LIVING A PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE
What is living a purpose driven life? Living a purpose driven life does not necessarily mean that god or a higher power has given you one purpose in life that you must learn and accomplish to save the world! It means that every moment of every day you choose to live life on purpose, being in the driver’s seat, taking control of your life and the situations in it.
People living a purpose driven life describe life as thriving, inspiring, they feel motivated, they have an overall feeling of happiness, they feel in control of their life and they feel generally happy.
People who are not living a purpose driven life feel like they are a passenger in their life, like they don’t have control over the things in their life, that life is just “happening” to them and they deal with what ever comes at them. Its described as feeling stuck in life, over whelmed, depressed, every day is the same old thing…work, home, cook, clean, work, home, cook, clean no real purpose to life just doing the things they have to do and just surviving.
If you want to start living a purpose driven life you can start today by choosing or practicing positivity, changing what things mean to you, knowing what you can control, setting goals, and getting help if you need it.
When starting to choose positivity it takes practice, deciding today that every min of every day you will be positive all of the time is to big of a jump and goal (don’t get me wrong that would be great if it was that easy! But if you have kids, a job with a boss, a partner or even parents you know that your positive bubble can be popped quickly by the loving people in our life.)
The good news is, just like anything else if you practice over and over again, eventually it becomes easier and will start to be second nature. But again it takes PRACTICE! So lets get started……..
I KNOW YOU CAN DO THIS!!!
HOW TO PRACTICE POSITIVITY – Coping Mechanisms
Coping mechanisms – means to invest ones own conscious effort, to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimize or tolerate stress and conflict. Coping mechanisms are the things we turn to when we are overwhelmed and stress is taking over our life, we turn to a coping mechanism to give us a break from thinking, feeling stress and all the things causing our stress.
Positive coping mechanisms are the things we do that make us feel good while doing them, taking our mind off things for as long as we are doing our coping mechanism. Some examples of positive coping mechanisms are (remember everyone is different and what is good for one person may not be a fit for another so choose what ever activity feels right for you) taking a bath, reading a book, meditating, yoga, exercise, cooking, baking, painting, playing a musical instrument, going for a walk in nature……the list could go on and on. Remember a positive coping mechanism is anything you do that takes your mind off your stress and you feel good doing it.
Negative coping mechanisms- A negative coping mechanism is something we do to “numb” our life (numb our stress or overwhelming), while these things do allow us an escape from our stress, it does not allow relief from stress.
Once you are done your temporary escape (negative coping mechanism) you will start to feel bad about the activity you choose to cope, you may feel ashamed or embarrassed about the activity you have chosen, which only adds one more thing to feel stressed about.
Some examples of negative coping mechanisms are drinking alcohol, drugs, binge eating, sexual promiscuity. The best way to know if you have a positive or negative coping mechanism is……do you feel good after you have done your coping mechanism activity, or do you feel bad about the activity you chose.
Keep in mind that for some exercising can be a health coping mechanism that makes them feel good, while another it could be negative because they become so obsessed about exercising that they feel guilty if they don’t exercise, they exercise for hours at a time, it can start to consume their life where they don’t go out with friends or enjoy life because they have to exercise and then exercising has become negative and unhealth rather than something positive.
I would encourage you to write down everything you do as a coping mechanism, something you do to give yourself a break out of your life, then read over the list and re-write the list into things that make you feel good after doing them and things that make you feel bad after doing them. Now you have your list of positive coping mechanisms to start practising positivity!
YOU CAN DO THIS!!!!
HOW TO PRACTICE POSITIVITY – Self Care
Self Care-the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health. This is what you do to pro-actively prevent stress from overwhelming you, things you do to decrease stress before it gets out of control and you need coping mechanisms to deal with life. You should regularly schedule in time for self care.
Examples of self care activities are reading, yoga, meditation, give yourself a pedicure or manicure, book a massage, get regular physiotherapy treatments, book time with friends, take a vacation, take a nature walk, look at the stars…….the list is endless!!!!
Just remember that self care is something you do/schedule regularly before you get overwhelmed; coping mechanisms are the things you do when you feel overwhelmed and NEED a break from life and your stress.
The lists of coping mechanisms and regular self care will overlap. So use your positive coping mechanisms list to help you write your self care list.
YOU GOT THIS, KEEP GOING!!!!
HOW TO PRACTICE POSITIVITY – Healthy Support Systems
Health Support Systems- a network of people who provide an individual with a practical or emotional support. This is where you turn to for support, these are people in your life that you can talk to about the good things and bad things in life. It is important to have a support system, talking can not only be therapeutic but it can also help you see things in a different light, or help you see the answers you need to find.
