Jonathan at Illuminated Mind writes an excellent post about “How to Find Your Purpose in Life” (site no longer exists). I love his explanation of purpose:

Your purpose has nothing to do with your degree, your resume, your career, or vocation. Your purpose is independent of all those things. In fact, it’s much bigger than any of those. Purpose has to do with your creative self expression. It has to do with what makes you feel alive. It’s something you do, where at the end of the day you think “I made a difference.”

Jonathan gives a four step exercise where you answer the question “What is my true purpose in life?” or “How would I want to be remembered when I die?” There is also a part about aligning your job and your life purpose.

The exercise comes from How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes where Steve Pavlina writes about how he found his life purpose.

See also:
What do you REALLY want to do with your life?
Motivation Is Garbage
What If Money Was No Object?
How to find your passion in life

Read elsewhere: Do what you love. Find Your Purpose In Life

Read elsewhere: What am I Doing with My Life? 10 Questions to Upgrade Your Mindset

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.