What is life mission?
If you are reading this, you probably feel you have a mission on this wonderful Earth. But how do you find out what it is? And how can you make sure you fulfil this mission?
To answer these questions, we need to understand what life mission exactly is. Life mission might not have the same meaning to you as it does to me.
In this article, I will unravel my personal interpretation of life mission. Please, don’t take this as the truth. You need to find your own truth about life. However, maybe you will be inspired to discover your own meaning and execution of life mission by understanding mine.
You can also read this article on Medium.
I will take you on a journey in which you might recognise some aspects of my vision of life mission. Imagining your own life path might help you in figuring out how you feel about life mission.
Imagine this…
Imagine you are standing on a path. This is your life path. Looking behind you, you might see most of where you have been. Looking forward you might get glimpses of what is ahead. But maybe you don’t see past or future, and you are focused on the present. On where you are right now. Just be aware of what you are perceiving while standing on your personal life path.
Sense of mission
One of the characteristics of life mission is your sense of mission. Not everyone has the feeling that they have a mission. I know people that are not consciously fulfilling their mission and not even giving it a name, but I can tell they are living life in accordance to their mission.
So, if you are interested in life mission, it means you have some sense of mission. What does this entail? It means you feel you have a great contribution to the world. You have something important to do for this Earth. You want to help the Earth grow in some way. You want to make a change somehow.
Imagine this…
Imagine you are standing on your life path. You are just standing here in this moment. What do you feel? What does this feeling tell you about your sense of mission?
The sense
This sense of mission might feel different to everyone. You might feel you have something important to contribute to the Earth. You might feel you want to help people, animals, plants or other beings of this planet. You might have a strong desire to discover everything about a certain subject. You might know exactly what you want to do in life.
If you feel this sense of mission, discover how this manifests in you. You might learn more about your mission by knowing and understanding how this feels in your body, emotions and thoughts.
In myself, this sense of mission manifests itself by wanting to help people by being there for them, listening to them and mirroring what I perceive energetically. As an energy worker, I am able to perceive energies. My mission is to make people aware of their own energie states, so that they can understand themselves better.
How does this sense of mission manifest itself in you? What are your desires for this world? What is moving you?
Imagine this…
You are still standing on your life path. You start to feel something drawing you towards something. You can’t not go with it. It’s something that starts inside of you and moves you towards something in life. It feels like something greater outside of you pulling. At the same time, it’s a choice, because by choosing to go along with this pull, your contribution to the world and to your own life has already started.
The pull
I always compare this part of the sense of mission with a pull towards your dreams; at certain moments in your life, you feel you are being pulled towards something. This something can be anything; a person, a project, a school, an event, an opportunity etcetera. You will feel that if you do this thing or connect with it, it will enrich your life. You might experience feelings of happiness, expansion, something opening up, lightness or other joyful feelings.
It feels like the Universe (or Spirit, God, All-that-is, Soul, Higher Self, intuition, the Force or whatever you name the force of life) is pulling you towards something that is going to change your life. This pull brings you closer towards fulfilling your dreams, which is another attribute of this sense of mission. This pull brings direction in your life mission. Some people might call this intuition or the Universe.
To me, the pull has ‘pulled’ me more than once in a certain direction. The first time I felt this pull consciously was when I was looking for a school after high school. During Dutch language class, I came across the term ‘psyche’ and ‘psychology’ and was immediately drawn to this science. I looked up university studies educating in psychology and I felt my heart jump at the thought of being able to learn everything about the human psyche. And that is what I did.
The funny thing is that my psychology study was the beginning, but certainly not the end of my urge to learn everything about the human psyche. I came across different hobbies, books, courses and schools that pulled and drew me in, fulfilling my thirst in knowledge about the human psyche and the Soul.
Vision for life and dreams
Imagine this…
You are walking on your life path. You know where you are headed to, but you don’t know the road. You don’t have a map. You don’t know how to get anywhere. However, you do have a clear vision about what things should look like or feel. Your vision for the future is clear and you are aware of the dreams for your life accompanying this vision.
Another important characteristic for people who feel they have a mission, is that they also have strong dreams that they want to manifest in their lives. These are either dreams for your own life or a vision for the future of the world. A lot of people experience both ideal vision and dreams for their lives.
