3 Ways to Find Your Life Purpose

Your mess is your message. It is one of the most powerful things you have that is unique to you. That if you have the courage, you're brave enough to share with other people, it will save other people.

Table of Contents

How to Find Your Life Purpose

Most founders wake up grinding, hustling, but still feeling like something is missing. That empty spot is purpose.

Without purpose, discipline feels forced and energy drains fast. With purpose, you wake up clear, driven, and unstoppable. Let’s break down the three steps to finding it.

1. Build Through Service

Purpose starts with giving. When you make it about helping others, you unlock a level of fulfillment and energy that no personal achievement can give you.

Ways to serve that lead to clarity:

  • Volunteer with kids, seniors, or underserved communities

  • Mentor young entrepreneurs

  • Use your expertise to help nonprofits solve real problems

  • Build something that removes obstacles for people behind you

Service OpportunityImpact for OthersFulfillment for You
Mentoring kidsConfidence, directionRenewed energy, perspective
Donating time to nonprofitsExpanded resourcesStronger sense of meaning
Teaching skillsFaster growthMastery of your own craft
📌When you start serving, you not only help others, you discover what truly lights you up. If you’re struggling to stay consistent in your business, you’ll want to explore how to buy back your time so you can give more of it to service.

Purpose requires you to help other people. You can get anything you want in life if you help other people get what they want.

2. Transform Pain Into Purpose

Your greatest pain can become your greatest teacher. Most people bury their hardest experiences, but that’s exactly where purpose often lives.

Ask yourself:

  • What pain have you experienced that you would never want someone else to go through?

  • What lesson did that pain teach you?

  • How could you use it to guide, heal, or support others?

Remember, your story is your unfair advantage. That’s why your purpose often connects directly to the worst thing you’ve been through. If you’re willing to own it, you’ll have a source of drive no competitor can replicate.

📌 As you do this work, you may realize the same resilience that helped you survive also gave you the mental edge to manage ADHD without medication.

Pain is the perfect teacher. Without purpose, the pain is just suffering. With purpose, the pain becomes fulfillment and energy.

3. Follow Intuition Relentlessly

Most founders already know what they want deep down, but ego and outside expectations keep them from acting. Your gut is shouting, but you’ve been ignoring it.

How to act on intuition fast:

  • Pay attention to where you feel most alive

  • Test small, don’t wait for perfect conditions

  • Stop waiting for permission from others

  • Create proximity to the people you want to serve

Start now. Don’t overcomplicate it. What begins with helping four people can grow into hundreds when you follow through.

📌 Intuition is the real cheat code. Trusting it is how you scale your life beyond just business wins. And if you want to push through internal resistance, you’ll need to learn how to act like a billionaire by playing bigger than your fears.

Your intuition is shouting. It knows exactly what you should do, but you keep saying no. The moment you stop making it about you, your whole life will change.

Start Living Your Purpose Today

Purpose isn’t something you “find” by waiting around. It’s something you build by serving, transforming pain, and trusting your gut. The sooner you take action, the faster you’ll experience the clarity and drive you’ve been missing.

Stop making it about you. Start making it about others. That’s when your life changes.

 Frequently Asked Questions

The three steps to finding your life purpose are serving others, transforming pain into purpose, and listening to your intuition. Service creates fulfillment, pain reveals lessons that shape your mission, and intuition points you toward what truly matters to you.

 

Serving others helps you find your life purpose because contribution shifts focus from yourself to the impact you create. When you dedicate energy to helping people, whether in your community, career, or personal life, you naturally discover meaning and motivation that align with your deeper purpose.

 

Past pain often reveals your true purpose because the struggles you have overcome can become the foundation for helping others through similar experiences. By turning hardship into guidance, your unique story becomes a message that creates connection, healing, and meaning.

 

 

Intuition is important for discovering purpose because it acts as an internal compass, guiding you toward decisions that feel aligned with your values. Many people ignore intuition due to fear or external expectations, but listening to it helps you recognize the work you are meant to do.

 

Yes, purpose is often connected to helping others avoid or overcome the same struggles you once faced. Sharing your experiences and creating solutions based on your journey allows your challenges to become meaningful contributions that inspire and support others.

