Revisiting my Purpose

It's been many weeks since I posted about my purpose in life. In fact I haven't posted anything at all because at first I wasn't even sure if I wanted to continue this blog. I was worried that I'd just be talking rubbish most of the time as I struggle to make sense of it all as well. But I digress...

Life. Why are we here? What is our purpose? Over the last few weeks I keep finding reference after reference to the value of finding our purpose. I mean think about it, if you don't know why you are here then why bother being here at all? Now I'm not talking about the purpose of mankind as a whole. No, I mean us an individuals. Every person must have some reason to be alive and I'm trying to figure out what my reason is.

When I posted about it before I was confused. I was thinking about purpose in terms of what I wanted to DO in life. Thats not a purpose - that's a goal. When I figured that out, it all started to click into place. I was struggling to find a single major purpose because there are so many things that I want to DO. There isn't just one thing. And that's where I was going wrong.

A goal is an objective and if you've ever read anything on goal setting you'd probably have heard guidelines such as to make them specific, and measurable and most importantly to figure out why you want to achieve them. The why is the purpose behind the goal. I currently have a fitness and fat loss goal but why? Because I want to be healthier so I can live longer. Because I want to be fit enough to do the things I enjoy such as Karate. Because I want to look good in clothes and in my opinion 'fat clothes' just don't look good. You get the idea.

Money is a common source of confusion. Ask people about their goals and most people will have money in there. But they don't really want the money. If you watch the TV series Lost you'll appreciate that in certain circumstances money is useless. It's not the money people want, it's what they can buy with it. Money is the means to an end and the end is what we are after.

When I was trying to define my purpose I was listing activities. These are the means, not the end. They are just goals. I was coming up with things related to software development and then getting in a pickle because it wasn't covering other important areas of my life.

Once I realised my error it became a whole lot easier. I had a good hard look at my life and thought about times when I was happy. What was I doing? I was fixing stuff, making things better, providing some unique service that nobody else was doing, I was teaching other people stuff that I knew. These themes ran through all sorts of areas, here's a few of them:

1. Being one of the top providers in the country of public domain software in my first company.
   
2. Automating a huge amount of manual work in one of my early IT jobs.
   
3. With another company, I provided a unique twist that nobody else did and provided a service that others would eventually try to emulate.
4. Running a highly popular games website that provided unique strategy guides.
5. Building a database for a company and building reports that could save them weeks of work at the click of a button.
6. Building a database for my own company that enabled me to generate my entire website at a click of a button saving myself weeks of work!
7. Becoming a consultant for a slimming franchise and helping others lose weight.
8. Writing a game that other people get enjoyment from.

This is some of the stuff I have done. It's varied and covers many of the things I have dabbled in job-wise. But instead of focussing on the details (Do I want to build websites? Develop utility software? Write games? Be a consultant?), I instead pulled out the common elements. It doesn't matter where my career and personal committments take me. What is important is that in whatever work / hobby / project I am currently engaged in that I am in alignment with my purpose. So what is my purpose then?

My purpose in life is to find ways to provide unique services that make a difference in people's lives, ensure those services are provided long after I am gone, and to teach others everything I have learned along the way.

Notice that it's a bit 'worky'. I am very much a career person. I have a family and I like spending time with them but I'll admit that I spend more of my free time on my projects than I do with them. For other people it's quite the opposite. Their major purpose will be the cultivation of their family lives and work is just something they do to pay the bills. But that's the thing - everyone is different. There is no right or wrong purpose, just our own.

I have a sence of peace now that I have figured it out. Whether I am developing business software at work, or writing games at work, or developing a website, or writing a blog, I can look at it and ask myself if I'm providing some unique service. Does it make a difference? If I die tomorrow will it carry on? Can somebody else do this? If not, I'll teach them. That's largely what my blogs are for. I'd also like to write books one day but that's another story...