Positive Support Systems-these people make you feel better after talking to them. You feel lighter after sharing your thoughts and emotions with them, they are good listeners and offer emotional support to you. If you get a promotion at work, they get excited for you and with you “congratulations you deserve it!!!”, they may want to celebrate with you “lets celebrate, lets go out for diner”. If you are having a bad day at work they may say “sorry you are having a bad day” or ‘don’t worry tomorrow is a new day, try to hang in there”, they may offer suggestions to help you deal with the situation at work, they may give you a hug in offer of emotional support.
Overall positive support systems make you feel good after talking to them.
Negative Support Systems-these are the people that make you feel worse after talking to them. If you get a promotion at work they may comment “must be nice, I wish I could get a promotion at work”, or “I hope you can handle the new role at work”. If you are having a bad day at work they might tell you all the things they think you did wrong to make the day bad, they may go on a negative rant about how much they hate their work.
These are the people who never say anything good about anyone or anything, they may call you up just to go on a negative rant which changes your mood to negative. Usually these are the people that make everything about themselves even if the conversation started about you.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE POSITIVE SUPPORT SYSTEMS IN YOUR LIFE!!!!
HOW TO PRACTICE POSITIVITY – Hobbies
Hobbies- Any activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure. Hobbies are anything you do, that you don’t have to do, just for fun and because you enjoy doing it.
Hobbies are the fastest way to start feeling like you are living a life on purpose! It is the fastest way to start feeling inspired and can get your creativity flowing!
Hobbies can be social or done individually, can be used as self care or a coping mechanism.
You can have multiple hobbies at once. They don’t have to be expensive. You can go to the dollar store and pick up paint, brushes, canvas and start painting today! If a sport is your hobby you can do things between practices and games to keep your inspiration going.
My son plays hockey and between games and practices he constantly re-tapes his hockey stick so they are ready to go for the next game, he tries different grip taping to increase his skills, he goes in the back yard to practice his shots on the hockey net we bought him and I can see the excitement in his eyes when he is doing these things that just keeps his inspiration for the sport going.
If your hobby is creative you can join a class, or a group to share the hobby with (i.e. join a band, take music lessons, join a paint night, take a pottery class). If you read you can join a reading group and share about the books you have read with others that have read the book. Or you can just do your hobby at home and be just as inspired.
Some examples of hobbies are (again no one is the same so everyone will enjoy different hobbies, pick the ones that feel best for you) reading, painting, knitting, sewing, playing an instrument, singing, playing a sport, doing puzzles (you can build a puzzle then glue it to put on your wall), the list is endless!
START A NEW HOBBY TODAY YOU WILL LOVE IT!!!!!
HOW TO PRACTICE POSITIVITY – Changing What Things Mean to Us
It’s important to acknowledge what you tell yourself situations mean to you and to always choose the positive meaning over the assumption of a negative meaning. Example say your have lunch plans with a friend and last minute they cancel saying “something has come up and they can’t make lunch today”. What is your thoughts on what that means, do you tell yourself that you friend does not value your friendship as much as you do and that you aren’t as important to them as they are to you? Do you tell yourself that you must be boring and the reason your friend is cancelling is because they found something more exciting to do than have lunch with you? Or do you tell yourself that something important must have come up, maybe even text your friend “I hope everything is ok, let me know if you need anything. We can do lunch another day”. Meaning you choose to make the cancellation mean nothing other than something came up and you have to reschedule lunch.
Example 2 your boss comes in to your office in a terrible mood, raising their voice and being short with you. What do you tell yourself it means, your boss is mad because of something you did; you are not very good at your job? Your boss doesn’t even like you and is often short with you, you must not be a very likable person? Or do you tell yourself it means your boss must be having a bad/rough day and return your interactions with calmness and support towards your boss in hopes that maybe you can make their day a little bit better?
In these situations you have a choice on what you tell yourself the situation means to you. You can choose the one that makes you feel good and not assume things you don’t know to be true. You could ask more questions to clarify what the situation means. But don’t jump right to the worst thing must be true and leave yourself feeling bad about yourself and the situation. It is a choice that you get to make as to what the situation means to you.
CHOOSE LOVING YOURSELF AND POSITIVY FIRST!!!
HOW TO PRACTICE POSITIVITY – Knowing What You Can Control
We can’t always control every situation example the weather, if mother nature gives us a big cold snow storm we can’t change the weather outside but we still want to feel comfortable in every situation so we have to go outside in the cold weather we put on a coat, hat, mitts, boots so that we can still be comfortable in an environment we don’t have control over.
Example 2 Let use the angry boss example from above. Your boss is angry, raising their voice, in just an over all bad mood. You can’t control how they present themselves to you, but you can control how you choose to respond back to them. You can raise your voice back to them, be short and rude back to them. Or assuming your bosses bad mood has nothing to do with you, you respond with calmness and maybe even empathy towards your bosses bad mood. You may even lighten their mood a bit.