 

More Resources

  • Portage – A rehabilitation center that helped Dan Martell and inspired his mission to support youth.

  • Kings Club – A youth mentorship initiative founded to empower and inspire kids through community and mentorship.

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  • Community service and volunteering – Pathways to create purpose through giving back and making impact.

Find Your Life’s Purpose By Doing These 3 Things – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CugrVcvcaso

Transcript:
(00:00) I got three things that I’m going to share with you that I think will transform your life. Three things, these ideas that will help you go from waking up, dragging your feet, not motivated, skipping workouts, lack of discipline to somebody that absolutely crushes their day.
(00:19) Somebody that other people look up to, somebody that walks with a level of energy and a pep to their step that is undeniable. The first thing is you got to understand this is built through service. Purpose requires you to help other people. It’s like when I remember a long time ago I went to Peru and I went on this retreat with my buddy Philip and it was like this you know this process that I could I did not understand.
(00:50) I flew for two days to go down to Peru to spend 10 days without a clue of the agenda, what I’m doing, but I trusted. And what happened was is part of the process was visiting orphanages. And what was interesting was the way Philip introduced them to us. It started with, you know, basic orphanages where, you know, the parents just couldn’t take care of the kids and they needed more support.
(01:15) Many of the kids had relationship with their parents, but they lived in this orphanage and we went and visited that one and it was really fun and we played soccer with the kids. And then it went to like the next orphanage, which is, you know, children that got taken from their homes. And then the third orphanage, which was the one that broke my heart open the biggest, was kids with mental disabilities that were just left on the side of the road.
(01:38) And it was really hard to watch and see and be. And I remember when we were at the first orphanage, Philillip saw me playing with the kids in a way he had never seen me play before. See, he knew me in a work capacity my whole life. Just achievementoriented, goal oriented. And I remember we’re on the bus about to leave and he says, “Hey, Dan, who’s that guy?” And I said, “Which guy?” He’s pointing at the field.
(02:07) I’m like, “There’s nobody on the field.” He goes, “You on that field? Who is that guy that was playing with those kids that were cracking jokes that you literally almost took a kid’s head off? You kicked the ball so hard on purpose, by the way.” I kind of laughed. I said, “Why?” He goes, “That guy’s cool. That guy’s fun.
(02:30) That guy very determined. like I I could see you wanted to win, but it took nothing away from you to also enjoy yourself. And that was the beginning of a conversation for me around really leaning into making it about other people, but choosing the other people, choosing. For me, it’s kids. I’m on a mission. I have I have a purpose.
(03:00) It’s very simple. I want to rid the world of any kid feeling like they’re broken. I want every kid to understand no matter what they’re going through, what they’ve gone through, what they’ve done, what people have said about them, there’s nothing wrong with them. They are not broken. The world is broken. They’re not broken.
(03:20) The other thing is, and this one’s a hard one. This may not This may not be something that you can work on right away. It might take you some time to figure this one out, but I believe that your purpose, what you’re meant to do with your time here on Earth, sits right next to the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.
(03:41) The thing that for a lot of people put in a box, bury that box, bury it at the bottom of the ocean. They have a lot of shame around it. They don’t want anybody to know. I was that person for 15 years after rehab, after ending up in jail twice as a teenager, after getting sober, starting to find my way.
(04:08) Even though it took me years to be successful from a business point of view, I didn’t want anybody to know. I had massive amounts of shame around the things that I had done, my decisions, and we never talked about it as a family for 15 years. Nobody knew. Even after I sold my first company wasn’t enough. Even after I got named number one angel investor in all of Canada wasn’t enough.
(04:32) Even after I built and sold another one of my companies wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until I got put in a position to help these kids, this place called Portage that saved my life. And only because of that did I had the courage or the drive or the desire to actually share my personal story publicly.
(04:55) And man was it hard. Did I have a face full of snots trying to share this? Did it feel like I had just broken my heart wide open? Was I worried? You better believe it. But I also know that when I got off that stage and I had people coming up to me, sharing with me things that they’d never shared with another human being ever and finally feeling understood by people that were like, “Hey, Dan, why do you think you’re such a risk taker in business? You have no idea what I’ve done.
