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A GUIDE TO SELECTING

Books About Finding Your Purpose in Life

What is Purpose?

Purpose is often considered similar to finding meaning or direction. It's also related to passion. The goal of purpose if fulfillment.

 

A purpose is often related to things someone likes to achieve in life, but many people have found that achievement is not satisfying in and of itself, even if you fulfill your purpose.

 

In books about purpose, the topic is often considered broader than a career, success or leaving your mark on the world.
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Different types of Purpose

​A combination of books gives us a total of 8 types of purposes and it can already be helpful just to become familiar with them:

  • Social: Purpose to connect deeply – prioritize belonging, joy, intimacy.

  • Order: Purpose to improve systems – innovate, serve, create structure.

  • Relevance: Purpose to leave a legacy – achieve something significant.

  • Existential: Purpose to find life’s meaning – explore philosophical truths.

  • Spiritual: Purpose to pursue enlightenment – align with higher consciousness.

  • Religious: Purpose to follow divine rules – devote actions to a deity.

  • Virtue: Purpose to live ethically – practice principles like the Golden Rule.

  • Hedonistic: Purpose to maximize pleasure – prioritize enjoyment.

 

Some see purpose as fate – something that was endowed on you at birth – others say it’s a choice, perhaps even a choice you can change throughout your lifetime.

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There may even be more than one purpose at the same time, aligned or hierarchical. For example, you may feel that your purpose is to provide excellent service to the customers of your bakery. At the same time, you could consider it your spiritual purpose to surrendering to the (humble) role you feel you’re meant to play in life.

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The Two Ways to Find your Purpose

There are two categories of ways to find/choose/discover your purpose:

  • Systematic searching

  • Surrendering to intuition

 

Systematic approaches revolve around zooming in on smaller questions about your beliefs and preferences – eventually piecing them together.

 

The other approach – surrendering – is to treat purpose as something that only reveals itself when you go beyond thinking about it and follow your feeling.

 

A good starting point for finding your purpose would be to answer for yourself – with or without the help of books – what resonates with you in terms of method, origin and type of purpose. Who knows, the purpose might just reveal itself.

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Best Books About Finding your Purpose

Here you find a list of archetypal books about finding your purpose from which we captured the essence in a short summary. The books are listed in a random order. We don't earn any commission on your selection.​

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"Finding Your Element"

Ken Robinson argues that finding purpose is a matter of discovering your passions as well as your natural talents. He shows how to find both and how to create an intersection of the two. The key is often in your childhood, from before conditioning. Reflect on what you liked and what came easy to you when younger. Ask your parents and others who were around you. Then experiment and see what excites you now.

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"Build the Life You Want"

According to Arthur Brooks, there are four pillars of purpose. Family provides purpose as it takes work to make families function well. Same for friendship. Progressing your career based on learning which aspects of your job you like also provides purpose. The forth pillar of purpose is to spend time on something related to your idea about the meaning of life. The book explains how to develop each pillar.

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"Find Your Why"

Simon Sinek argues that purpose is not so much about "what" you do, but about "why" you do something.  Although primarily designed for business purpose discovery, this book's practical framework and exercises can also help you uncover your core values and articulate the unique contribution you'd like to make to the world.

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"The Purpose-Driven Life"

This book by Rick Warren argues that purpose is primarily found in faith, not self, which requires a belief in God. By connecting with Him, you also find the purpose he had in mind for you in the world. Thus, regular bible study is a key elem​​ent to finding your purpose. Other practical tips are: reflect on what comes easy to you (which is a sign), take career tests and assessments to learn about your talents and look for ways to serve others with those abilities.​

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"Man's Search for Meaning"

Victor Frankl suggest that we don't need to know our purpose and values before we can act well, but rather that it's the other way around. By deliberately living in accordance to what feels right, our purpose will reveal itself to us. Start acting as-if your life already has purpose. Look at the world with the intention to see what role it's asking from you to ​​​fulfill in it. Experiment and notice what feels right to continue doing. Don't wait for purpose to find you.

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"A New Earth"

Eckhart Tolle argues that the true purpose for each of us is first and foremost to awaken from the egoic thought pattern – the illusion of being an autonomous "self" – our minds have been habitually repeating. Once we do so, we'll naturally find our role in the game of life, surrender to it and have the issue of finding purpose ended on all levels. The key is to develop an ability to observe the thinker of your thoughts long enough until it dissolves and only thought remains.

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Bukuru's Zero-Books Approach​​​​​​​​​

Our minds develop habits. If you look into buying another car, you suddenly notice all sorts of cars that you were previously not aware of. Similarly, when you have a tendency of looking for mistakes, you miss good results.

 

When you lack clarity of your purpose, you'll be looking for it within yourself, no matter which book or approach you take. You'll be looking for the one thing in your life that you would do if you already had all the money, love, attention, energy and abilities you could wish for. If nothing of your current lacks had to be compensated for anymore, what would you like to do most?

 

Once you know the answer, you can start doing that and reframe everything else you do as something that serves the purpose of allowing you to do more and more of what you're supposed to be doing in life – what you were born for.

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About Bukuru

The core philosophy of Bukuru is that each person should test their own beliefs. The project started as a quest to categorize self-development books in such a way that it would become easier to find books that match your beliefs. However, along the way we concluded that the essence of most books can be captured in a few sentences – if the idea is original at all. Instead of helping people buy books, we now help people not buying books.

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