You also have the choice how you will continue your mood after this negative interaction. Will you let your bosses mood change your happy positive bubble into matching their negative grouchy mood and then interact the rest of the day with your co-workers and family in a negative grouchy way because you let your boss also now ruin your mood and day? Maybe even bringing a few more people negatively down with you also? Or will you brush the negative interaction off as that is my bosses stuff not mine and I’m not going to let his bad mood ruin mine and continue to have a lovely day? Its a choice you can choose to be positive, react positively and move forward about your day in a positive way!
ALWAYS CHOOSE POSITIVY, IT TAKES PRACTISE AND I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!!!
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS – STEP 1: What Areas Do I Want to Change
Goal setting is the key to living a purpose driven life! It is hard to know where to start and what to set goals on. Let me walk you through how to set successful goals and how to achieve them! Step one is to figure out what areas of your life you want to see change and growth in. Make a long list of everything and every area you want to change. Make the list vague and generic, you don’t need a lot of detail or time to do this. We will get into more detail later on in the next few steps. For now just as yourself in my perfect inspired world what would it look like and what would I need to change? Write down everything you can think of.
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS – STEP 2: Prioritizing Your Goals
Once you have a list of all the areas you would like to see change and growth in, now we need to prioritize the list so you know where to begin setting your goals. Take the list and evaluate the list on an emotional scale, how important is change in this area of your life? Rate it on a scale of 1-10, 10 being very important that you see change in this area and it would make a large impact on your happiness, 5 being someone what important in the near future you would like to see change in this area and 1 being not that important that you change this area of your life or something that you would like to see change in years down the road. Take your list from step one and number everything you wrote down on your list based on the above emotional importance scale. Make sure every single item on that list has a number assigned to it and write that number down on your.
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS – STEP 3: Pick 1-2 Goals To Work On
Now that you know the areas you want to see change in and you have prioritized by most important to least, take 1 or 2 of the most important goals to start writing your goal plan. ONLY pick 1 or 2 goals to start with, a great way to set yourself up for failure is to get excited about the future and all the changes you want to make and then start working on all of your goals at once (join a gym, start a new diet, take a few night classes, start journaling, meditate daily, ect.) if you have to many goals you are working on at once, it is quite hard to find the time to get them all done, you will start to feel overwhelmed, you will not see big results in any one area, you will get discouraged feel defeated and then just quit! Quit doing all of the goals you started and give up completely feeling like you can’t accomplish anything.
If you only pick 1 or 2 goals to work on you can manage your time to allow time needed to work on these goals, you can also follow your progress and see that progress is being made which will inspire you to keep going! You can easily make small changes if needed to keep the moment going. So I really recommend starting with 1 goal, or 2 goals if you feel that is attainable.
So the next step is to pick 1 or 2 goals you want to start with.
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS – STEP 4: Write Down the Details of Your Goal
Now that you have your 1 or 2 goals to work on, you want to write them down and come up with your goal plan. You want to make S.M.A.R.T goals.
SPECIFIC- Make your goal as specific as you can. The more details the better it is to follow your plan. If you want to start eating healthier, be specific on the area of nutrition you would like to start working on I would like to eat more fruits and vegetables.
MEASURABLE-Make sure you make your goal measurable so you know if you are achieving your goal and it gives you guidelines that you can change to allow you to achieve your goal eg. I want to eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables 5 days per week.
ATTAINABLE-Make sure you are honest about if your goal is actually attainable. Setting a goal higher than you can realistically achieve will set you up to fail or loose your inspiration and momentum. If you currently make $30k per year and you set your goal to make $150k by the end of this year, that is probably not a very achievable goal. Which will leave you discouraged and doubting your ability to achieve your goals.
REALISIC-a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be. If your diet is mostly fast food and you don’t consume any vegetables at all, making a goal of being 100% vegan overnight, not even really knowing what vegan is other than they eat lots of vegetables, is probably not a realistic goal for you.
TIMED-Make sure you set a specific time frame for your goal. How often per day will you do something? How many days per week will you do it? If you have a weight loss goal, how much weight to you want to lose by when? If you want to increase your income how much do you want to be making and when would you like to be making it by? Having a time frame on your goal keeps you motivated to keep doing your goal. Or it gives you the sense of urgency that time is running out to accomplish your goal so you better getting working on it. If you want to lose 15 pounds by your cousins wedding and you have 1 month left now to do it (you started with 3 months but you procrastinated a bit), you might just get the push you need to keep going…..if so far you have only lots 2 pounds, now you know that you have to lose about 5 pounds per week to attain your goal so you better crack down and start eating right and exercising daily.
