Know Your Life’s Purpose…Make Great Decisions?

The following is an excerpt from The Rhythm of Life: Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose.

In almost every moment of the day, we find ourselves being confronted with questions and opportunities.  Our lives are a constant flow of decisions. What will I eat?  What will I wear?  Where will I go?  Whom will I go with?  What will I do?  What will I buy?  Where will I live?  Life is always asking us questions. Often they seem small and insignificant, but in truth they can significantly impact our lives.

We have options.  I could watch television for an hour every day or exercise for an hour every day.  I could eat McDonald’s every day for lunch or I can have soup and a salad.  We choose between various options a hundred times a day, and our choices impact our health, happiness, well-being, and destiny.

In his classic poem, “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost describes coming to a fork in the road and having to choose between the two paths that lie before him.  The poem closes with one of the most famous lines of modern literature:

“I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Too often the poem is interpreted as being about one monumental moment, one enormous decision, that determines the outcome of a person’s whole life.  It is as if, once this one decision is made, all is well, and the rest of the road is smooth and slopes gently downhill.

The poem is not about one moment in a person’s life.  It is about every moment of our lives.  We find ourselves constantly at a crossroads.  No sooner do we make one decision and take three or four steps down either path than we come upon two roads diverging in a yellow wood…again!

The fork in the road is constantly appearing in our lives.

The ability to choose comes from a sense of purpose.  Leaders are charged with the responsibility of making decisions, because they above all others are supposed to understand the purpose of the people or organization they lead.  Direction comes from an understanding of where you are going.  If you don’t know where you are going, you are lost.

When we have a sense of our purpose, the decisions of our daily lives can be easily assessed with that purpose in mind.  Direction emerges in our lives by bringing our decisions before the altar of our essential purpose.

If you make great decisions, you will live a great life.

As I’ve shared here before, I’ve been on a journey of discovering and living my life’s purpose for about ten years now.  Over the last two years, I made a series of decisions regarding my career and lifestyle.  I weighed those decisions based on my life’s purpose and goals, and they ended up being great decisions.

What about you?  How has knowing your purpose made decision-making easier?  Or, can you point to an instance when you know you could have made a better decision if you had known your purpose more clearly?

You might also like:
How to clarify your life purpose
Decision making process – How to turn problems into opportunities
Life’s greatest truth and hardest lesson:  Everything is a choice