Living a purposeful life
Three ways to live a life of purpose
Are you living the life you wish to live?
Or are you living a life of comfortable complacency?
I believe we all have a mission or a calling in life. It might not be a big world wide mission like caring for the dying as Mother Teresa felt called to do. Instead, it might be a way that you impact the local environment that you live in. It might be the role model that you provide for your children. It might be a cause that you created out of a tragedy that impacted you personally. It might be a passion that you have to make the environment a better cleaner place. Sometimes it takes a near disaster to call attention to how we are living our lives out of alignment with our calling. Covid has been a wake up call for many in this regard. Whatever, your mission, it is something you have been uniquely gifted and positioned to do.
Living Life Intentionally
How do you live so that you experience life as full and abundant? First, it takes a change in your mindset. Rather than looking at life as something that happens to you, you begin to see life as something you create. Much like a writer writes a story or a film-maker creates a film, your job is to determine the plot, the direction of the story arc of your life. Of course you can’t control everything. I understand that. But the one thing that you can always control is your reaction. You can control what you do with the events that occur. You can begin to look for the possibilities in everything. In many ways Covid has created an environment where you can either give in to the despair and worry around you or, you can remain open to the possibilities of the situation. Sometimes you even create change!
Living A Balanced Life
When we fail to be intentional about where we are going in life, one of the consequences is often a life out of balance. Generally, this means that we invest too much time and energy in one area and neglect other equally important areas. For instance, we may invest in our work and neglect family or friends or our spiritual growth. We may invest in our family, but never set aside time for our own personal growth. Lives are never perfectly balanced and there are certainly particular seasons of our lives that call for sacrifices in one area or another. However, if we consistently starve one area of our life of time, attention or energy, then we will one day discover that we have created a situation that may be hard to restore.
Live a life of courage
Finally, to live a life of purpose we have to relegate fear to it’s proper place in our lives. While we can never live life as completely fearless, (it would actually be dangerous to do so), we can make sure that our fears don’t drive or control our lives. When fear is in charge and we are afraid of making mistakes or failing, we live lives that are small and limited. Instead, live from your heart with passion. The word courage actually comes from the word, cour or heart. A person of courage is someone who is living with an open heart.
Stories only happen to people who can tell them. Lou W. Stanek, author, critic and teacher
