What is it you Plan to Do with your One Wild and Precious Life?

Practical pointers on how to find your purpose

I’ve written before about life purpose, as finding a sense of purpose has made such a massive difference to my life, helping me to discover and unleash capabilities I didn’t know I had.

But how do we find a sense of purpose? If we don’t have a clue what our purpose is, where do we start looking? Or maybe we could pick any one of half a dozen purposes — how do we figure out which one is The One?

First, I don’t think we need to stress too much about this. For most of us, and certainly for me, I don’t think there is just one single purpose for an entire lifetime. Purpose is likely to evolve, or even change completely, according to our age and circumstances.

Second, purpose doesn’t have to look like a grand obsession with music, science, exploration, etc. Purpose can be a quiet creature, more values-based, being more about how we do what we do that what we are actually doing.

And third, purpose might just come and find you when it’s good and ready — which of course, might mean when you are good and ready. Sometimes we find it, and sometimes it finds us. I always take great comfort from the example of Mary Wesley, who didn’t publish her first novel until she was 71 years old, and still managed…