How to Use Purpose to Transform Your Life

By Peter Montoya
Leadership Strategist, Speaker & Author

How would you like a tool that radically transforms your life and everyone around you? If you want MASSIVE motivation, better health, and ability to turn any job (or negative experience) into something inspiring, then invest in purpose.

Purpose is more than only finding your calling. It’s also about engaging with the world from the lens of empowered meaning where (1) you decide the significance of everything around you and (2) how you’ll craft that to your advantage.

But first, you need to create your purpose.

Find Your Purpose

Purpose combines three core elements:

• What you’re good at (or want to become good at)
• What you love;
• Where you want to make a meaningful difference.

It’s a simple format, but can take time to craft a purpose so meaningful it fires up your life.

No one can tell you what should or shouldn’t be your purpose (otherwise, you’re not living authentically [insert link]) Purpose is personal and changes over time, so don’t be worried if yours does too.

List out all your skills, passions, and areas of contribution that are meaningful to you. Then see how you can work them together into one cohesive contribution.

Your purpose could be to combine your drawing abilities with your love of the environment to help create motivational artwork to combat climate change. It could be to combine your organizational skills with your love of helping children to volunteer as an administrative assistant at a local charity.

Live Your Purpose: Job-Craft

Once you have your purpose, start practicing it, first, through job-crafting.

Job-crafting is creating the kind of job you want out of the job you have. It’s actively bringing your purpose (skills + passions + contribution) into your work. If you’re an accountant and you’d rather be a fiction writer, that could mean writing more engaging reports with fiction writing skills. If you’re working as a server but would rather be an actor, try serving using a variety of characters to entertain customers and bring joy.

Live Your Purpose: Meaning-Craft

Second, meaning-craft. This involves using any (and I mean ANY) experience to further your purpose. If your purpose is to build a business empire and you get laid off from work, use the  experience as part of your entrepreneurial story: search for new opportunities, and view it as a growth opportunity to develop determination (trust me; as an entrepreneur, you’ll need loads of determination).

If your purpose is to raise wonderful children and you similarly get laid off, use that experience to show them how to successful overcome adversity. Anything can be meaning-crafted. Read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning if you need convincing.

My Invitation

Purpose is life transforming. In our coming future, with dangers known and unknown, we need everyone to bring their full lives, passions, and purpose into fruition to help. Doing so will not only help our own lives and our people’s, it will make our entire species flourish.

Peter Montoya is the best-selling author of “The Brand Called You” and his latest books, “Meetings Without Walls” & “Leadership Power”. He’s also a sought-after and highly motivational keynote speaker and leadership development strategist, specializing in developing high-performance teams. To find Peter, visit www.PeterMontoya.com or call (949) 334-7070.

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Interesting related article: “What is Motivation?“