52-Week Challenge: Week Twenty

This post is delayed a bit, but I was busy yesterday celebrating my FIRST Mother's Day with my beautiful little boy and my husband.  I hope all you mothers were treated to something special yesterday, and I hope all you non-mothers did something special for your own mothers. :)

Anyway, moving on to this week's challenge.  The challenge is entitled "Live with Purpose."  Sounds vague, but the author says we are to "find your purpose in life and live it every day."  Wow.  That's not intimidating or anything.  Way to lay one on us, Blumenthal.

For all practical reasons, living with purpose means being proactive in creating the life you want while also creating a life with meaning and significance.  Having purpose makes it easier to make decisions, take responsibility, and choose which path to make while standing at a cross-roads.  The key is FINDING this purpose.  Brett Blumenthal gives some advice on how to do this:

First and foremost, answer these questions about yourself as honestly as you can:
1.  What do you want?  Be honest about this.  Don't answer in a way that you THINK you should or answer it based on anger or fear.  Sit down and honestly think:  When I'm 80, what will I have wanted to accomplish in my life?  What do I want my child to think of me?  If I died, what would my eulogy say? Be honest, but also be realistic.  ;)
2.  What are your passions?  What is it in your life that brings you the most joy?  What do you do because you WANT to, not because you have to?  THAT is your passion.
3.  What are your strengths?  Easy enough:  what do you do best?  This should be almost automatic.  If you have to think to hard about it, then it's probably not truly one of your strengths.
4.  What matters most to you?  Is there something that lights a fire in your belly?  Is there something in this world you want to change or make better?

Answering these questions should help you come up with a mission statement.  Sounds corny, I know, but I believe this will ultimately have value if you sit down and do it.  In a few sentences, describe your purpose in life.  Include everything you just reflected on:  your wants, passions, strengths, and things you care about.  Basically, why are you here?  What do you want to contribute to the world?  What kind of influence do you want to have?

Having your mission plan written down will help you make goals and plans for you life.  If a decision needs to be made, choose the solution that best goes along with fulfilling your purpose.  Set goals and try your hardest to reach them.  Choosing your activities for the day will be easier (and more structured) if you have a PURPOSE to them.

So, I guess for this week, the main thing you should try to do is to answer the above questions and come up your mission statement.  Find your purpose for life and, as soon as you have it, start living it.  I'm actually excited about this.  I have a general idea of what I for my life, but sitting down and really making it something concrete can only help me.  I'm going to go out on a limb and share that mission statement with you in next week's blog.  I hope you're willing to share too!

Good luck!