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS – STEP 5: Check-in and Celebrate
Once you have your 1-2 goals you are working on pick a time to check in to evaluate how you are doing, see what you have achieve so far or if you have achieved the goal completely!
This check in can be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly depending when you feel is a good time to check in to see how you are doing. Allowing time to change anything that needs to be changed and CELEBRATE what you have accomplished so far!
Look at what you have accomplished and be proud of yourself. Make time to acknowledge the little steps along the way and the accomplishing of a goal!
To often we focus on the large picture and it becomes one more thing to do. Boom goal done, next, boom goal done, next. What about the most important step…….CELEBRATE!
You do goals to feel good about yourself and feel like you are in the drivers seat of your life but if you only focus on the destination you will miss the beautiful things you see along the way!
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS – Celebrate the Failures
Yes you read that correctly……CELEBRATE THE FAILURES!!! Failing to try is trying to fail. If you try but fail, try again, and again, eventually you will achieve the goal! If you never try at all you will never accomplish anything towards your goal and you become a passenger in your own life.
Failing at a goal doesn’t mean you are not also succeeding at the goal. In failing you learn and you grow, it also means you are closer to achieving the end goal. So if you didn’t meet your full goal look at it objectively, did you achieve some of your goal? What did you learn from your failure?
There are some goals that you should expect to see failure at first (or not the end result right away). For example lets say you want to meet your perfect dream life partner, give yourself a reasonable time line like a year; then set your goal that each month you will actively go out on 10 dates.
Now your first date you probably aren’t going to meet MR/MRS perfect for you (if you did I suggest buying a lottery ticket next!). So you have to expect that you are going to fail at the end goal, but achieving 10 dates is successfully moving forward with your goal!
What you will experience on these dates is you will probably meet some really nice people, have some new fun experiences and eat some good food on these dates. Plus you will now be 10 people closer to the “one” because you know 10 people weren’t the right one.
What it will also do is allow you to understand what type of person would be perfect for you. Each date you can see things you like in each person and things you don’t like so when you meet the “one” you will confidently know you have met the right person for you from the experiences you had knowing what you like and what you don’t like. This can be very valuable information you gather along the way!
Another example is if you want to change jobs to maybe make more money or climb the ladder. If you are to afraid to fail at getting a job, you don’t want to feel rejected during an interview, than you will NEVER get a different job and will be stuck in the one you have now forever.
So don’t be afraid to fail! Let the lessons be, each interview is a trial run to the interview that lands you the perfect job. The more practice you get at being interviewed the better you will become at it.
Apply for every job that interests you, when you don’t get the job celebrate that you applied, that you have practice with interviewing and you are one step closer to the perfect job! Celebrate that you are trying and have put yourself out there and being vulnerable.
Remember the worst case scenario of trying, is that you end up exactly where you are already at. If you go on the date and don’t meet the perfect guy, you end up still single, if you apply for a job you don’t get, you end up in the same job you already have. So there is nothing to FEAR in trying something if the worst place you end up is right where you already are.
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS – STEP 6: Evaluate and Re-set Your Goals
This is the last step you need to know in goal setting! Now that you have set your goals, are trying to achieve your goals, have evaluated how you are doing, celebrated the accomplishments and the failures, now we start asking questions to allow us to re-set or change anything that needs changing with our goals.
Some questions you want to ask yourself: What is working so far? Do I need to change anything about the goal? What have I accomplished so far? What can I celebrate? Did I accomplish my goal? If you accomplished your goal what goal do you want to start next?
Remember the goal of the goal is to be moving forward in life, to feel like you are living your life on purpose and are the driver of your life.
Anything about a goal can be changed! Example of this would be lets say your goal was to drink 5 glasses of water per day. So that is 7 days a week and 35 glasses of water at the end of the week. You evaluated that you only drank 3 glasses of water 2 of the 7 days. What you might ask is: was 7 days to much to ask? Maybe 3 or 5 days would be better to accomplish. Was 5 glasses of water to much to start with? Maybe I should only try for 3 glasses every day.
Or was there something out of the ordinary that happened this week that prevented me from accomplishing my goal like last minute having to fly out of town for work. Long days in meetings, out for diner with co-workers after. Drinking 5 glasses of water in the hotel room right before bed would mean you would be up several times in the night using the washroom.
So maybe the goal was fine and you can just start fresh the next week if you feel confident that the goal was fine but the circumstances were not ideal for achieving the goal that week. You would simply start the next week with the same goal.
Remember you can change anything about a goal and never beat yourself up for not accomplishing what you set out to accomplish. There is no good use for doubting yourself. Stay positive and keep going!
YOU CAN DO THIS!!!!
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