Most of us are born without a purpose, other than for our parents, or other, to look after us and bring us up. Many do

not even have that purpose to start with. But, what about when we grow up? After school ends? What is our purpose then?

Some of us may do what our parents want of us; go to university, get a certain job, keep the family business going, marry a certain type of person. The list could go on there, but what if we must do what we think is best? Make our own choices? Do we let ‘fate’ take control? Do we strive for something? Or do we give up?

Well, making our own choices is what most of us end up having to do, at least at some point. What would we be and how would we feel without purpose? Useless? Unloved?

Building our own purpose in life is one of the basic needs of our existence.

We need purpose to stimulate and nurture our mental health, and we can find it in many things:

• Work
• Friendships
• Love life
• Family
• Interests
• Education
• 
  

But, even so, we still must usually work for the purpose and make choices.

For example:

• Work – We need to choose a job to go for. We must pass an interview to get the job, or maybe more. We must train for the job, and be committed to work to get real purpose from it.
• Friendships – To be in a friendship, we have to be worth knowing to the other person (s), helpful, polite etc
• Love life – We have to work at loving another and accepting being loved. We must care for and appreciate another person enough that they will want us in their lives and love us back. We have to work out how that person likes to be loved, ie hugs? Kisses? Being taken out? Mental support etc. And how do we want to be loved? If we know, we can share, and create better harmony. Bearing in mind, the lover often started out as a stranger, we have a lot of work to do. Trust, is another thing. But it can give us great purpose in life to be in a loving relationship; the terms marriage, partner, ‘other half’ etc. say it all.
• Family – Well we might be blood relatives, but we still have to work at keeping relationships with those in our family. We don’t HAVE to, but we usually want to.
• Children – If we are a mother, father or caregiver to children, we have an important purpose for many years.
• Pets – Looking after our pets is fulfilling and our purpose is to look after them.
• Interests – We choose interests based on our access to them and knowledge of their existence. We might get good at them, ie playing a musical instrument, singing, sewing, crafting things, participating in adventures or sport, but we must first commit to learning a new thing or at least be willing try it out.
• Education – We need commitment to learning, and the ability to socialise with others, generally, in order to educate ourselves. Although we can also learn from home. Once we are educated about something, we become useful to others’ for our knowledge and we feel pleased that we have new knowledge.

There are lots of other ways of looking at it, but this article would be far too long if I tried to tackle the enormity of having purpose in life. However, I hope I have explained enough so that you understand why we need it, how we might get it, and how we often must look for it ourselves — rarely is it handed on a plate. Even if it was, we would soon bore or become disillusioned about the purpose, if we hadn’t decided upon it ourselves, hadn’t striven for it ourselves and had committed to it ourselves.

So, my reason for this article is…

Without purpose in life, we can feel:

• Useless
• Unwanted
• That we have no meaning

These can lead to:

• Isolation
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Mental health issues
• Impulsivity
• Low self-esteem and self-worth
• Cause us not to look after ourselves with the attitude of ‘what’s the point?’
• And much more…
• 
  

It’s not about randomly picking things up to make us feel we have a purpose, because impulsive things might not last anyway ­– it’s about putting our mind, hearts and soul into things or people, so we benefit from them. It is also best is to do these things from our heart, rather than in a self-fulfilling, selfish way.

I have suffered with loss of purpose at times. If you feel out of sorts, like something is missing, this might to something to work on for you.

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