A self-guided process
7 Steps to Your Life Purpose
A structured self-guided process for uncovering what your life is genuinely asking of you — and beginning to find your direction. Work through each step at your own pace, with a journal and an open mind.
Most people who feel unclear about their direction are not lacking information. They are carrying too much of it — accumulated opinions, inherited expectations, and the residue of decisions made before they knew themselves well enough to choose.
This process does not tell you what your purpose is. It creates the conditions in which you can find it yourself — by removing what is not yours, following what is genuinely alive, and looking carefully at the patterns your own life has already laid down.
Work through each step honestly. Write your responses in a journal or notebook — not on a screen. Give yourself time between steps if you need it. There is no correct pace.
Before you begin
Find a quiet space. Have something to write with. Resist the urge to answer quickly — the most useful responses tend to come after a pause. If a question does not land immediately, leave it and return.
Why life purpose matters
Awareness of life purpose is Skill 2 in the 21 Skills of Spiritual Intelligence — a rigorously evidenced framework developed by Cindy Wigglesworth. Like any skill, it develops through recognisable stages — from novice to mastery.
This process is designed to move you from feeling burdened toward aliveness and action. You will get the best results through honest reflection rather than clever thinking.
The seven steps
Step One
Clearing the Surface Noise
Before you can hear what your life is genuinely asking of you, you need to quieten what it is not asking. Most of us are carrying a considerable amount that was never ours to carry — expectations inherited from family, standards absorbed from culture, identities we adopted before we were old enough to choose.
This step is not about rejecting your past. It is about becoming clear on what actually belongs to you — so that what remains is honest rather than borrowed.
Reflection questions — write your responses
What expectations or “shoulds” have you been carrying that were never actually yours?
If no one judged you — family, society, friends — what would you stop doing immediately?
What parts of your life feel heavy or obligatory rather than alive?
Where in your life are you currently out of integrity with yourself?
Purpose cannot be uncovered while you are still operating under borrowed identities. Take as long as you need here. The discomfort of this step is usually a sign it is working.
Step Two
Tracking Aliveness
Purpose tends to live where aliveness lives. Not excitement — that is a different thing, and often misleading. Aliveness is quieter. It is the sense of being most fully yourself, most present, most engaged without effort.
This step asks you to identify the moments, activities, and conditions in which that quality appears — and then look for what they share.
Reflection questions — write your responses
What activities make time disappear for you?
When do you feel the most “you”?
What kinds of problems do you naturally start solving even if no one asked you to?
What would you do for free because you can’t not do it?
What brings you a sense of deep inner expansion?
After answering, look at what you have written and see if you can identify a repeating pattern — a mode of engagement that keeps appearing. Service. Creation. Teaching. Protecting. Healing. Transforming. Building. The word that fits may be one of these, or none of them.
Step Three
Moments of Truth / Purpose Clues
Purpose leaves a trail. Across a lifetime of experiences — including the difficult ones — there are moments that carry disproportionate weight. Moments where something important happened, or was expressed, or was recognised. These are not random.
This step asks you to look at those moments carefully — and extract what they reveal about your signature contribution: the particular way you tend to show up, and what happens to others when you do.
Reflection questions — write your responses
What was a peak experience in your life — a moment that felt genuinely meaningful? What made it so?
What hardship or difficulty has shaped you most? And what inner resource did it awaken?
When have you felt proud in a way you could not quite explain to anyone else? What was underneath that pride?
What do people consistently come to you for — informally, not just professionally?
If someone observed you closely for 30 days, what would they say you naturally contribute to the people around you?
Step Four
Strengths and Weaknesses
Before moving toward a purpose statement, pause and look honestly at the person through whom this purpose would have to be lived.
Purpose does not float above your nature. It must grow through the actual soil of who you are — your strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, sensitivities, fears, and recurring patterns.
This is not about judging yourself. It is about telling the truth. Your strengths show where life may move through you naturally. Your weaknesses show where your purpose may become distorted, avoided, or abandoned.
Reflection questions — write your responses
What strengths appear repeatedly in your answers so far?
What qualities or capacities do other people seem to rely on in you?
What do you seem able to do naturally, without forcing?
What weaknesses, fears, or patterns repeatedly pull you away from what matters?
Where do you overuse a strength until it becomes a distortion?
What do you avoid, exaggerate, control, or perform when you lose contact with yourself?
What do you need to be honest about if this purpose is going to be lived, not merely imagined?
Take your time here. Purpose is not lived by an ideal version of you. It is lived through the actual person you are becoming.
Integration Pause — 24 to 72 hours
Before continuing to the next step, sit with what you have written. Do not rush to Step 6.
Notice what feels alive, grounded, and quietly persistent across the four steps — not what is exciting, but what keeps returning when you stop trying to find it. If nothing feels clear yet, that is information too. Purpose ripens. It does not force.
Step Five
Wisdom Traditions
This is where we look at soul and soil.
Your soil is the particular nature your soul has embodied into: your strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, sensitivities, preferences, and natural currents.
