How to Find the Purpose of Life (A Case Study of a High-Powered Woman)

How to Find the Purpose of Life (A Case Study of a High-Powered Woman)

Dr. Kerry Petsinger

To join people from 167 countries who have used Kerry's "30 Powerful Questions to Find Your Passion" workbook, visit www.kerrypetsinger.com. Full Bio

As a mindset and performance coach, I help people achieve Success that Matters®. My clients create high performance in what matters most to them, resulting in a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment. I’m going to share with you the transformation of a recent client and how you can use these same strategies to create a life of purpose and find your true meaning of life.

How to find the purpose of life and live a fulfilling life

“Ding,” my phone beeped at me, signaling a new potential coaching client had filled out my pre-interview questionnaire. She was successful in her career and enjoyed the challenge of her work. But like many of my ambitious clients, she was struggling to balance her work and her personal life. She started to feel lost about her goals in life.

This is how I met her, Jenny (alias), a high-powered career woman.

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Jenny’s career had gradually crept all over her calendar, and she was trying to cram her personal life around the edges. From the time she woke up in the morning until going to bed, emails marked ‘urgent’ from colleagues and clients flooded her inbox. She spent a lot of time putting out fires and responding to the demands of others. Her self-care had dwindled. She had little time to nurture her most important relationships with family and friends.

She was feeling overwhelmed with her never-ending to-do list and was wondering if the life she imagined living was even possible.

During her interview call with me, I knew I could help her. I’ve helped hundreds of high achievers with the struggles she faced, and was confident that 8 weeks later her life would look much different.

And it did.

The positive results 8 weeks later

In our weeks together, she achieved the following results:

Achieved her ideal work-life rhythm (without sacrificing her career success)

Began an exercise habit

Created time to nurture new friendships

Streamlined her workflow in her career and personal life

Created the space to realize a big dream and make an action plan to achieve it

Defined success on her terms and built her life around what matters most to her

Felt a sense of purpose and fulfillment

Here is a breakdown of the 4 strategies I used with Jenny. You, too, can use these strategies to find your purpose of life and your sense of significance.

1. Define your true priorities and eliminate false objectives

To live your extraordinary life, you’ll need to live YOUR life, not somebody else’s.

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Often, we live our lives how others want us to live. We build our daily habits and schedules around what our families, friends, and society want for us. We are a product of our surroundings.

It takes guts to live your life according to your true priorities, especially when your priorities differ from the people around you. When you have the courage to build your life around what matters most to you, you live authentically and your days become filled with a stronger sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Remember:

In today’s high-pressure, crazy-busy world, it is very easy to stray away from your true priorities and build a life around false objectives. False objectives are the goals you’re working toward that don’t align with what matters most to you and the person you most want to be.

For some people, climbing the corporate ladder is a false objective because they desire more than anything to take some time away from their career to stay home with their young kids. For others, having a large home mortgage is a false objective, because they would love the freedom to travel the world.

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In order to feel fulfilled, it’s important to closely evaluate your life and be 100% honest with yourself on the following questions:

What matters most to you?

What false objectives are you working toward?

It’s important to identify and eliminate the false objectives in your life. When you eliminate the false objectives, you begin focusing your life on what matters most to you; and, it gives you the space to create your authentic, extraordinary life.

2. Develop a crystal-clear vision of the life you desire

As you define your true priorities, you can start developing a vision for the life you desire.

How will you build your life around your priorities?

Write down everything you can think of about the life you desire. Then work on believing it’s possible to achieve it. This can be really difficult, but it’s crucial.

If traveling is one of your biggest priorities, and you deeply desire to create a freedom-based career with a laptop lifestyle allowing you to work from anywhere in the world, you’ll need to believe it’s possible. If deep down you believe that it’s not possible for you to break free from the 9-5 in the cubicle, you won’t take the steps necessary to break free from the office.

If you say writing is very important to you and your biggest ambition is to become a New York Times bestselling author, but deep down you believe that you’ll never finish writing your book, the actions you take every day are going to align with your disbelief. When you’re not feeling motivated to write, you won’t. When you’re feeling defeated, you’ll quit.

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What you believe about yourself–and what you believe is possible for yourself–affects how you show up every day to achieve your biggest goal.

Get clear about the life you desire, and work on believing it’s possible to achieve it.

3. Create a plan to achieve your vision

Let’s use the bestselling author example again.

If your biggest ambition is to become a New York Times bestselling author, because you want to write about a topic that matters a lot to you and make a difference in the lives of many with your words, you’ll need a plan to achieve that vision.

Hope is not a strategy. You’ll need a plan.

You’ll need to develop a writing habit. You’ll need to research how to get published. You’ll need to learn how to effectively market the book or how to hire somebody to market it for you.

Create a specific plan and give yourself deadlines to achieve it.

4. Deal with resistance effectively

Every day, when you are working on building your life around your true priorities and your big vision, you’ll face resistance. Your life will probably look something like this:

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This resistance occurs in many forms including:

Fear of failure

Fear of success

Fear of standing out from the crowd

Fear that what you believe is possible maybe isn’t really possible for you

Feeling tired or unmotivated

Distractions

Interruptions

You will be bombarded every day with many things that attempt to distract you away from your true priorities.

It’s important to run YOUR race, live YOUR life, focus on what matters to YOU, and build your life around YOUR vision.

You’ll face a lot of resistance, and it’s important to have strategies in place to deal with your resistance effectively, so you’re able to stay on track even during tough times.

Follow those steps and everything changes

When you’re clear about what you truly desire and what matters most to you, and you develop a plan to achieve your big vision, everything changes.

You feel more focused and you make decisions that align with your true priorities.

You find the purpose of life.

You show up with more passion and enthusiasm.

You build your life around what matters most to you, and life becomes very fulfilling.