Making New Year’s Resolutions? Try This Life Resolution Instead…

Making New Year’s Resolutions?

Try This Life Resolution Instead…

Warwick Fairfax

January 27, 2023

I am not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions.  After a few weeks they are easy to break, and then you inevitably feel discouraged, stuck, or back to where you started. But there is one resolution that is worth pursuing not just this year, but for the rest of your life.  It is a key to long-term happiness and fulfillment…

That resolution is to live in light of your true purpose and vision.

It is easy for our sense of self, our sense of purpose, to get lost.  It gets swept up in the tide of other people’s expectations and visions for our life. After all, in some cases these people are our friends and family that love us and deeply care for us.  We think, “They must want the best for us so they might be right. Why not take the easy way out and just go with the tide of expectations, beliefs and advice that is around us?”

The problem is that over time just going with the flow of other people’s expectations and vision for our lives can lead to a sense of being unsettled or even feeling smoldering discontent.  As we say in our e-course, Discover Your Second-Act Significance, it can lead to us feeling stuck, to asking ourselves, “Is this all there is?”  That sense of dissatisfaction, left untreated, tends to grow and get worse. Then, our sense of unease increases even more.

We have a duty to ourselves to be who we were designed to be.

For people of faith, we have a duty to be who God designed us to be.  We were designed for a purpose as unique as our fingerprint, to have an impact for good in the world.  To be clear, it is not a competition to see who can have the biggest impact. Impact can be in the eye of the beholder. It is about being true to who we are, our design and our purpose.

So, what are the steps to finding your true purpose, your true calling in life?

1. Admit You Have a Problem

The first step to finding our true purpose and calling is to admit when we are confused.  We might feel torn between the expectations or competing visions that our family and friends have for our life, none of which may feel very appealing to us.  We might feel we really don’t know who we are, why we were put on this earth, and what our true purpose is.  Admitting when we feel conflicted, torn and confused is an important first step.

2. Assert You Have a Right to Have Your Own Purpose and Calling

It is one thing to feel conflicted and torn between others’ expectations and vision for us.  It is another to assert that we have a right, from my perspective, the God given right, to have our own purpose and calling.  This is a stake that we must plant in the ground.  We were designed for a purpose, and it is our right — our responsibility, I’d even say —  to find that purpose and live it out.

3. Understand Your Design 

We are each designed a certain way.  Some may be more athletic.  Some may be more artistic.  Some may be more mathematical and scientific.  There are a number of good assessments such as Myers Briggs, StrengthsFinder and Enneagram.  Choose one or more and then look at the results of the assessment – and see if there are important learnings or anything that surprises you.  As a certified International Coach Federation (ICF) coach, I am a believer in the power of coaching to help us in many ways, including understanding who we are, a process that can be aided by good assessments.

4. Reflect on What You Believe

We all believe in something.  For some it might be a religious way of thought.  For some it might be less religious but more spiritual.  For others it might be a set of values.  Whatever it is, reflect deeply on what you truly believe to the depths of your soul.  What you believe matters.  It is an important key to understanding what makes you truly you, which can lead you to the vision and purpose you are meant to pursue.

5. Focus on What You are Passionate About

Most — if not all — of us are passionate about something.  It might be a vision or a thought that we daydream about of what could be. For many of the guests on our podcast, Beyond The Crucible, their defining purpose came out of a soul searing crucible.  They came out the other side of that setback or failure wanting, in some cases, to help others who have gone through similar crucibles or to help others avoid suffering what they suffered.  Either way, you know you have some key insights to your purpose when this vision keeps gnawing away at your soul.  You just can’t let it go.

6. Talk to Your Friends and Family About Your Purpose 

Now this might seem counterintuitive, because weren’t we saying that sometimes our friends and family might have a different idea of our purpose and vision than we do? True.  But hopefully we can find some friends and family who don’t have an agenda and truly want to help us be who we were meant to be.  Dialoguing with such open and neutral parties can be helpful – more than that, really. It can be essential. When we lay out our design, what we believe and what we are passionate about; these trusted people who have known us for years can help us. They can affirm and help us refine and focus our purpose and vision, in a way that is true to who we are.

7. Find Fellow Travelers 

Once we have an inkling of our purpose and vision, having a team of people who want to help us make our vision became reality is very important.  These could be formal business partners and co-workers, or informal supporters and helpers.  These are people who believe in us and our vision.  Life is tough.  So having a support team alongside us helps us keep going and certainly speeds up the journey of our vision and our purpose becoming reality.

Our life matters! We were put on this earth for a purpose, from my perspective a God-given purpose.  I am not a big believer in guilt as a motivator.  But if it works for you, consider that if you were put on this earth with a certain design, a set of beliefs and something that you are off-the-charts passionate about, isn’t it your duty to live in light of that purpose and that vision?   Living in light of our purpose and vision means the world will be impacted for good with gifts that are uniquely ours.  We owe it to ourselves, and the people and world we may help, to live in light of that authentic purpose and vision.