Finding Your Purpose

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset, mentor, and life coach, Trista Guertin.

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of This Daring Adventure. Thank you so much for joining me today.

I wanted to talk a little bit about finding your purpose. I think when we're younger, we grow up and of course, it's. Very much a part of the media and our culture in terms of movies and TV that. We look to find the purpose of our lives. We mature, we finish school, we become adults. We have to find a job, start our careers.

And so there is sort of this idea that we need to decide and find what our purpose is like it's somewhere out there, we need to, to go out and look for it. And. We can feel a little lost that when we are not sure what our purpose is and what we're supposed to be doing with our lives. And it can be overwhelming.

And while finding our purpose makes a great movie, right? Hollywood has done a lot with. Finding our purpose as a big epic adventure is something that we need to strike out on our own. Go travel, find out what we're made of and, and what life is about.

I think it can be a little bit simpler and a little bit more straightforward in terms of just. Deciding what it is that we want our purpose to be. And it really can be that simple. It's a decision. It's a decision that you make that you can. Red decide you can choose something different. You can change your mind down the road. What your purpose might be at 20 or 25 or 30, or 40 or 50 can change based on what's important to you, what you've experienced, what you've learned, and what you value at that time.

I think it's important to know that you don't need some big epic adventure and some big epiphany that's gonna happen and that you need to look externally to make this decision. It really can be as simple as deciding or choosing what your purpose is. Now, in order to decide or to choose, you will have to do a little bit of exploration, but for me, this is mainly internal. It's thinking about what you want for yourself and for your life. It can be something that is simply just fun, something that's interesting, something that's challenging, something that's rewarding. All of the above. It's, it's simply a choice up to you.

One of the best exercises I think that we can do in order to start thinking about this is one, and I have this in my free document that you can get on my website, but I will include it in the show notes and how to create the life you want is to write a list of 25 things that you want. And it can be anything. It can be something simple like reading War and Peace. It could be something like watching a movie that you've never watched before, but it's been on your list of things to do. It can be going to a museum, it could be writing a blog. It could be travel. It could be learning a sport, or learning an instrument or learning a language. But trying to come up with 25 things, and the idea here is to start to prime the pump. I've mentioned this before in one of my previous podcasts, but it's important to get yourself thinking creatively. And broadly about what the possibilities are for your life. A lot of times we don't spend time thinking about what it is we truly want for ourselves and for our lives. And so this exercise of coming up with 25 things is a good way to start you thinking about these.

Now, these might not contribute to your overall purpose in life, but. It is a good way to start your brain thinking and maybe to pique your curiosity about certain things that maybe you want to explore further, that maybe you want to look deeper into as something that you want to learn more about or to develop in yourself or to to follow. And it really can be that simple. The other effective exercise is to imagine that you're 95 and you've lived your life. What are the top five outcomes that you have achieved for yourself? Think about what's important, what you would have liked to have accomplished. What you would have liked to have done, what you would have liked to have, have seen who you would've liked to have become. You can tie these into five outcomes.

Of course, there are more for sure, but maybe starting with five is a good way to begin. And these can be health education. Wealth, business relationships, it can be travel. Of course travel is, is one of mine. And so think about what you would have liked to have accomplished in in each of these areas, these outcomes. then you can look at your day-to-day life and see whether anything you're doing day to day is moving you closer to achieving those outcomes. And if not, Then you want to start thinking about ways that you can start to incorporate ways you're moving yourself forward, steps that you're taking, things that you're creating or learning. It could be on a daily basis, it could be on a weekly basis, it could be on a monthly basis, but you want to start creating your days based on what your ultimate outcomes will be in your life, and I think that can really help to shape your purpose.

Again, these are things that you can decide for yourself today, but if you change your mind down the road in a year, five years, 10 years, it's okay. There are no rules here. This is solely for you, and so you don't need to justify it. You don't need to explain it to anybody. You can just decide and then start creating it for yourself and start living it I think it's important to make sure you have fun with this. That it's enjoyable, that it comes from a place of ease and lightness and abundance. You can decide if your purpose involves something greater than yourself, whether it's, you know, working for a charity, nonprofit donations, but it doesn't have to be. There's no judgment. Some people will choose to be altruistic and, have those types of activities as their purpose, and that's great. If you decide that that's what you want for yourself and you like your reasons, then do it. But if it doesn't include any of that, I don't want you to judge yourself or beat yourself up or think that your purpose is any lesser than someone else's, because it doesn't include any altruistic outcomes. Is it selfish? I don't think so. I was looking up the definition of selfish for this podcast, and from Google. I found it defined as the tendency to act excessively or solely in a manner that benefits oneself even if others are disadvantaged. I don't think that's what we're talking about here. I think you choosing a purpose that is based around your desires, your wants, doesn't necessarily disadvantage others. And if it does, then obviously you want to reconsider or think about that seriously. But for the most part, I don't think that most of us are looking to establish a purpose for ourselves or to decide on a purpose for ourselves that would necessarily disadvantage others.

So, Selfish is not really a valid concern here, and as I mentioned, you don't have to justify this. You don't have to explain what it is you want to anyone.

Your purpose will be yours. To decide and to choose, and you can change your mind at any time.

For me, my purpose has been to grow, to learn, to travel, to feed stray animals, and to coach to help others. I've decided I don't just have one single soul purpose.

My purpose is to have a life of adventure and fun and growth and love. And to me, all of those things make for a very rich and rewarding life. And so I do urge you to spend a little bit of time thinking about what your purpose it might be, what you want it to be, what will fill you up, what will bring you joy, what will inspire you and guide you to create the most amazing life you can.

That's all I have for you today. Thank you for allowing me to share this with you. I'll talk to you next week. Take care everybody. Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to This Daring Adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin. We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life again.

As always, you can head to tristaguertin.com for additional resources and to book a one-on-one coaching session.

You can also follow Trista on Instagram at tristavguertin Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time.