How to Align Your Life Purpose with Your Career

Most of my clients come to me when their energy tank is empty.

 

They are so unhappy in their career and it seems to spill out onto all other areas of their life. In the past, at times, I have been in that place as well.

What I have realized, is that if you align your life purpose with your career, you can start getting your energy tank back to full.

What is a life purpose? It’s like the North Star. It steers us on a course through life that resonates deeply with the truth of who we are.

How do you figure out your life purpose?

And here is an even tougher question, once you find it, how do you align it with your career?

In the process of becoming a certified coach, I have taken in-depth courses on purpose, goal setting and harnessing your intuition with the Coaches Training Institute. They have developed an exercise to create the first draft of your life purpose, which I am going to share with you here.

*** Warning: You are about to take three guided inner journeys! I recommend you do this in a calm space and take a few deep breaths before each journey. ***

After each of these journeys, take some notes of what you experienced.

Journey #1

Turn the clock back and look at a time in your life when you felt your full power – a time when your spine, arms and fingertips were tingling with excitement, a time when you simply didn’t care what anyone thought of you. You were absolutely alive!

Where were you? What were you doing? Who was around you? What was your impact on them? (Write your notes here before proceeding.)


Journey #2

You’ve been given a billboard and can put any message you can on it. Thousands of people will drive by and see your billboard each day. What does it say?

What does it say? Write your notes.


Journey #3

You are getting into a rocket ship. The rocket ship takes off. You are on your way to an underdeveloped planet in the universe. It’s a fine planet in every way, but it’s uninhabited. You can create this planet however you want it to be created. When you land, what is it that you’re going to make happen? What’s the impact you want to have? How will the planet be?

Please don’t skip over it, take a moment to write your answers.


After you’ve completed the three journeys, look at your notes and incorporate the common themes between them to come up with the first draft of your life purpose.

What were some of the metaphors that might have come up?

As you connect the dots of the three exercises, what were the impact you had on yourself, others, and the planet?

Then, as you come up with the first draft of your life purpose, it might look something like this:
I am the (fill in the metaphor), who (fill in your impact).

Mine is: “I am the firefly that illuminates your heart.”

This might seem like a simple exercise, however, if you spend time honestly answering the questions, it can have a great impact on your life. That’s what it’s provided for me and many other clients I have worked with lately.

Once you have a rough draft of your life purpose statement, then how can you align it with your career?

Ask yourself…is my life purpose statement showing up in the work that I do? If so, how can I
make it even more so? If not, what can I do to start making it show up?
Once your life, career and life purpose are aligned, you’ll start to experience true joy.

If this has been an intriguing exercise for you, sometimes it can help to excavate your life purpose statement with a mentor or coach in order for it to have its fullest impact in your life.

Feel free to connect with me if you’d like a little more clarity on your life purpose and how to align it with the work that you do every day.

Here’s to you being the CEO of Your Life!