Do you feel a potential to do something big with your life but you cannot get clear on exactly what it might be? Or do you have a dream project yet you are struggling to get it off the ground? If you’re feeling stuck and off purpose, chances are, the golden thread of your life is tied up in a knot. Journaling can help unravel this thread of meaning in our lives and help us can get clear on what we truly came here to do and who we came here to be. Our purpose is always deeply entwined with our passion, so identifying what lights you up will be a sure indicator of where your true purpose in life really lies.

Crack the code of discovering your life’s purpose by answering these questions in your journal. Prepare with the ritual we outlined in Week One and once you feel settled and calm begin to write freely – and with as much colour, detail and passion as you like.

• I feel most alive when…
• The thing that gives – or would give me – the greatest joy in life is…
• If I could do anything with my life I would…
• My greatest dream for my life is…
• If money were no object I would…

Now read through your answers until you find the golden thread that weaves them all together.

Another way to discover the golden thread of our life is to think back to our childhood dreams and see where the fragments of those dreams are showing up in our adult lives. Use these prompts to trigger your memory:

• As a child I dreamt of becoming…
• When I was young my favourite thing to do was…
• I always said that my life plan was to…

The likelihood is that your childhood dreams contained the seeds of your potential to pursue your life purpose. If the specific dream has faded, ask yourself what new dreams have come in to replace it? An example from my own life is that when I was a child I longed to be a circus clown – I wanted to make people happy. Now as a writer I help people to connect with their inner capacity for creating happiness and fulfilment in their own lives – my desire to help others is a golden thread running through my life. So, why not write in your journal now about the golden thread that runs from your childhood instincts into all that you do now in your adult life.

The next is super effective for helping us to find our true purpose in life. It involves thinking about the people we admire and identifying precisely what it is we admire about them: be it their qualities, their values, the work they do, how they do it and how they live, for example. The simple fact is this: what we admire in others, in one form or another, is the very thing we would like to achieve or develop in ourselves. Here is the journaling practice. Name your favourite:

• Writer
• Movie director
• Playwright
• Designer
• Artist
• Book
• Film
• Play
• Style
• Work of art
• Character in a book / movie / play
• Actress / actor
• Historical era

Now list the reasons you like all of these people and things and you will quickly discern the golden thread running through your choices. The things you admire in others point to the things you most likely want to develop in yourself.

The golden thread that I found running through my choices in this exercise was my desire to be able to live and to work differently, to live outside the crowd, to strive for authentic self-expression and to be true to myself. Samuel Beckett is my favourite writer and after doing this exercise he became my role model for how to do life differently. Learning that my deeper desire was to develop the courage to do things differently in life gave me the confidence to go ahead and do them differently.

Our final journaling exercise is to review your list of that all you admire in others and then journal about how you can embrace these qualities and traits in yourself and in your own life. Allow yourself to feel a new sense of potential and possibility and then revisit the prompts above and see what has shifted.

• If I could do anything with my life I would…
• My greatest dream for my life is…

Next week we’ll look at the power of journaling to help us overcome blocks and obstacles, both in journaling and in life.

Happy writing!

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