Living Your Life, On Purpose 

Have you ever asked yourself, “What’s my purpose?” In the early 2000’s, there was a popular book called “The Purpose Driven Life." It’s a powerful devotional book used by millions worldwide to figure out what their purpose is from a spiritual standpoint. Why? Most people want to have (and know) what their reason is for existing!

Within this very community, we have stories about how to find your purpose and about those who found their purpose. I believe that you can find your purpose when you live your life on purpose by doing three things: being intentional about simple things, counting it all as joy, and paying your blessing forward.

Be intentional about simple things

If you have a daily routine long enough, you start doing things without thinking about them. This is great if time management is your goal. However, you may lose yourself in everything else but YOU without knowing it! You might also forget about the joy you had doing some of those simple things.

For example, I think most people (regardless of gender) like dressing up. Now, ask yourself when is the last time you held a fashion show to remind yourself how good you look. Maybe you like cooking. Do you still enjoy it like you used to? Take time out of your day to be intentional about enjoying some of the simple things.

Another good practice is thinking about how you will handle stressful situations BEFORE they happen. Give yourself time to prepare your response in a way that might help minimize the stress. These things will help you live your life on purpose each day.

Count it all as joy

Living your life on purpose involves learning how to deal with mistakes, failures, or disappointments. Negativity is a POWERFUL force! I heard it takes five positive thoughts to overcome a negative one. Focusing on negative things weighs a person down. If not handled properly, you may feel like a victim of what happened.

Change how you deal with these negatives. Gain control of how much peace you have in your life. Having more peace makes it easier to live your life on purpose. By controlling your reaction to the negative, you are no longer a victim! So, how do you do that? Remember – every mistake, failure, or disappointment is a learning opportunity. Focus on why it happened, not what happened. Then, avoid doing it again. Top that off with some gratitude that you can change that negative into a positive. Count it all as joy! Being joyful gives you more of a reason to live your life on purpose each day.

Pay your blessing forward

Paying it forward also helps you live your life on purpose. If you have never heard of this concept, it is simple. If someone does something nice for you, do something nice for someone else. You may wonder how this helps. When you focus on paying someone back, you typically limit it to one gesture. Paying it forward opens a world of possibilities. You are no longer limited to what you can do to repay one person. You can pay it forward to ANYONE ANYTIME doing ANYTHING!

If this is done, especially when they aren’t asking or don’t expect it, you might find yourself thinking of all the ways you were blessed by others. You might want to do the same (or better) for someone else and in even more ways. In doing this, you will probably notice that one or two ways bring you the most joy. That joy may mean you’ve probably found something you are meant to do – your purpose.

Live life again - on purpose!

Sometimes having a chronic medical condition like heart failure makes it hard to see the beauty of life anymore. As patients, we tend to focus more on surviving than living our lives. For some, just the thought of trying to “have a life” again seems impossible. 

Fortunately, just like any other part of our survival and recovery, having a life on purpose is possible by taking one step at a time. Being intentional, counting it all as joy, and paying your blessings forward can help you live your life on purpose. If we try to put a little of each of these into our daily routines, there is a chance that we might not only find our purpose but can also overcome our health conditions mentally. We are no longer surviving, we are living again. The difference is that this time around, we are living on purpose.

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