You probably also have a strong vision about how the world could be or what the ideal Earth looks like. You have an ideal picture in your mind of what the world, society or your environment should look like and you are working towards it. Do you recognise this?
You also might have vivid dreams for yourself and your own life. There are things you want to achieve, to be or to get to. You want to create, to express, to connect, to learn. There is a belief in making your dreams come true. There is a confidence that you can create your own reality, manifest your dreams whilst making the world a better place.
Your unique contribution to the world
Imagine this…
Suddenly, while walking on your life path, something on your path strikes your attention. Your road seems blocked. A lot of people are standing around the obstacle to remove it, but alone they’re not able to move it. You walk over there to lend a hand in your own way. You are helping out to solve, remove or change this obstacle, whatever needed. It turns out that with your help, the obstacle was able to be removed. What is it what you did that added that extra something to this situation to remove it?
Your contribution to the world to the world can manifest itself on many levels and in different ways. It can be on a small scale, for your family or your personal environment. It could be for the lady on the street that dropped something out of her bag. It can be a talk you had with your friend.
It could also be on a larger scale. It can be making changes in your company that affects the whole organisation. It could also be setting up a store and changing the energy of the street, just by being present and selling your unique goods. It could be you, as a parent, leading the whole family to take up volunteer work at a local farm.
Whatever and whenever you contribute to the Earth, it is always unique. And you doing it, is also unique, because it’s something you are and do in the present. You’ve had your share of experiences and knowledge to be this way right now.
In this moment, you get a hunch, an intuition, a feeling to be or do something that contributes to your environment, be it a small or large contribution. You are actually changing the energy around you by being yourself in this moment. And this is your purpose in this moment and your personal and unique contribution to the world.
In other words, life mission doesn’t have to be grand and great. It can be in the little moments we have every day. It can be in the here and now.
Discovering who you are and who you are not
Imagine this…
While walking on your life path, you notice a fork in the road. A lot of feelings about this split in direction start coming up. You are thinking a lot of things. You get confused and overwhelmed, because you start overthinking how to make a choice. You stop walking, because you don’t feel your intuition anymore. There is a fork in the road and you need to choose which direction to go. What should you do?
To be able to live in the moment, we have to know who we are and be connected to what our Souls want. I believe that we all have an energetic essence or Soul that is timeless, infinite and wants to create and manifest through our bodies and personalities. Our Souls want to make a change in the world and want us to learn to become ourselves more and more. We are learning every day to let go of conditioned selves or egos to make more room for our Souls.
However, our conditioned selves have a purpose, so let’s not discard our egos right away. We need some ego to connect our Soul to our personality, but we are allowed to let go of anything that our ego is holding onto and doesn’t serve in integrating Soul and human being. The ego likes to attach itself to the things we are familiar with.
This means that we need to get to know our true selves. We need to know which of our emotions and thoughts are true or not, so that we can use a guidance system of true emotions. How can we discover our true emotions?
Heavy and directive emotions
We consist of lightness and darkness. A lot of what we feel is connected to our past. More importantly, we need to experience our sensations, feelings and emotions and become aware of our thoughts. An uncomfortable emotion might tell us that we are not headed in the right direction.
This is how I see emotions: emotions that keep lingering, feel heavy and strong, might tell us something about a situation we have been in, but it might not be the true emotion of our Soul. These are the emotions from the ego. We are used to having these emotions. They keep coming back and being triggered by situations similar to when they first were created. Mostly, these heavy, challenging emotions are coping or protective mechanisms that move us away from our Souls.
Emotions from the Soul are directive. They lack the heaviness, trigger and feeling of challenge. Emotions from the Soul are loving, light and subtle. Your Soul won’t ever pressure you to feel or do anything. It just gives a subtle signal about life and pushes you lovingly in the right direction. It is the voice you hear in the silence between the sounds of the world. Yes, sometimes the signal turns strong when you don’t listen. So, make sure you listen. And sometimes, it’s other people, situations or things communicating with us about our direction.
