Step 1 to a Portable Career – Define your Life Purpose

As you embark on this journey of creating a portable career, you will soon be on your way towards fulfillment while maintaining your professional identity no matter where you live. So let’s make a start with writing your own life story!

The first step towards your success is creating a mental map of where you want to go with your life, what you want to discover about your true self and how you want to express that in your life and career.

STEP 1 – DEFINE YOUR LIFE PURPOSE

When I work with clients and start asking them about their purpose in life, their initial reaction often is a sense of wonder of what exactly I mean and not being convinced that they should even create a life purpose statement for themselves! However all it is is a calling, a mission or an overall life theme that you want to experience, develop and achieve throughout your life and career.

As it is so common (and important) for businesses and organizations to have a mission and vision statement that guides them towards the realization of their big goals and their success, I want to challenge you to define a personal statement for yourself too! Once you have one that is a true reflection of you, defining and creating your portable career will come easier. Furthermore, it will become a great tool to actually fulfill your life purpose, as it brings fun, fulfillment, a sense of direction and of ‘coming home’ to your life as a global nomad!

In order for you to come up with your own personal Life Purpose Statement, answer the following 4 questions for yourself:

What do I love to do (at work, at home, in your spare time)?
List as many as you can.
What childhood / adulthood experiences shaped you to become who you are today?
Highlighting your pride and triumph of overcoming these experiences
What do I do naturally well (your unique strengths)?
These are very likely to point to what you’d like to do most with your life and career.
Who would you love to help (and use your talents to do so)? Listen to your heart when answering this question and don’t worry about any restrictions such as income or other practicalities.

All that’s left now is to bring your answers together to craft your own life purpose statement like this:

My life purpose is to use [answers from question 1 & 3] to help [group you want to help (4)] overcome [experiences from question 2]*

When you have formulated your life purpose statement it can serve you as a central theme throughout your life that helps you make the right choices and live your own life story. It allows you to be the director of your own life as it helps you to balance your choices in creating your portable career or accepting future jobs (paid or voluntary), in establishing or developing your relationships (personal and professional), and establishing a life of fulfillment.