The Four Purposes of Life: Finding Meaning

and Direction in a Changing World

 

By Dan Millman

Author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior

 

Bestselling author distills a lifetime of learning on living with--and on—purpose

 

Beloved teacher Dan Millman faces life’s fundamental questions: Why am I here? What am I meant to do? Millman understands the primary human need for direction and purpose. Here, in this straightforward and down-to-earth book, he shares fresh, realistic techniques anyone can use to find and fulfill their fourfold life purpose. The four purposes include:

Writing with special consideration for those in transition or at a crossroads such as graduation, raising a family, health challenges, career upheaval, or impending retirement, Millman simply and beautifully addresses everything from intuition to sexuality, making money to the meaning of service, predestination to paying attention to the present. The result is an extraordinarily lucid guide to nothing less than life and how to live it.

 

To explore Dan’s book on Amazon.com, click here!

Here’s an excerpt:

With the pace of life accelerating, in a world of change, it’s not easy to maintain our balance and sense of direction. Yet we strive to do so, because a sense of direction, toward a meaningful goal, may be the better part of happiness. In this pursuit, the journey may indeed matter more than the destination--but without a destination to aim for there is no journey; we can only wander.

            We humans are goal seekers from infancy, drawn by the objects of our desire. But somewhere along the way, most often in the dilemmas and angst of adolescence, a sense of confusion obscures the simple desires of childhood. What we want is muddied by expectations about what we (or others) think we should do. We begin to doubt our desires, mistrust our motives, and wonder where we’re going and why.

            In my first book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, the old service station mechanic I called Socrates suggested that all seeking--for knowledge or achievement, for power or pleasure, for love or wealth or even spiritual experience--is driven by the promise of happiness. But the search only reinforces the sense of dilemma that sent us seeking in the first place. So he advised me to replace the search for future happiness with the practice of “unreasonable happiness” in each arising moment.

            When my seeking ended and the practice began, I came to understand that what we all need, even more than a happy feeling, is a clear purpose--a meaningful goal or mission that connects us with other human beings. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, this fundamental need for purpose and direction may be as important to our psychological growth as eating is to our biological survival.

            But the duties of our daily lives leave little time to contemplate life’s larger questions, except on rare occasions, in the silent hours or in times of transition or trauma, when we are compelled to ask: What do I really want? How would I know if I had it? What would happen if I got it? Is getting what I want going to take me to where I want to be? And finally, What is the purpose of my life?

            Maybe you’ve wondered why you’re here on Earth or what you’re here to do--what the French call your raison d’être, your reason for being, an organizing principle and sense of direction that gives shape and meaning to your life. History provides numerous examples of iconic figures like Joan of Arc, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama, whose clarity of purpose drew others to their missions like moths to the light.

            The Four Purposes of Life, which proposes some fundamental “reasons for being,” contains elements from my previous works, presenting them in their full context for the first time.  The book was inspired by my own quest for a purpose in life. I once believed that my purpose was all about work, and I searched through my twenties and well into my thirties for a career and calling. It took another decade of exploration and intro-spection before I understood that career is only one of four primary purposes in life.

            But why four purposes? Some might argue that our sole (or soul) purpose is learning to love--that whatever the question, love is the answer--or that spiritual awakening or surrender to God is our ultimate aim. Others point out that our primary biological purpose is family--bonding with a mate, and bearing and caring for children. Still others might propose three or five or more purposes, or even suggest that there are as many purposes as there are people. Yet just as we divide all the days of the year into four seasons, and points on a compass into four primary directions, sorting our experience into four fundamental purposes helps us to create a sense of structure to better organize our lives.. These four purposes also prepare us for, and point toward, the ultimate or transcendental awakening promised by all the great spiritual traditions.

            The first of four purposes we’ll explore in this book--learning life’s lessons--centers around the premise that Earth is a school and daily life is our classroom, and that our daily challenges (in the core arenas of relationship, work and finances, and health) bring learning, growth, and perspective. The value of our life experience resides in what we learn in the process. Difficult days may provide the most important lessons, helping us develop the awareness and self-reflection that lead to higher wisdom.

            The second purpose--finding your career and calling--underscores the critical importance of self-knowledge, as well as integrating both logic and intuition, in making the wisest possible life decisions. This section also shows how the service you provide in the world can become a meaningful path of personal and spiritual growth.

            The third purpose--discovering your life path--addresses a hidden calling you’re here to explore, a personal path that for most people remains obscure. The information in this section sheds light on the strengths you possess and challenges you face, highlighting a deeper mission you’re here to fulfill.

            The fourth purpose--attending to this arising moment--brings the first three into sharp focus and down to earth, enabling you to integrate all the others with awareness and grace, here and now.

            I wrote The Four Purposes of Life for anyone seeking deeper insight into themselves and their lives, but especially for those at a crossroads, facing a challenge or change, when “business as usual” no longer applies. I invite you to explore the four key purposes that can provide meaning and direction in your life, and in a changing world.

 

To explore Dan’s book on Amazon.com, click here!

           

Dan responds to some questions:

Q:  How did you go from being a college athlete and coach to writing books about personal and spiritual growth?

A:  In retrospect, it all seems a natural evolution in my case, combining a love for teaching, leading me to first explore how to increase talent for sports, and then into the larger arena of daily life and a quest for those skill-sets that would improve our talent for living.

Q:  Given the title of your book, can you give us a short description of the four purposes?  And why these four?

