Finding Your Life Purpose

Happiness expert and psychologist Robert Holden shares how you can fi nd your life purpose.

- Robert Holden

LIFE IS SUCH A MYSTERY. When you really think about how we just arrive, it’s really quite something. That we just arrive with very little explanation for why we have a life as a human being. Why do we show up as humans and not as whales, for instance? Joseph Campbell said something like “Life is rather like showing up in the middle of the movie, having to find out what’s happened already and then also having to leave before the end of the movie.” And I think that’s sort of how it is: we get dropped into our life and there is such a great mystery to it and I think that the purpose on one level is to try to make sense of it all. I think it is also the feeling of wanting to somehow make the most of our life, to be able to do something precious with the gift of having a life. How can we make the most of this opportunity? How can we encounter the mystery where we can somehow navigate our life and find a way to enjoy it?

THE INQUIRY INTO PURPOSE

There are so many ways into purpose. One of them is to begin to notice stirrings inside yourself, where you begin to notice that there are times when you feel more alive than others, and then to ask: What is that aliveness telling me about myself ?

In some ways a purpose is to want to be the most alive that you can be in your life, not just getting through the day and ending up tired and exhausted so that you have to sleep at the end of the day, but more a feeling of being alive so that you encounter the day in such a way that you are living it rather than trying to get through it.