this book

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvin.../oneminute.doc

........spiritual crap....no reference to religion....."it's an inside job"

“Is there such a thing as One Minute Wisdom?’ “There certainly is,” said the Master. “But surely one minute is too brief?” “It is fifty-nine seconds too long. “
To his puzzled disciples the Master later said. “How much time does it take to catch sight of the moon?”
“Then why all these years of spiritual endeavour?”
“Opening one’s eyes may take a lifetime. Seeing is done in a flash. “

....do not believe what the eyes are seeing...
....when the imagination is out of focus.....................~samuel clemens

The secret to life's purpose is that there isn't one...

[eloquentdisaster]

"You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
--Albert Camus

I believe that. I don't really think about a meaning or purpose to life. For me, there is no reason to.

[Nicks_Nose]

Thank you eloquent. I like that quote. However, while I have been living my life day by day , whimsically taking life as it comes to me, a little planning might have helped me too

I am too impulsive haha.

[eloquentdisaster]

Originally Posted by Nicks_Nose

Thank you eloquent. I like that quote. However, while I have been living my life day by day , whimsically taking life as it comes to me, a little planning might have helped me too

I am too impulsive haha.

Haha, I know what you mean. I don't think it means don't plan, though. I have a pretty strict plan for a certain part of my life (I'm very impulsive, too! I also need plans ) but I don't search for meaning in them. I'm not saying you should live according to that. Something work for some while for others they don't

[tooski]

Maybe our true purpose in life is unknowable? I agree that purpose and vocation may be two separate things.

For example, someone came into my life briefly and actually changed my life. And he never even knew it, didn't have a clue as to the huge effect he had on me. And never will. (Don't mean to be mysterious, it's just a long story, too long for here.) I'm not saying that was his true purpose in life, but he unknowingly changed my life.

Another example, but fictitious - A guy is in a bank when a robbery begins, and is killed by a bullet that would have killed a pregnant woman if he hadn't happened to accidentally be standing where he was. In time, the woman has her baby who grows up and finds a cure for cancer. Maybe that man's true purpose in life was to be standing in that place at that time and save the life of that child.

Interesting post, de meliora - thanks for making me think.