How to find purpose of your life?

Once I was talking to my friend and I asked her what is the purpose of her life, why are we on earth? She replied — Are you mad? Who thinks about all this? She’s not wrong; at least not totally! Most people do not have the purpose of their life and surprisingly, they even do not realize it.
It is an inevitable part of the life that one should have to have a purpose otherwise it is like a car on autopilot which has no destination. Sometimes, it takes right and sometimes left, roaming in a loop and doesn’t know where to stop. It may be because most people have no time to think beyond materialistic needs.
People simply acquire “sudo” purposes from other people that are close to them. For example, most people acquire spiritual purpose from their parents, financial purpose from best friends or siblings, philanthropic purpose from a celebrity etc.
Forget about the majority; I want to ask specifically you that do you even know what is your GOAL in the next 5 years and why do you want to achieve this? You might know for the next 5 years but you certainly do not know why? This WHY is the purpose of your life! When you know this WHY of your life you have a purpose; it could be one or multiple.
Purpose of life could be family, friends, marriage, career, community, education, philanthropy, spirituality, mental peace and so on. Steven Hayes explained in detail about how to analyze the different areas to find the purpose of your life and areas where you should work on. You can read his article here. However, how to improve areas is a different article altogether.
As mentioned above, you can think of all these different areas of life and see which area/s gives the most happiness and matters most. That one possessiveness about that one thing in life is the purpose. During the findings, thou can ask people who are close to them for suggestions. Write down all these suggestions, rate by yourself too and decide your purpose of life.
Once you decide the purpose of life, you must write three extremes that you can do and you can’t do in any situation. For example, if you find a family as your purpose:
Three extremes that you can do could be:
- I will prioritize my family over any other goal; any other!
- I will protect my family all the time; no matter what!
- My family is above everybody; above my friends, girlfriend, career etc. and I will compromise anything for my family
Three extremes that you can not do in any situation might be:
- I will never let my family apart in any circumstances.
- I will never leave my family for my progress or needs; even I get a million dollars job which demands to leave a family.
- I will never let my family cry for a bad reason.
Writing these extremes doesn’t mean that you should or shouldn’t do all this but it gives you a sense of priority and boundaries of your purpose. For example, if you get a million dollars job and it will only allow seeing your family every three months, you will consider your boundaries and prioritize family before getting the job. So, when you get work offs, you will see your family rather spending leisure time at Hawai beach. And, your purpose of life makes you happy, so, eventually, you will be happier with family than being at Hawai beach.
Your purpose of life just not give you happiness in life but it will give you the pride to pursue them successfully. You can raise your head and say loudly that you are a family man or you are a spiritual person or anything that is your purpose of life. Also, it will improve your mental health and satisfaction level of your life. Share with me below what could be the different purpose of your life is? Mine is career, motivation and family!