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Note: If you’d rather hear this article in an audio format, check out How to Reconnect with Yourself Using Six Helpful Habits.

This is a little lesson about introspection - nurturing a relationship with yourself through six helpful habits - so you can really reconnect with your core values and live a more fulfilling life.

It’s not always easy, but its definitely worth it. 

Dislcaimer: I’m not a therapist or life coach. What I am is an INFJ artist, writer, avid student of human nature, and woman on a spiritual journey who wants to talk to you deeply like we’re friends on our Spencer’s Gifts landline phones in 1996.

I started wondering what my purpose in life was from an early age - I’ve been seeking and finding answers from early childhood until now and I want to run them by you so you can try them too. 

So you’re in a busy phase of life, like me too, and are involved in the societal trappings of human life that make us feel like we don’t have enough time for the people and experiences we care about on top of not having enough time for the hobbies or habits that fulfill our own souls and true selves. Or, perhaps your life has even slowed down since the pandemic started and you’re still struggling with existing during this transitional phase in our human history.

Make The Shift From External to Internal.

I get it. We have systems that keep you churning in the cogs so that everything runs for the collective. But does it really run for the collective? Are you happy with what you’re doing? 

We need money, right? We need all the things that will help us look young, right? We need all the things that will make us look cool, right? We need all the things that will keep us healthy without trying too hard, right? Remember when this was called keeping up with the Joneses rather than the Kardashians? That’s where I’m at - the Joneses can have it.

They can have it because those materialistic things are what external forces are telling us will make us happy, but it isn’t true. We’ve made it true, but it doesn’t have to be. (Okay - of course you can still get your Stitch Fix box and enjoy your PSL even though that’s not very 1996. Just listen…)

At the end of the day, I want to be at peace with and happy with the actions I’ve taken in this life and I want to act according to my inner conscience, following what’s right over what’s easy.

I want to act in alignment with what feels right on the inside, regardless of external pressures or rules or judgements or advice or… the list goes on. 

When the machine is so gigantic that we can’t even begin to see how we’d change one little practice in our own life, let alone how we’d change the machine of our world and society, we must start small. To start seeing how we can progress, we must break down our wants, desires, and goals into small, achievable steps. 

Incremental progress is the answer. 

Incremental progress starts with starting. 

With that in mind, let’s talk about starting habits. Replace habits you don’t care about or don’t need anymore with these - as your friend, I really think you should try it.

The incremental progress part comes in because these habits start to work over time, after you’re consistently using them to be introspective, observe patterns, determine if those patterns are helpful or hurtful, and then decide to make a change. So, finding your purpose is a commitment, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Remember - start small and build over time. That could look like doing one practice per month and adding a new one in once you’ve made the first one a real habit. Whatever pace works for you.

Note: If you want to go faster than self help habits allow, consider working with a life coach. We highlight a variety of life coaches on the Human Amplified podcast that could be a good place to start if you’ve never worked with one before. Additionally, feel free to see if trauma-informed coaching with me is a good fit for you.

These habits, when absent from my life, are noticeably missing because I can look back over the patterns that occurred and see the shift toward the negative rather than progress toward the positive. 

These habits are ways to be intentional about finding your purpose and living your purpose. The descriptions of each are based on my own experience with each.

Each item in the list is a tool that I’ve used in the past and flow in and out of as life requires. I haven’t always done them religiously depending on where I was at in life, but they’ve helped me when done consistently. I wouldn’t tell you to use them if I hadn’t tested them and approved them over time.

Six Helpful Habits to Find Your Purpose:

Here’s the list of tangible practices that you can do immediately and keep doing over time to start finding and/or living your life purpose in alignment with your true self.

1. Journaling

This is free-form writing that is so powerful. It helps you process your emotions, recognize where you’re directing your energy by showing you your regular thought patterns, and acts as a primary source for what it means to be human to you. 

Journaling takes us on a journey of self discovery, regardless of what you choose to write about.

Related: The Healing Power of Telling Your Story

2. Prayer

Prayer is a powerful method of talking to God or the Universe - whatever you prefer to call your higher power. Prayer is a spoken form of your thoughts, fears, desires, hopes, wishes, and so much more. It’s your side of your relationship with God, the Angels, Spirit Guides, and even your deceased loved ones.

3. Meditation

Meditation is a powerful method of God, the Universe, your Angels, or your Spirit Guides talking to you. It’s a way to open up your consciousness to receive the messages that are meant for you - even from your own, higher self. It helps you relax and let go of the tension and external pressures of human life through breathing, visualization, and clearing your mind. Mastering meditation definitely takes practice.

4. Positive Thinking

Positive thinking is intentionally tailoring your thoughts to focus on the positive rather than the negative. Focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want. Focus on the good rather than the bad. 

This doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge the bad things that happen, the pain you go through, etc. To the contrary, you must acknowledge these things and feel the very real and big emotions to be healthy and release them. Suppressing the negative causes harmful mental and physical ailments. 

But, positive thinking helps you harness the lessons from hard experiences so you can progress in a productive and loving way - it helps you love yourself and others more. It helps you attract more love into your life.

5. Acceptance

Acceptance is suspending judgement of your current circumstance, station in life, dealt hand, feeling, being, doing, treatment from another person, a loved one’s true character, or any other area of life that you might judge. 

Acceptance means acknowledging the truth and being in it without hating it, without beating yourself up about it, and without trying to control it into being something it’s not.

Acceptance doesn’t mean let someone walk all over you or treat you poorly. It just means recognize when someone is so you can then set boundaries and go about your life no longer being hurt. 

There are things within our control and not within our control. To accept doesn’t mean you can’t change a circumstance, but change comes with intention, time, and will. Acceptance comes before changes because it sets you up in a place where you’re able to focus on what you want rather than what sucks so bad. If something is out of your control, acceptance is also the first step to healing.

Acceptance is the hardest one on the list for me. It’s the one I have to work at the most because sometimes I want circumstances, relationships, and the course of life to go a certain way and it hurts when it doesn’t. But, the highest good for all happens in due time and I know everything happens for a reason. So, remembering those gems of truth my Granny gave me, helps me keep trying at acceptance.

6. Hope

Hope is a form of faith, isn’t it. To quote the littlest engine, “if you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t.”

Hope drives motivation. Motivation drives change. For those circumstances you can’t change, hope (coupled with acceptance) allows you to move on, live in the present, and look forward to the future with joy.

If we believe the future is bright, it is.

This statement is true because if you put your energy toward a certain thought, you live your life in a way that will see it to fruition. So you can see, this statement is also true for the converse - if you dwell in the negative because you avoid acceptance of life circumstances, the negative will come to fruition.

And guess what? Our future actually is bright because we are creatures who can embrace healing, love, joy, and creation - a God-given gift. I believe it because I’ve done it, and at the time of writing this article, have talked to over 50 people on the Human Amplified podcast (formerly the On Being Human podcast) who’ve bravely told their life stories with similar messages. Check it out if you want more proof.  

So what is the importance of being intentional through journaling, prayer, meditation, positive thinking, acceptance, and hope? 

These habits, when rooted in pure love, help you start finding your purpose, start recognizing it, start taking action toward it. Starting is so important.

Related: Finding Your Purpose Series: The Role of Pure Love

In the rest of this blog series, we’ll explore each of these practices in more depth. 

Take Action.

In the meantime, you can now start paying more attention to your inner self. Pick one practice from the list and do it everyday for a week - even if only for a couple minutes.

Or, are you already doing some of these? How have they been helpful in your own life? Which one might pose the biggest challenge for you and why? Drop a comment so we can keep chatting about these deep, life-changing ways of being human!

Love,