Recently a 15-year old asked me, ‘What should be the life purpose of us 15 year olds be?’
I thought it was way too early for him to be bothering about life purpose and all that. I started to think about my life purpose only after 30. It was only at 36 that I understood what I truly wanted to become. As Carl Jung said ‘Life begins at forty. Up until then, everything you do is just research.’
So it got me thinking about what I should tell this 15-year old. Perhaps I could simply help him prepare to answer the question for himself when the time came.
For me knowing and living your life purpose is achievable through answering 5 questions.
1. Who are you?
2. What do you do, i.e. what is your skill?
3. What do people need your skill for?
4. What do people get out of it?
5. How do they transform as a result?
I worked this out for myself.
1. Who are you? I am Sandhya Reddy.
2. What do you do? I make it easy for people to know themselves and realize their dreams.
3. What do people need you for? To find the right stories about themselves.
4. What do people get out of it? They achieve their best potential.
5. How do they transform as a result? They are able to lead more confident, self-aware and productive lives.
If you see, only two of the questions are about ourselves. The rest are about our impact on the world.
Why not answer the questions for yourself and determine your life purpose right now?
About the Author:
Sandhya Reddy is a Life coach and Leadership coach based in Bangalore, India. She is the Founder and Principal Coach at Chapter Two Coaching, a coaching consultancy that enables everyone from CEOs to work-from-home parents to achieve their goals by replacing self-imposed limitations with enabling stories.
Sandhya, a life coach in Bangalore, who runs a life coaching academy, can help individuals with a desire for change to examine their beliefs – or their ‘stories’ – and change them for the better, so they can achieve their goals.
Many of us in our thirties experience a disquieting realization: what brought us to middle-management may not take us to senior-management. This is true. To chart a new career path, one needs to think and do things differently. This is where Sandhya can help. She is a coach. Life coaching, executive coaching, personality development, leadership coaching… they are all part of her forte. Her Executive coaching programs helps tomorrow’s leaders set new goals, make new plans to achieve those goals, get that elusive promotion through a blend of knowledge, action and image-building, enhance influence among the leadership team, be more productive, get more out of one’s team, and be known in the company as an indispensable performer and future leader.