A:  As I note in the book’s prologue, people have various ideas about our purpose for living.  Some say it’s all about love, or service, or knowing God.  One could argue that there are ten or twenty purposes, or as many as there are people.  Still, just as we divide the compass into four cardinal directions, it occurred to me (in a moment of lucidity), that we are, most fundamentally, here to learn the lessons of life and all that entails (the first purpose I present in the book); but we can’t ignore that purpose involving our work--our career and in some cases our calling (the second purpose). I wrote a major book, one of my most popular, called The Life You Were Born to Live: A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose, so I couldn’t very well ignore this mysterious system or what it reveals (covered in the third purpose); and finally, I present what may be the most important purpose of all (the fourth purpose)--the one that appears in each arising moment.

Q:  In The First Purpose--Learning Life’s Lessons--you suggest that Earth is a perfect school and the daily life is our classroom. Then what are courses we need to pass in order to graduate?

A:  Again, in a previous book--and a course I now present at www.dailyom.com titled “Master the Peaceful Warrior’s Path”--I present twelve gateways or golden keys to self-mastery.  These twelve arenas address self-worth, self-discipline, energy, money, mind, intuition, emotions, courage, self-knowledge, sexuality, love, and service. Yet in this new book, we can appreciate these areas as required courses in the school of daily life--what we are really here to master within and through the theater of our work, relationships, and physical challenges.

Q:  You wrote, “We learn to ride the shifting tides of emotion like skillful surfers as we grasp the great truth that we don’t need to feel compassionate, peaceful, confident, courageous, happy, or kind—we only need to behave that way.” Isn’t behaving differently from what we feel a form of pretense or denial?

A:  This may be one of the most controversial areas of my teaching, because it runs counter to our dominant social programming and beliefs about how we have to fix or improve our feelings, or quiet our minds, before we can live well.  So let me put it in the simplest terms within our context here:  It is only possible to show courage when we are feeling afraid of something.  Is behaving with courage when we feel afraid denial?  I think not.  It is the same for any feeling and any action. We can feel whatever we feel, yet behave with kindness, with courage, in a peaceful way.  Paradoxically, doing so reflects a warrior’s spirit.

Q:  The Second Purpose deals with Finding Your Career and Calling. Why is it important to differentiate between a career and a calling?

A:  A primary purpose of this book was to replace confusion with clarity. Just as I draw a clear distinction between self-esteem and self-worth in a previous work, here it seems useful to help people understand that some of us have a higher calling, drive or interest that may or may not be a career (or work that produces income); and that not every career becomes a calling. Sometimes they merge, and sometimes they remain separate in our lives.

Q:  You write that many young people are pressured to choose a career path before they really know themselves, so they end up choosing what they think they should do rather than what they really want to do. Can you say more about this?

A:  Until we know who we are--our talents, interests, and values--we may make the right choices for the wrong person! Although there are exceptions, social scientists say that early marriage, for example, is the number one predictor of divorce. Similarly, having to pick a long-term career before we understand ourselves often leads to a mismatch between work and emerging values. That’s why I recommend in the book, “Until you find your career and calling, just get a job. Meanwhile, stay open to new opportunities.”

Q:  The Third Purpose seems the most mysterious, based on a number system and one’s date of birth. Where did you come up with this as the third purpose of life?

A:  As I explain in the book, I learned the fundamental elements of this system from an unusual mentor.  Quite skeptical myself at first, how working with the numbers in one’s date of birth could possibly provide accurate information about core elements of one’s life, it was only after working with many, many people and years of study that I fully came to appreciate the power and clarity of this mysterious method, and how it provided deep insight into our individual life path--information usually hidden beneath the distractions of daily life.

Q:  In The Fourth Purpose, dealing with each arising moment, you suggest that “there’s no such thing as a future decision?” What do you mean by this?

A:  Thinking about doing something is the same as not doing it. We can think about and talk about decisions we are going to make (in the future), but decision are always made by action, in the present moment. The rest is the subjective merry-go-round. As E.M. Forster wrote, “How can I know what I think until I see what I do?”

Q:  What steps can someone take to immerse themselves in each moment, and find the flow or the zone, as some athletes experience?

A:  I receive emails from a number of athletes who have experienced what feels like a mystical moment of transcendence, and they want to know how to be in “the zone” all the time.  I respond that the quality and intensity of our awareness and attention change all the time. Naturally, there may be some moments that feel extraordinary, when a golfer can “see” the line to the hole with absolute clarity, and a tennis play can put every shot right on the line. We can increase such moments of clarity or absorption by practicing what we do rather than just doing it. 

Q: Each of the four purposes leads readers toward greater clarity--even spiritual awakening. In your other books you describe instances of your own awakening. Can you select one recent moment of transcendence and share what you felt with our readers?

A:  Many people love miracles and moments of transcendence--the idea of getting ‘smacked across the head by a Cosmic Oar’--and many of us pursue such altered states of consciousness by various means and methods. But the reality of my life has been less like a light switch turning on, and more like a dimmer switch slowly turned up, over time and experience--brighter in some moments than others. Nature has always been my primary teacher--watching streams flow around obstacles, pursuing the path of least resistance; observing how trees grow strong roots, but flexible branches that bend in the wind; how the seasons change in their own rhythmic cycles. The natural world, along with training (in any sport or art) can teach us all the universal laws I describe in another book, The Laws of Spirit.  Now I'm happy to share the four purposes of life that lend meaning and direction to anyone's life, in any moment--especially helpful for those at a crossroads, in transition, going through changes.

Dan Millman is the author of 17 books read by millions of people in 29 languages. He teaches worldwide, speaking to men and women from all walks of life, including leaders in the fields of health, psychology, education, business, politics, sports, entertainment and the arts. His website is www.peacefulwarrior.com.

From the book The Four Purposes of Life.  Copyright c 2011 by Dan Millman. Reprinted with permission of H J Kramer / New World Library, Novato, CA

To explore Dan’s book on Amazon.com, click here!