Each of us were born with a unique purpose in life. Along the road to becoming, we may stumble and fall, but the quest for true meaning guides us.
In Life On Purpose: Six Passage to an Inspired Life by Brad Swift, DVM, the author advocates "transforming the world from one that's off purpose to one on purpose, one person at a time."
As the saying goes, it's simple but not easy.
In reality your Purpose already exists. One must first learn how to labor, then develop skills, goals, a plan and then strive toward the Purpose. Often people want to reach the summit before they develop skills.
I remember an employer saying, "You have to walk before you can run." I didn't like this advice one bit, but looking back I realized that I needed to develop muscles (skills) in order to reach my goals and to create a plan for my life.
Dr. Swift outlines a proven, systematic, spirutally based, and practical approach to begin to live a life at cause including a number of exercises to clarify your unique and "purposeful path."
Some confuse the means or the process to be an end in itself. Working to make money is not your Purpose, for example. Work is what we do on the way to Becoming. With a false purpose you eventually reach a dead-end street. I think this is at the root of why men in midlife question their choices.
A purposeless life is a confused life. In a family unit, if everyone is allowed to do their own thing, the family degenerates. If they don't work together, play together, plan together, they are like an instrument out of tune. When a parent gives a child a goal, he helps to integrate that child to a larger purpose, even if is only to clean his room. A synchronized family is a harmonious family.
And that's how we begin to transform the world, one person at a time.
Additional references: The Purpose of Life, Torkom Saraydarian, p. 20.