A Purpose Driven Life
Simplifies Career Decision Making

What Is The Purpose Driven Life?

After Pastor Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven® Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? made it to bestseller status, PDL has become one of those modern catchphrases that everyone drops in conversation, expecting that everyone else knows what they are talking about.

So what exactly does it mean to live a life of purpose?

Does a purpose driven life have anything to contribute to our concerns about career decisions and career choices?

My Introduction To The Purpose Driven Life

I have been greatly helped in my understanding of the purpose driven life by the message of Rick Warren's book. I believe many lives too have been touched by his clear, readable style and his passion for living a life according to God's purpose, which is what the book is all about.

Do you know what the first line of the book says?

Here it is, word for word.

"It's not about you."

Is there any statement more in-your-face than that?

I suspect one reason why it makes me so uncomfortable and ashamed is that some part of me knows he is speaking the truth.

Let me explain.

What Personal Development Experts Teach

How do self-help gurus attract attention from potential clients? If you've ever been to a motivational seminar or scanned the self-help shelf at the book store, you'll know the formula.

It goes something like this.

Apply these success principles (or natural laws or laws of the universe), and you will instantly and dramatically:

• transform your life
• become wildly successful
• attract more of what you want into your life
• become wealthier than you ever imagined.

One can be forgiven for thinking that the purpose of living is all about you and me. How to get more of what we want. How to enjoy ourselves as much as we can. To be fair, some authors do take pains to educate their readers that wealth and fame are just tools to a greater good. But it's easy to lose sight of the message when the medium seems to promote the sensational.

The Meaning Of Life vs. A Life Of Meaning

What if Rick is right and life's not just about us?

Suppose we've made a mistake, got our priorities upside down. What if it's true that we are not created for our own ends? If we are not here to live lives of pleasure and ease, or to gather riches for ourselves, but are part of God's divine plan to help more people live a purpose driven life?

What would living and working within the framework of a purpose driven life mean for your career?

How would it affect the choices you make about the work you do?

Finding Life Purpose And The Meaning Of Life

Questions about life purpose and the meaning of life have fascinated me since I was a teen.

Adolescence is the time in your life when you're especially unsure of your place in this world. You've left childish things behind (hopefully). You're almost an adult. But you still have so many questions, the kind no amount of schooling can prepare you for.

Five Common Ultimate Questions

Who am I?

Where am I going?

What is my place in this world?

What am I here for? What is my life purpose?

How do I live a purpose driven life, one that is full of joy, fulfillment and passion?

These are what I call Ultimate Questions. They rise from a deep inner desire to make sense of the world and our place in it. They are questions we never stop seeking answers to, even when we're "grown up". Some of us can spend our entire lives searching for satisfying answers.

Your 'Why' And Why It Matters

What's life purpose got to do with your career?

Consider this.

Whatever you believe and value touches the work of your hands, like ripples that move outwards in concentric circles.

If your life purpose is your driving force, then it will determine the choices and decisions you make. These include choices and decisions about your career.

When you have taken the time to order your inner world and to work out what drives you, you can begin to make career choices and career decisions that are compatible with your beliefs. You can choose work that energizes and excites you.

Your work becomes an extension of everything that you hold dear. It is no longer a bane, a chore or a mere means to survival.

Spirituality And Life Purpose

Spirituality can have a profound impact on mental health and wellbeing.

Just because we have conditioned ourselves to be constantly busy and occupied does not mean that that is the best or only way to live.

If life is a coin, then the everyday is just one side of it. The other side is the spiritual - the deep instinctive concern and curiosity we have about the eternal and the invisible.

Physical vs. Spiritual

Transient vs. Eternal

Visible vs. Invisible

Outer vs. Inner

Yin vs. Yang

There is a beautiful symmetry and balance to life that we often fail to acknowledge. If we neglect one or pay too much attention to the other, we will suffer an imbalance in the quality of our living.

Finding your life purpose and using it to help you live a purpose driven life is part of what it means to be spiritual. When you know what drives you, you gain something of far more value than a pay raise or a job promotion.

A sense of destiny.

The excitement of knowing who you are and whose you are.

A buzz of purpose, passion and clarity.

A reason to wake up every morning.

Except for the financially desperate,
people do not work for money alone.
What also fuels their passion for work is
a larger sense of purpose or passion.
Given the opportunity, people gravitate to what gives them meaning,
to what engages to the fullest their commitment,
talent, energy and skill.

Daniel Goleman, Working With Emotional Intelligence

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