The Benefits of Purpose-Driven Living

There are five great benefits of living a purpose-driven life.

Knowing Your Purpose Gives Meaning To Your Life

We were made to have meaning. When life has meaning, you can bear with almost anything; without it, nothing is bearable. A young man in his twenties wrote, “I feel like a failure because I’m struggling to become something, and I don’t even know what it is. All I know what to do is to get by. Someday, if I discover my purpose, I’ll feel I’m beginning to live. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope. The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose. Hope is as essential to your life as air and water. You need hope to cope.” Dr. Bernie Siegel found he could predict which of his cancer patients would go into remission by asking, “Do you want to live to be one hundred?” those with a deep sense of life purpose answered yes and were the ones most likely to survive. Hope comes from having a purpose. If you have felt hopeless, hold on!

Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose.

Knowing Your Purpose Simplifies Your Life

It defines what you do and what you don’t do. Your purpose becomes the standard you use to evaluate which activities are essential and which aren’t. You simply ask, “Does this activity help me fulfil one of my purposes for life?” Without a clear purpose you have no foundation on which you base your decisions, allocate your time, and use your resources. You will tend to make choices based on circumstances, pressures, and your mood at that moment. People who don’t know their purpose try to do too much – and that causes stress, fatigue, and conflict. It is impossible to do everything people want you to do. Purpose-driven living leads to a simpler lifestyle and a saner schedule.

Knowing Your Purpose Focuses Your Life

It concentrates your effort and energy on what’s important. You become effective by being selective. It’s human nature to get distracted by minor issues. We play Trivial Pursuit with our lives. Henry David Thoreau observed that people live lives of quiet desperation, but today a better description is aimless distraction. Many people are like gyroscopes, spinning around at a frantic pace but never going anywhere. Without a clear purpose, you will keep changing directions, jobs, relationships, or other externals – hoping each change will settle the confusion or fill the emptiness in your heart. You think, maybe this time it will be different, but it doesn’t solve your real problem – a lack of focus and purpose. The power of focusing can be seen in light. Diffused light has little power or impact, but you can concentrate its energy by focusing it. With a magnifying glass, the rays of the sun can be focused to set grass or paper on fire. When light is focused, even more as a laser beam, it can cut through steel. There is nothing quite as potent as a focused life, one lived on purpose. The men and women who have made the greatest difference in history were the most focused. Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most. Never confuse activity with productivity. You can be busy without a purpose, but what’s the point?

Knowing Your Purpose Motivates Your Life

Purpose always produces passion. Nothing energizes like a clear purpose. On the other hand, passion dissipates when you lack a purpose. Just getting out of bed becomes a major chore. It is usually meaningless work, not overwork that wears us down, saps our strength, and robs our joy. George Bernard Shaw wrote, “This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the work will not devote itself to making you happy.”

(From: A Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, 2002)