It is our duty towards our Souls to recognise our inner truths. Life mission is about discovering who we truly are. What comes from our Souls, Source, Spirit, the Universe or intuition? What is coming from the past or future? Get to know your true self and shed anything that is not you. But then, why do we experience these heavy emotions?
Life lessons
This is why it’s important to dive deep into yourself and discover what is true and what isn’t; we are supposed to learn from life. A lot of emotions are rooted in defence mechanisms or emotional patterns that stem from our past. We need to learn from them and understand the contrasting emotion that we haven’t allowed inside ourselves. These are the challenges and life lessons we go through.
Once we have allowed in the message, usually accompanied by a lighter emotion or feeling, more in line with our Soul qualities, we become our Souls more. The emotions that we experience are coming from the Soul, who speaks through our Hearts. When we know what is in our Hearts, our life path and direction in life becomes clear.
Knowing yourself is not only about discovering who you are. It is about discovering and releasing who you are not. And sometimes we need some help in gaining perspective and understanding our lessons. Don’t hesitate to ask for help in overcoming challenges.
Accepting Self
Imagine this…
Still standing in front of this fork in the road, you are aware of your confusion. “How do I choose?”, you wonder. “What should I choose? How do I feel about this road? How do I feel about that road? What will I gain if I go there?”. You realise that making a mental analysis won’t take you anywhere. Then, you take a deep breath in and let your body relax. You accept that you are standing here in your own mental confusion. And in this acceptance, the silence expands itself. And suddenly, you know where to go.
I admire the Chinese philosophers from centuries ago who already figured out so much about the mechanisms of the Universe. One of my favourite examples to use, is that of the balance between Yin and Yang. I believe people are similar to this explanation of how the Universe works. Internally, we are always opposites of lightness and darkness, in a playful interaction and integration, always looking for balance.
Because we consist of lightness and darkness, every moment we might be someone else. Every moment we are in a different balance. There is no right or wrong here. Sometimes, you are more human, more grounded, and more from the ego. At other times, you are in tune with the Universe and your intuition is so clear. Sometimes, we are light, sometimes we are dark and sometimes somewhere in between.
We should accept that we are ever changing beings. At the same, our essence, our Soul, is always there, sometimes visibly, sometimes in the background. We need to accept ourselves in every moment, even though we have parts in ourselves that we don’t agree with or even hate. We need to accept that we have these dark sides too, otherwise they will lead their own lives inside of us and eventually outside of us.
How do we accept ourselves? In the end, everything inside of us just wants to be seen, heard and acknowledged. It doesn’t mean that we are this frustrated or sad person all the time, but frustration and sadness do want to be recognised. It means that, the more aware of who we are not, the more choice we have of being who we want to be. In this way, we discover who we truly are and let go of who we are not. We just need to accept ourselves in the moment and wonder whether this is our true selves or not.
Sometimes, we just need to stop, breathe and accept. Accepting ourselves and getting to the core of who we truly are, will give clarity to your life mission and your life path. Then, our dark and light parts are integrated and we fall into the silence and space where our Souls will give us the subtle answers we need.
Life purpose vs. life mission
Imagine this…
After having removed the obstacle on the road, you realise what your purpose was in this moment. You also realise that you’ve had many obstacles and many purposes in the past. They weren’t always the same purpose, but in the moment itself, this purpose came from your intuition and Soul. These purposes were different parts of your Soul expressing itself.
I feel that to a lot of people life purpose and life mission are the same. To me, life mission is broader and explains more about the human and Soul connection. Life purpose is more similar to a goal or intention within a moment. I also don’t believe that when you have a mission, there is only one purpose. You can have many purposes in life at different moments. At any moment, you can have a different purpose.
Life mission is about discovering who you are, living your life and contributing on a small or large scale at different moments in life. Every moment you can be someone else, because in every moment different parts of your Soul might want to express itself.
In the end, it is all about energy. Your contribution is about being who you are and creating a change in your environment (or the world) with your unique and specific energy, by being you. Therefore, there is no plan in your mission. You just need to live life, discover who you are, make choices and be your true self in the moment. Your energy state will reflect what is around you, while it also changes your environment (yin and yang working together).
