When I was young, my father gave my brothers and I some of the best life advice about finding purpose in how we live. In this article, I want to share with you that valuable advice with the hope that it helps you find more happiness and purpose in your own life.
As kids, we all have our dreams about what we want to be when we grow up. Some of us wanted to be astronauts, cowboys, doctors, nurses, or anything else under the sun. When my brothers and I would tell our parents what we wanted to be when we grew up, my father always responded the same way…
He told us that it didn’t matter what we chose to do when we grew up, what mattered was who we became. He told us that we would always have our parents support as long as we found a way to do three things with our lives…
First, we needed to be genuinely happy with the life that we chose to live (regardless of what others thought).
Second, we needed to live life passionately and fully invest ourselves into what we chose to do with our lives.
And third, we needed to find ways to make the lives of those around us better by how we lived our own lives.
He made it clear that our life’s purpose shouldn’t be to accumulate wealth or to find fame or fortune but to find our own personal purpose in what we chose to do with our lives, how we chose to live them and how we found ways to make the lives of those around us better.
His famous quote to my brothers and I was, “I don’t care if you decide that you want to sell fruit on the street corner, as long as you’re happy, we’ll support you.”
If you are looking to find more purpose in how you live, hopefully you can take away the same value that I did from this simple lesson. Live the life you want to live while following three rules and see what happens…
Rule #1: Follow your heart.
To be happy in life we have to follow our own hearts, not the hearts of others. My dad’s point with the selling fruit example was that if selling fruit made us happy than we would have our parents support even if they wouldn’t have made the same choice. The truth is, not everyone will support the choices you make in life and that’s ok. Follow your heart anyway. Don’t make trying to please other people your only purpose in life because it will suck your happiness away.
Rule #2: Live life passionately.
What does it really mean to live life passionately? To my father, being passionate meant investing yourself whole-heartedly in what you do and how you live. It meant caring about what you did and how you did it. It meant taking pride in how you lived.
He taught us that by investing yourself whole-heartedly in how you live, you could take pride in the life you lived because you were showcasing the talents God gave you. Even if we didn’t love a sport, school, or a job, we were taught to do it passionately anyway. He taught us that being passionate shouldn’t just apply to the parts of life we liked most. To passionate meant to be proud and to be proud meant being passionate.
Sometimes it takes us a while to find out what we want to do with our lives or what parts of life bring us the most happiness. Don’t wait until you find your life’s purpose to start living life passionately. Pour passion into each and every moment you have air in your lungs. Life your entire life passionately.
And last but not least, Rule #3: Find ways to make the lives of those around you better.
Living passionately is one thing, but I’ve learned that finding true purpose in how you live comes from finding a way to connect your life to something greater than just yourself. When your life becomes a tool to make the world a better place, you’ll find purpose in each and every part of your life because of what your life represents.
Now, go out and live a purposeful life!
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