Finding Your Purpose

What is success?  What is it about success that people value so much?  Is success defined by the way you dress, the size of your house, what school you graduated from or where you got your degree?  We as people have begun viewing success as a material issue.  To the common American, success is not about if you are happily married with kids and you love your job, it’s about how much money they can make to save up for their new BMW.  In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren talks about success as more of being a spiritual thing between a person’s life and God, and then their life thereafter stems from that relationship.  This is what I will be going into more detail about in this paper focusing on what I view success to be and how I can apply that to my life by having read this book.

            This book is scheduled to read it for forty days, which is also broken up into a six-week plan.  The first week is called “What On Earth Am I Here For?”  The whole idea of us being here is to serve God and glorify Him with our life, but what Warren goes into detail about is how we can glorify by creating a life for ourselves including the life that God wants us to live. 

In Day Three, Warren talks about focus.  He says, “There is nothing quite as potent as a focused life, one lived on purpose”(p32).  Focus on your goals in life, on your purpose, is what he’s trying to get across.  He then goes on to say that “purpose always produces passion…on the other hand, passion dissipates when you lack purpose”(p34).  If you want to live a successful life, you need to realize what your purpose is by getting there and once you’ve realized that, you can focus your life on that purpose or goal.  C. S. Lewis said, “There are two kinds of people:  those who say to God ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right then, have it your way’”(p37).  We need to realize that it’s not always going to be about us, that we can have fun and still remember that God wants us to still obey Him.  “Focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life’s purpose”(p18).     

What is a life metaphor?  Warren considers it to be what someone’s description of how life works and what they expect from it.  Some people express theirs through clothes, jewelry, cars hairstyles, tattoos, and so forth.  To go into detail a little more, he continues with this:

Your unspoken life metaphor influences your life more than you realize.  It determines your expectations, your values, your relationships, your goals, and your priorities.  For instance, if you think life is a party, your primary value in life will be having fun.  If you see life as a race, you will value speed and will probably be in a hurry much of the time.  If you see life as a battle or a game, winning will be very important to you (p42).

Don’t let your life metaphor be tainted by the world around you.  Lead your own life and don’t let other’s view on how you should live it distort your own.  Focus on your goals and your true character will be revealed. 

            Another topic that Warren goes into great detail with is our relationship with others.  He quotes, “Relationships are what life is all about”(p126).  We as people need to rely on others and we need to be able to work with others, so therefore, we need to have relationships with other people.  “We discover our role in life through our relationships with others”(p131).  Warren parallels our relationships to others as being like a body with organs, that if one is separated from the body, it can’t do much to survive on its own.  We need other people, and if we don’t realize that, we won’t be able to survive and live successfully. 

            How to solve relationship problems is just as important as being able to maintain one.  “Every time you understand and affirm someone’s feelings, you build fellowship” (p141).  Fellowship is what will keep the human race sane and we, as people need to realize that things won’t always be perfect with each other.  We won’t always agree with our spouses or friends on issues, but the important thing is not to agree with them, but to maintain the friendship while in disagreement.  “When conflict is handled correctly, we grow closer to each other”(p147).  You don’t always have to be right or the other party doesn’t always have to be right, but reconciling is more important then resolving. 

            Our life has a purpose; we just have to figure it out for ourselves.  We need focus in our life oriented with our goals in order to achieve success in life.  Then along the way, we will make relationships to last a lifetime, if we know how to treat them and how to maintain them well.  Life is all about goals.  The most important part is finding out for yourself which ones are for you. 

Here are some more quotes from Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life.

• “When you are doing what you love to do, no one has to motivate you”(p239)

• “Your character is essentially the sum of your habits”(p175)

• “Great opportunities often disguise themselves in small tasks”(p261)

• “We become what we are committed to”(p180)

• “Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test”(p43)

• “You will never know what you’re good at until you try”(p251)

• “The greatest gift you can give someone is your time”(p127)

• “While it is wise to learn from experience, it is wiser to learn from the experiences of others”(p292)