by Dr. Kerry Petsinger; Lifehack
As a coach specializing in mindset and performance, my mission is to help people attain Success that Matters®. My clients excel in what they value most, which brings them deep purpose and satisfaction. Let me walk you through a recent client’s transformation and show how you can apply these same methods to craft a meaningful life and uncover your true calling.
Finding life’s purpose and living with fulfillment
A notification pinged on my phone, indicating a new coaching prospect had submitted my pre-interview questionnaire. She thrived in her career and enjoyed its challenges, yet like many driven clients, she battled to harmonize work and personal life. She began to feel uncertain about her life goals.
That’s how I encountered Jenny (a pseudonym), a high-achieving professional woman.
Jenny’s career had steadily consumed her calendar, squeezing personal time to the margins. From dawn until bedtime, a flood of ‘urgent’ emails from coworkers and clients filled her inbox. She spent hours extinguishing crises and catering to others’ demands. Self-care faded, and she had little energy for nurturing key relationships with family and friends.
Overwhelmed by an endless to-do list, she questioned whether the life she envisioned was even attainable. During our initial interview call, I recognized I could assist her. I had guided hundreds of high performers through similar struggles, and I was certain that within eight weeks her situation would transform dramatically.
And it did.
The remarkable outcomes after eight weeks
Over our time together, she accomplished the following:
- Established a harmonious work-life rhythm (without compromising career success)
- Developed a regular exercise routine
- Carved out time to cultivate fresh friendships
- Simplified her workflow in both career and personal spheres
- Created space to conceive a major dream and formulated an action plan to realize it
- Redefined success on her own terms and constructed her life around what genuinely matters
- Experienced a profound sense of purpose and fulfillment
Below are the four strategies I employed with Jenny. You too can adopt these approaches to discover your life’s purpose and feel truly significant.
- Pinpoint your authentic priorities and discard misleading goals
To lead an extraordinary life, you must live YOUR life, not someone else’s.
Often, we shape our lives according to others’ expectations. Our daily habits and schedules are built around what family, friends, and society desire for us. We become products of our environment.
It requires courage to live by your true priorities, especially when they diverge from those around you. When you bravely design your life around what matters most to you, you live authentically, and each day becomes infused with stronger purpose and fulfillment.
Keep in mind:
In today’s high-pressure, relentlessly busy world, it’s all too easy to drift from your genuine priorities and pursue false objectives. False objectives are goals you chase that don’t align with what truly matters to you or the person you aspire to be.
For some, climbing the corporate ladder is a false objective because they long to step back from their career to raise young children. For others, a large mortgage is a false objective because they crave the freedom to travel globally.
To achieve fulfillment, it’s essential to scrutinize your life and be completely honest with yourself about these questions:
- What holds the greatest importance for you?
- Which false objectives are you currently pursuing?
Identifying and eliminating false objectives is crucial. Once you remove them, you can focus your life on what truly matters, creating the space to build your authentic, extraordinary existence.
- Form a razor-sharp vision of the life you want
As you clarify your true priorities, you can begin crafting a vision for the life you desire.
How will you structure your life around those priorities?
Jot down every detail you can imagine about the life you want. Then work on believing that achieving it is possible. This can be challenging, but it’s vital.
If travel is a top priority and you deeply yearn for a freedom-based career with a laptop lifestyle that lets you work from anywhere, you must believe it’s attainable. If deep down you think breaking free from the 9-to-5 cubicle is impossible, you won’t take the steps to escape the office.
If you claim writing is crucial and your greatest ambition is to become a New York Times bestselling author, but you secretly doubt you’ll ever finish your book, your daily actions will mirror that disbelief. When motivation wanes, you won’t write. When you feel defeated, you’ll give up.
What you believe about yourself—and what you consider possible for yourself—shapes how you show up each day to pursue your biggest goal.
Get crystal clear on the life you desire, and strengthen your belief that you can achieve it.
- Devise a plan to bring your vision to life
Let’s revisit the bestselling author example.
If your grandest ambition is to become a New York Times bestselling author because you want to write about a deeply meaningful topic and impact many lives with your words, you need a plan to realize that vision.
Hope alone is not a strategy. A concrete plan is essential.
You must develop a writing habit. You need to research publishing pathways. You must learn how to market the book effectively or hire someone to do it for you.
Create a detailed plan with deadlines to achieve it.
- Manage resistance skillfully
Every day, as you work to build your life around your true priorities and grand vision, you will encounter resistance. Your journey might resemble this:
Resistance appears in various forms, including:
- Fear of failure
- Fear of success
- Fear of standing apart from the crowd
- Fear that what you believe possible might not actually be achievable for you
- Feeling tired or unmotivated
- Distractions
- Interruptions
You will be assailed daily by countless things trying to pull you away from your genuine priorities.
It’s vital to run YOUR race, live YOUR life, focus on what matters to YOU, and build your life around YOUR vision.
You’ll face substantial resistance, so having strategies to deal with it effectively is crucial, enabling you to stay on course even during tough times.
Follow these steps and everything shifts
When you are clear about what you truly desire and what matters most, and you devise a plan to achieve your grand vision, everything changes.
You feel more focused and make decisions aligned with your genuine priorities.
You discover the purpose of life.
You show up with greater passion and enthusiasm.
You construct your life around what matters most to you, and life becomes deeply fulfilling.
