How To Determine Your Purpose In Life
Using The Bell Curve
In an earlier lesson I suggested that you should think of success in your life as consisting of three things:
Finding your purpose in life
Becoming the best you can be in that area
Finding a way to share that value with others
So the first step to being “successful” in life is to determine your purpose in life. Your purpose in life is the ONE THING you are going to focus on to be the best that you can be at it, so that you can help others.
But how can you do this? What should be your purpose in life? Should you be a basketball star? A world class chess player? A professor of mathematics? What should you choose to be?
One of the keys to answering this question lies in SELF-AWARENESS. What is it that you are good at? What do you have a talent for?
Using The Bell Curve To Help Self Awareness
A bell curve is a a model or way to show how things are usually spread out or distributed. Think about any sort of talent, skill or ability of a group of people, and the results will look like this bell shaped chart
People Bell Curve Illustration
This means that MOST PEOPLE ARE AVERAGE (in the middle) the REALLY GOOD PEOPLE are smaller and to the right, and the REALLY BAD are smaller and to the left.
Given any talent or ability you want. everybody falls into one of these parts of the bell curve. Your physical ability will be average, better than average or less. Your natural mathematical abilities will be average, better than average or less.
Your spot on the Bell curve changes from subject to subject. You will be naturally good at some things, and struggle more with other things.
You can also improve your spot on the Bell Curve with training. So if you're not very athletic, you can improve that with training.
But TRAINING AND EDUCATION WILL ONLY TAKE YOU SO FAR.
Someone who is five foot 2 might practice to be a really good basketball player, but they will never make it into the NBA.
If you are not very strong and athletic, training will help, but it may not be enough to be a world class athlete.
So you probably don’t want to focus on an area where even with training you will be just average. That’s not how you reach YOUR full potential.
Here’s the rule:
FIND SOMETHING YOU ARE ALREADY NATURALLY GOOD AT AND FOCUS ON THAT TO BECOME THE BEST YOU CAN BE.
This will be different for everybody. What do you naturally excel in? In what area are you towards the right of the Bell curve? What are you “better than average” at already?
Think about what it might be.
Whatever it is, put your focus there. Pour all of your energy in that thing. Make this the ONE THING you want to excel in and become the best that you can be.