Across centuries, different wisdom traditions have tried to help us understand this soil. In this step, we take four symbolic maps and look for convergence: where do all these systems seem to be pointing towards the same thing?
We do not use these systems as oracles. They do not tell you who you are. We use them more like a geologist who sends a signal down into the earth: depending on what bounces back, an image begins to appear on the screen. The systems are the signals. You are the soil. What resonates — or is “revealed” — helps form the image on the screen of your conscious awareness.
The aim is not to let any system define you, but to notice what resonates, what repeats, and what seems to confirm what your own life has already been quietly showing you.
The four symbolic maps
Astrology / Birth Chart
Offers insights into core drives, emotional needs, expression, vocation, life lessons, and growth edges.
Human Design
Reveals how energy moves through you, decision-making authority, where conditioning may distort self-trust, and your natural role in systems.
Enneagram
Offers insights into ego strategy, core fear and fixation, how personality can hijack purpose, and growth and stress patterns.
Gene Keys
Offers insights into how challenges mature into strengths and contribution, how shadow can become gift, and how suffering may alchemise into service.
This is a deeper interpretive stage. It benefits from being held in live coaching because the work requires discernment, pattern recognition, and a skilled human mirror.
Step Six
Living Purpose Statement
Once the patterns from Steps 1–4 are reasonably clear, it is possible to begin forming language around them.
A purpose statement should be treated as a living symbol, not a contract. It gives direction, but it should stay open to deepening as your life changes, your responsibilities change, and your understanding matures.
It is not meant to explain your whole life. It is meant to reveal a thread of service that feels true enough to live by for now.
A useful purpose statement can be shaped like this:
“I am here to help [who]
[experience / become / realise what]
through [my way of serving],
in a way that expresses [essence / core qualities].”
The four layers
Who or what do I feel called to serve?
What change, healing, growth, or beauty do I help bring?
Through what activity, role, craft, practice, or relationship do I serve?
What qualities of my being must be present for it to feel true?
Use what you discovered in the previous steps. Your Impact is what tends to happen when your gift is genuinely expressed. Your Way is how that gift actually moves through you — through teaching, creating, parenting, leading, healing, building, protecting, listening, designing, performing, organising, or something else. Your Essence is the quality of presence that makes the expression feel true rather than forced.
The risk with any purpose formula is that people try to produce something impressive. But purpose is not narcissistic self-branding. It is not about creating a sentence that sounds elevated, spiritual, or marketable.
A real purpose statement must remain answerable to life.
That means it should not only ask:
“What do I want to express?”
It should also ask:
“What is life asking of me?”
“Who or what am I responsible to?”
“Where does my presence, care, skill, or courage actually serve?”
Examples
“I am here to help my children grow into confident, free, and loving people by creating a home of love, safety, and belonging, in a way that expresses devotion, steadiness, and care.”
“I am here to help young people learn, grow, and believe in their own capacity to understand the world and shape their future through guiding them, in a way that expresses clarity, encouragement, and care.”
“I am here to help people feel beautiful, confident, and at home in themselves through bringing out their natural beauty, in a way that expresses creativity, presence, and care.”
“I am here to help people remember what is true, trust their inner authority, and find clear direction through deep listening, spiritual intelligence, and structured inquiry, in a way that expresses presence, truth, and devotion to soul.”
How this might sound in recognisable lives
To understand how this structure works, it can help to imagine how the living purpose statement of well-known figures might sound through this lens.
These are not claims about what these people would have said about themselves. They are reflective examples — ways of seeing the thread of service, impact, method, and essence that appears to run through parts of their lives.
Nelson Mandela
“I am here to help oppressed people reclaim dignity, freedom, and democratic belonging through resistance, reconciliation, and leadership, in a way that expresses courage, endurance, forgiveness, and moral strength.”
Steve Jobs
“I am here to help people experience technology as intuitive, beautiful, and empowering through visionary product design, in a way that expresses simplicity, imagination, taste, and relentless excellence.”
Mother Teresa
“I am here to help the poorest and most forgotten experience dignity, care, and human tenderness through acts of service, in a way that expresses compassion, humility, devotion, and love.”
Jane Goodall
“I am here to help humanity remember its kinship with the living world through research, storytelling, and advocacy, in a way that expresses curiosity, reverence, patience, and care.”
These examples are intentionally imperfect. No single sentence can contain a whole human life. But they show how a purpose statement can point toward a recognisable thread: who is served, what becomes possible, how the person serves, and what qualities animate that service.
These statements are not grand because they sound impressive. They become meaningful only if they are honest.
Your turn — write your working statement
Using the patterns you identified in Steps 1–4, write several versions of your own purpose statement.
Start with this structure:
“I am here to help __________________ experience / become / realise __________________ through __________________, in a way that expresses __________________.”
Do not try to get it right on the first attempt. Write three to five versions.
Then read each one aloud slowly.
Ask:
“Does something in me recognise this?”
“Does this sentence make my body quietly say yes?”
“Does it feel grounded, or does it feel constructed?”
“Would I still recognise myself in it on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon?”
“Does it clarify my next choices?”
“Does it call me beyond self-image into service?”