(05:30) This the business stuff that’s easy.” Here’s what I discovered and this is my question for you. What pain have you experienced that you would like to help other people avoid? What pain have you gone through that you would help other people get through easier, heal easier? What did you experience? What part of your life that is something you don’t want to think about, but if you think about why you’re successful, it may not be something you wish happened, but you definitely know because it happened, you are better for it.
(06:11) I believe this pain is the perfect teacher. Pain is the perfect teacher. It is an appropriate teacher in your life to show you where you got to go do the work. And if you’ve been blessed enough to do it, I actually believe that your purpose on earth is to help other people with that. Your mess is your message.
(06:31) It is one of the most powerful things you have that is unique to you. That if you have the courage, you’re brave enough to share with other people, it will save other people. The last thing I want to share with this is intuition is shouting. It’s screaming. Your heart, your desire knows exactly what it should do.
(06:57) It wants you to do it. But what happens is we have our ego, our perceptions of what other people expect of us. And it pushes back on our decisions to follow our intuition, to follow our hearts. We know what we want to do, but we deny it. Our purpose sits right there, but we say no. I remember a couple years ago, I was frustrated when I moved to Colona, and that’s where I live now.
(07:26) I made a decision to get active in my community like I had out east where I grew up. I I visited the rehab center that saved my life. I would do a lot of community projects and I had this like incredible community. So, when I moved here, I wanted the same thing. And I’d been here for a couple years and I realized that up to that point, yeah, I did a few talks and I went and spoke with a few organizations and we and my wife and I supported a ton of nonprofit projects, but I didn’t have that proximity and connections with the kids that I had
(07:56) back home where I grew up. So, out of frustration, one day I said, “Enough’s enough. Whoever wants to come, I want us to go find four kids.” And I called a social worker and I said, “Hey, do you have any kids that you think are ready and would benefit from spending some time learning about life and being successful and looking at cool cars cuz that’s also a big part of my life.
(08:16) ” And she found four kids. And those four kids came into my office and we sat down and we talked and I shared some stories and I shared some ideas and I shared my car and it started with four kids. The next week or maybe like few weeks later it went to eight. Few weeks later, 1632. Today, we had to move Kings Club is what it’s called, to an auditorium of a hundred seats.
(08:43) There’s 500 kids in my town. We do it every month. And it sells out. It’s free. doesn’t cost anything, but massive impact on my life, my ability to support these these troubled youth that I absolutely adore because I didn’t wait. My intuition told me, do something with it. And I think my gut tells me it’s talking to you and you know what you’ve got to do and you’ve been putting it off because it’s not big enough or you think I need to get this person to say yes to support me in it and if I can only get this person and this person involved then then it’ll be
(09:24) worth doing. No, no, no, no. We don’t do that. I need you to make a commitment to decide to give back to support others. Stop making it about you. See, you can get anything you want in life if you help other people get what they want. It’s the cheat code of cheat codes. You receive what you desire for others.
(09:47) If you want more money, help other people get more money. If you want more love in your life, help other people find it. If you want richer relationships and friendships, help other people. You want to get healthy, help other people get healthy. The moment you stop making it about you, your whole life will change.
(10:04) So that’s why I truly believe that purpose is the most powerful thing you can have because without it the pain is just suffering. With it, the pain is fulfillment. It is drive. It is it’s an energy that can move mountains. But like I said, it’s built through service. It sits right next to the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.
(10:29) And that your intuition is shouting for you to do something with it. below. I want to hear from you. I I need to know your com I need you to leave a comment letting me know what your purpose is. One simple thing. Don’t make the mistake of making it this big thing. Just tell me what it is. Why do you do what you do every day? What is the reason you’re going to do what you do every day? Because if you make it about somebody else, you’ll do way more for them than you’ll do for yourself.
(10:55) It’s why most people raise a bunch of money and train because they do it for charity. Tell me below in the comments. That’s my request. Do that and you will crush it in

Dan Martell

Dan Martell is the bestselling author of “Buy Back Your Time” and the #1 executive coach for founders and CEO’s in the world. He was named Forbes Top 10 Business People to Follow on Social Media and is a highly sought-after speaker, including events by Tony Robbins and John Maxwell. He’s a husband and dad of two boys, and when he’s not in family mode, he’s competing in Ironman races and supporting troubled youth.

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