The term “purpose anxiety” is a new and first-heard term to many people. However, it is on the rise, especially in young people.
Children are asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and they almost always have an answer full of big dreams, big hopes, and big goals. As those children spend more time in the world and become teenagers, they often lose that ambition they once held with their childhood dream career and find themselves without an answer.
Those teenagers turn into high school graduates, college students, and young adults who have to take the “What do you want to be when you grow up?” question more seriously as they pick jobs and majors. Moreover, many of those people find themselves more clueless than a 5-year-old when it comes to discovering what they want to do in life, often causing anxiety.
With that being said, the purpose of this article is to help you find your purpose. Discover your purpose by asking these 5 simple questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why?
- Who are you?
The first and most important question is, “Who?” You must know who you are before you begin anything or you will start to only become what you do. A piece of advise, or encouragement to some, what you do is not who you are. Often times, your purpose is already embedded into who you are. Therefore, before you can find your purpose, you must find who you are.
2. What do you want?
The word “want” is a word of many layers. If you were hungry and somebody asked you, “What do you want?” Your answer would probably include food. Although, your purpose in life is not to be hungry and in want of food. You have to dig a little deeper, cut some layers, and find the things you really want in life. Find what drives you, but you would walk for. The things that you care a lot about and would do even if you never got paid for it, that is your purpose.
3. When can you do it?
Trick question. The answer is right now. You do not have to wait until what you believe is the right time to start living your purpose. Your purpose is who you are, and it is meant to be lived right now. Stop listening to excuses, and start listening to your purpose.
4. Where can you do it?
If you can start right now, then you can start right where you are. However, there is always a limit in your environment. Television host Steve Harvey once said, “If you take an oak tree seed, and you put it in a two-foot pot. That seed will never become the oak tree that oak trees are capable of becoming. “The seed has the purpose of becoming a tall, strong oak tree within it. But placed in the wrong environment, it will never grow to its full purpose. You can start living your purpose right here, right now. But to grow in your purpose, you may have to change environments.”
5. Why do you want to?
Why do you want to do this? If your “who” is your foundation, then your “why” is your cornerstone. Your “why” is what you grow and build on, and it is what you come back to when there seems to be no growth. Your “why” is the reason it is your purpose.
Who? What? When? Where? Why? Take some time to evaluate these questions within yourself, and believe in the purpose that already resides in you.