If the language feels impressive but not true, simplify it. If it feels vague, make it more specific. If it feels heavy, ask whether it is carrying a “should.” If it feels exciting but ungrounded, return to your actual life. Purpose is usually less theatrical than fantasy and more alive than obligation.
The shadow check
A purpose statement becomes spiritually intelligent only when it asks more than, “What am I here to express?”
It must also ask:
“What am I here to serve?”
“What choices does this require?”
“What must I stop doing because it is not aligned?”
“What temptations pull me away from this?”
“If this purpose becomes distorted by fear, ego, ambition, or control, what does it turn into?”
Without this, purpose can become a personal mythology that flatters the ego.
A teacher’s purpose can distort into control or superiority. A healer’s purpose can distort into rescuing. A leader’s purpose can distort into self-importance. A parent’s purpose can distort into overprotection or martyrdom. A creator’s purpose can distort into performance or vanity.
So after you write your statement, complete this sentence:
“If my purpose were distorted by fear, ego, ambition, or control, it might become __________________.”
Then complete this one:
“To stay faithful to what is true, I may need to stop __________________.”
This prepares you for Step 7, where your purpose statement moves from language into action.
Remember: the formula is only as honest as the material that feeds it. If the statement does not feel true yet, return to Step 3 and look again. Purpose ripens. It does not force.
Step Seven
Purpose in Motion / Integration
A purpose statement is not the end of the process. It is the beginning of a different way of making decisions. Purpose that remains abstract — a sentence in a notebook — tends not to change much. Purpose that is translated into attention, environment, and action tends to reorient a life.
This step asks you to move from language to orientation — to identify where your purpose can actually be expressed, what is currently preventing that, and what one honest next step might be.
Some people may recognise a similar inquiry in the Japanese concept often referred to as Ikigai (meaning: reason for being) — the overlap between what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. This can be a useful visual map, especially when thinking about livelihood. But in this process, we are listening for something slightly deeper: not only what might become useful or viable, but what feels answerable to life, service, and the truth of who you are.
This diagram is not a formula to obey, but a helpful orientation point as you begin translating purpose into a life that can actually be lived.
Reflection questions — write your responses
What are the 2–3 environments — roles, relationships, contexts — where your purpose seems most naturally expressed?
What environments consistently suppress it?
If you took your purpose statement seriously as a navigational tool, what would you start doing this month?
What micro-habits or daily practices would support your living in closer alignment with what you have named?
Which of your current relationships energise your purpose — and which quietly drain it?
What is the smallest honest action you could take in the next 72 hours that would be consistent with what you have found, and aligns with your purpose?
The last question matters most. Not because small actions change everything — but because they tell you whether what you have found is real enough to act on, or whether more work remains.
For those who want to go further
The Inner Work Questions
These questions sit beneath the seven steps. They are not required — but for some people they unlock something valuable. Approach them only when the earlier steps are complete, and only if you are willing to be genuinely honest.
Identity
Who are you when you are not performing for anyone?
Which version of yourself are you longing to become — and what do you fear will happen if you do?
Desire
What desire are you afraid to admit, because it feels too large or too unrealistic?
What would you do if you were certain you would not fail?
Shadow
What part of yourself have you been suppressing that actually carries significant energy?
Who would you disappoint if you lived your purpose fully?
Legacy
What do you want people to thank you for when you are gone?
What do you want your life to make possible for others?
“You already know something needs to change. That knowing is enough to begin.”
— Simon Blackhall
Before you move on
What this process can do — and where it reaches its limit
Working through these steps honestly will surface something real. A direction that keeps returning. A tension that will not settle. A sense of what matters that sits just outside language. For some people, that is enough to move forward on their own.
But self-reflection has a limit — and it is worth naming it clearly. What you find on your own is real. What you cannot always do on your own is distinguish signal from noise with precision, or see what proximity prevents you from seeing, or hold what emerged long enough to understand what it is actually asking of you.
That is not a failure of the process. It is what the process is designed to reveal.
“Sometimes grace is the hand that pulls you through the wall when, by yourself, you would have turned back.”
— Thomas Hübl
Choose your next step
Three honest paths forward
There is no right answer. The question is simply: where are you now?
Path one
Continue reflecting on your own
If something emerged but you are not yet ready to name it — or you simply want more time with what surfaced — that is entirely right. Return to the steps that did not fully land. Sit with the integration pause. Let the questions do their work.
There is no pressure to move on before you are ready.
Path two — recommended next step
Book a Life Direction Review
If something real emerged — a direction you can almost name, a pattern you keep circling, a tension the questions brought to the surface but did not resolve — a Life Direction Review is the natural next step.
It is a focused 1-hour session with Simon Blackhall. Not more reflection — a direct conversation about what your material actually means, where the weight of it seems to be pointing, and what an honest next step looks like for you specifically.
Path three
Go straight to Find Your Direction
If you already know that one conversation will not be enough — that what you are dealing with is deeper, and that you want sustained 1:1 support to work through it properly — Find Your Direction is the right next step for you.
Learn more about Find Your Direction