Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life—the reasons you get up in the morning.

Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For some people, purpose is connected to vocation—meaningful, satisfying work. For others, their purpose lies in their responsibilities to their family or friends. Others seek meaning through spirituality or religious beliefs. Some people may find their purpose clearly expressed in all these aspects of life.

Purpose will be unique for everyone; what you identify as your path may be different from others. What’s more, your purpose can actually shift and change throughout life in response to the evolving priorities and fluctuations of your own experiences.

Questions that may come up when you reflect upon your life purpose are:

• Who am I?
• Where do I belong?
• When do I …

You only live once, and life is tragically short. It’s easy to look at people who are happy and assume they don’t understand your pain. The older you get, the more you realize that happiness takes work. People who smile in public have been through every bit as much as people who cry, frown, scream, etc. They just have the courage and strength to smile through it anyway. So how do you ensure you’re living life to the fullest? Here are some tips to help you out:

• Decide what’s important to you. It doesn’t matter what it is. Don’t do what you think people want you to do. Your parents, friends, community, and society in general all have their opinions, but at the end of the day, you’re the only person who will be around for every moment of your life. Do what makes you happy. Everything else …

Usually we’re too busy rushing around living life to really ponder its meaning. But sometimes we can’t help wonder, what does it all mean? Why are we here?

Ah, the “rat race”—our darkly humorous term for how we relentlessly run on the endless treadmill of working, paying bills, running to and fro fulfilling family obligations and social responsibilities and ending up exhausted, only to do it again the next day.

We typically scurry around day to day, month to month and year to year, living life as if it has no end. Occasionally, though, we slow down from the maddening quest for “success”—pursuing money, love, fame, power … whatever—and ask ourselves some of the most profound questions in life: Why am I here? Is there more to life than just acquiring “stuff” or doing things? What is the meaning of life? Is there a reason, a purpose, to this …