Sometimes we get caught up in the daily drudgery of life. It’s like we’re trudging through a swampy forest in the dead of night with no end destination. But finding your life purpose is like a streaming light that follows you through that very same swampy forest and lights your path. Once we find our life’s purpose, the rest is history; but first you have to follow your heart and listen deeply within.

Follow Your Heart

1. Decide what captivates you.

In order to follow your heart you have to notice what catches your attention. What has always meant the most to you? These are questions that you need to answer to reveal your life purpose. For me, it’s traveling. I want to learn about myself through the geography of the world. That’s why I’m a freelance writer–so I’m not tied to a place and schedule and I can do my work on the road.

2. Avoid the “shoulds.”

Everyone is always trying to tell us what we should be doing. You should be married. You should have babies. You should buy a home. Avoid someone else shaping your life. Listen to your life purpose and ignore the purpose of those around you. While that may work for them, it doesn’t have to work for you.

3. Learn from past callings.

Learn from callings that you’ve followed in the past. What worked and what didn’t work? Why was this the case? This will reveal your talents and shortcomings so that your skill set lines up with your purpose.

4. What are your core values?

Do you love animals? Are you a social activist? Do you love spirituality? Take a closer look at what makes you tick in terms of your core values and this will help you reveal your purpose.

5. Serve others.

We get the most fulfillment out of life by serving others. Find a purpose that in some way serves those around you. How can you use your primary talents to serve others?

6. Act on it.

Spend 80 percent of your day working toward your life goals. What goals, if accomplished, will move you toward your purpose? Decide what they are and get to work.

Related on EcoSalon
30 Quotes About Personal Fulfillment

Is Your Career Wrecking Your Love Life

Make Meaningful Changes in 2014

Image: martinak15

The post Follow Your Heart: 6 Tips to Reveal Your Life Purpose appeared first on EcoSalon.

A view from sailing into Port At Fael, the Azores.

As I meet my middle thirties, I’m finding the lifelong, insatiable urge to see this world and be witness to new experience isn’t going away. When I’m home and the grass is long and the bathroom faucet is dripping, I start to feel as though the walls are closing in on me. I look at the objects around me, the possessions I’ve collected on the theme of “me” and I ponder how I got here.

If it’s been too long since I’ve traveled, I feel out of context even in the construct of my own design: this is not my house, this is not my beautiful wife. It’s not the old cliche about feeling imprisoned, but it is a bit like being fixed in a diorama I’ve built to suit my needs, my wishes and some of my desires. That’s the problem: it’s all me, me marinating in the thought of me.

We see these static dioramas in our lives every day. Like at cocktail parties. Conversations center around the health care debate, the relative greenness of bamboo flooring and what kind of Ikea furniture doesn’t look too Ikea.

And there’s always that one person at the party who just got back from backpacking in Bhutan or trekking in India. They are sharing a story of life off the beaten path and there is something about the passion of the story that makes us, just for a moment, deify that person because he or she “just did it.” For a moment, you fall out of yourself and let your imagination go wild as the yarn spins to the room. You experience life as an expression of navigation and let yourself become a character in the story being told. You dream of being wherever there is.  You imagine how resourceful (or not) you’d be. You taste the chimichurri, you bathe your bottom in the bidet.

But when the story ends, you find yourself back in your diorama, happy wine buzz fading away with it. Yes, it’s hard to get away. It’s hard to button up the house, forget the hedge trimming and jump into an ecstatic mode of being in some foreign place. But don’t you want it?

Trust me, you do. Make a plan, set a date. Read Travels with Charley. Even the planning phase will begin to disentangle you from you. You’ll start thinking of different ways of thinking and how different people live different lives. And once you go, you’ll come back to your diorama and it won’t look the same.  You’ll notice objects in your life that have been there for ages, but you never noticed them quite in the way you do now, with fresh eyes. Maybe they’ll even take on new meaning. You’ll think about the flavor of your tap water compared to where you were. You’ll think about the shape of your toilet, you’ll think about someone else’s health care debate and all of the sudden you’ll feel what all people who travel know: traveling makes you a better person in your home world.

The post The Diorama of Ordinary Life: A Meditation on the Need for Travel appeared first on EcoSalon.