Discovering Your Purpose: How Life Coaching Can Guide Self-Discovery

The journey of self-discovery is about uncovering our true passions and our life’s purpose, which changes as we move through different stages of our lives. However, we find that we lose sight of our own passions and desires as habitual living, comfort zones and competing priorities take precedence in our lives. We must create opportunities to pause and reflect on how we are meeting our own desires and feeling that sense of purpose as we pass through these different stages.  So how can we embark on this path?

Developing Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is fundamental to any meaningful change in life. It involves understanding our thoughts, values, beliefs, and behaviours. Without this awareness, we cannot:

• Change thought patterns if we aren't conscious of them.

• Align our choices with our values if we aren’t aware of what we truly value.

• Challenge outdated or false beliefs unless we recognise what we believe now.

• Alter behaviours if we don’t understand our patterns or why we act in certain ways.

Exploring the Origins of Our Thoughts, Beliefs, and Values

Self-discovery begins by examining where our thoughts, beliefs, and values originate. Often, they are shaped by childhood experiences, conditioned behaviours, and the opinions of others during those early formative years. These thoughts, beliefs, and values are stored in our subconscious mind and influence our behaviours and attitudes and shape how we see ourselves.

This is where life coaching comes in, helping individuals uncover the origins of their beliefs and question the accuracy of such beliefs. Our subconscious mind, which once protected us by reinforcing certain beliefs, may now be limiting us, holding us back from realising our full potential. Through life coaching, we learn to move beyond these limiting beliefs by exploring their origins and challenging their truth, determining where and who we want to be and focusing our energies in reaching those personal goals- sometimes we need to get out of our own way and remove the blocks we ourselves have erected.

Determining our needs:

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a well-known motivational theory concept, based on 5 categories of human needs that he believed we all share. Those are

• Physiological Needs: Basic survival needs like food, water, and shelter.

• Safety Needs: The desire for security and protection.

• Love and Belonging needs: The need for relationships and connection.

• Esteem need: The need for self-worth and respect from others.

• Self-Actualization needs: The pursuit of personal growth and fulfilment.

Basic survival needs are a priority for all but how good are we at fulfilling our psychological and self-fulfilment needs. Self-actualisation means being your best you, it’s about finding and unleashing your highest values and achievements-it’s about achieving self-fulfilment. Do you feel you are you moving towards self-fulfilment, finding your life purpose and meaning.

Our lives can be broken down into some key areas to help us more deeply understand where we currently are in our life. These areas are broadly presented here as our personal, professional, social, intimate and meaningful connections. Examining our lives under such groups, allows us in a holistic manner, to uncover imbalances and discontent across different life areas.

Today I have control over my own life and my life choices at this present moment in time- not tomorrow or in the future but right now and I aim to make each day a meaningful one. Beginning a journey of self-discovery is enlightening especially when you give yourself the space to look at where you are right now. Becoming aware is the first step for real change to take place. Becoming aware means, you are shining the spotlight on yourself and while this may cause feelings of discomfort initially, those feelings tend to be short-lived. You can listen to your head, but you also need to tune into your heart.