This is why life mission to me is more fitting than life purpose. However, you might interpret purpose differently. Looking up the word ‘purpose’ in the dictionary gives different words that also are in line with life mission, for example: sense, meaning, determination. You choose which words you want to use to explain life. And hopefully, I have translated my interpretations sufficiently for you to decide for yourself.
Living life not knowing your mission
Imagine this…
You decide to look back on your life path. It doesn’t always give you a good feeling to look back and you shouldn’t always look back, but right now you are. You realise that the choices you made were in the moment. Would you make different choices if you could go back now? Would you enjoy what was coming, knowing it would come? You realise that all you can do is just live life and choose in the moment what feels best to you. And what feels best, you know in your Heart. This is all you can do.
Ultimately, it’s not even important to know your mission. You just live life, ask questions and you will get answers. Sometimes you don’t ask and you get answerrs anyway. You bump into obstacles once in a while and (re)discover what is true to you and who the true you is. Your emotions will show you the way, by making you let go of emotions that don’t serve you in the form of life lessons or by your true Heart emotions, which are the emotions from your Soul.
Living life means you become aware of your physical sensations, your emotions and your thoughts. Your reality is not created by what you observe in the physical world, as a lot of people think by default. Our realities are created by the way our Souls are connected to us and by the way we think and feel about things. The more we are connected to our Souls, the more we can manifest the ideas and dreams into our reality. Observing yourself, going deep and releasing emotions from the ego will lead to more directive emotions from the Heart and Soul and clarity on your life path.
For a long time, my pitfall has been that my sense of mission was so strong that I always felt I had to work hard on it. I had to direct the world into a certain direction. I had to save the world. It made my shoulders feel so heavy. Only now, I am starting to accept that I’m also allowed to enjoy life. To make choices, not only for humanity, but to also make my personal dreams come true.
Eventually, especially at the end of certain life phases but not exclusively, you will know who you are. Your experiences, talents, skills, qualities and characteristics will create something so unique for the world, that only you can create. Children show this already, because their ego has not been formed completely yet. They are more Soul than conditioned patterns, and act and live in the present. They wonder about every thing they perceive and play with it. Let’s allow more of this childlike wonder and Soul integration in ourselves.
Summary and conclusion
Can you imagine this…?
You are walking on your life path with a sense of acceptance, confidence and overview. You feel you know who you are. You feel you’ve lived life enough to have experience in dealing with it. You feel a new stage in life has started and you look forward to it. You don’t know what is coming, but you feel that what is coming is beautiful and miraculous. Your sense of self and Soul feel like one. You just know things are always going to work out.
Life mission is about your contribution to the Earth and life. Life mission is about discovering who you are. Who you are is who your Soul wants you to be in life. Your Soul wants to manifest a certain human being, with a certain personality, at a certain moment. Your Soul wants to integrate through your humanness, so that you can live as your Soul, learn lessons, live life and contribute.
There is no map of your life path. You might have the end result in mind in the form of a dream or vision. You will know the way when you feel a sense of mission and you feel pulled towards a certain direction. And if you don’t know the way, you just live life and bump into things, so you know what this feels like. If it doesn’t feel good, you can do something about it, for example, change directions or stand still to contemplate for a bit.
Life shows us where we should be through our emotions. Emotions formed in the past as conditioned patterns may teach us life lessons and show us which Soul quality wants to come through. Our directive emotions from the Heart, is our Soul speaking to us and showing us the path and which choices to make. We move from ego to Soul, and sometimes the other way around, because we are human beings. Let’s accept this and find the stillness and peace within. In stillness, our Soul speaks and we get answers through intuition.
To exactly know your life mission is not important. It’s more important to just live life, be in the present, enjoy it, learn from it and allow more of your Soul in yourself and in your life. In this way, you will always contribute to the world as your unique self in this moment, small or big. So, let’s just enjoy life and enjoy who we are. Trust your inner guidance system. Trust life. And don’t worry about your life mission.
And if you do know your mission, you are a step ahead. It might be easier for you to make choices in life. Each pull might feel very clear to you. But don’t forget that you are also here to enjoy life and just live it.
I hope you got inspiration to ponder about the subject life mission. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. Just follow your own truth to become who you essentially are.