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Two weeks ago I went through my del.icio.us account and read a number of articles, including How to discover your life purpose in about 20 minutes. So, this begs the question, how do I discover my life purpose? While I definitely recommend you go read the whole article, the way Steve Pavlina recommends is fairly simple, albeit a challenge:

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

Like I said, not very complex, but boy is it a challenge. I filled up at least 4 sheets of paper with different ideas, and still couldn’t find anything that felt right. Steve says Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. However, it took significantly longer for me. Eventually, I just ran out of time, so I stopped (which you’re not supposed to do).

This weekend I finally had a chance to come back to it. I took a bunch of paper, the sheets I’d written on a few weeks ago, and sat by the pool. It took at least another 45 minutes (probably closer to an hour), but I finally came up with an overall purpose I’m happy with.

To help others & decrease suffering by connecting people, creating tools, and teaching. To help myself by facing my fears, continuing to learn, staying fit, and being happy with my mind & body. To do both by communing with nature with others, and by building teams dedicated to all these goals.

Long, with three almost separate ideas, and complex. For reference, Steve’s is much, much simpler: to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace. Mine has already been boiled down some, so I’m not sure if I can simplify it any further.

I’m going to redesign my site to put this on it, though I’m not exactly sure where or how; this blog will probably be moved to a subdirectory, though I’ll keep the newest entry visible on the homepage.

One of the most basic things to start doing is tracking your expenses (I just download statements from my credit card, checking account, and savings account, and put them into Excel.)

While doing that, I went and looked for a budget. But budgets suck! You never follow them for very long because they feel so constraining and they’re annoying, too. Fortunately, I ran across the 60% solution, which I use as a reverse budget.

By a reverse budget, I mean that after every month, I go over my expenses (like I said, big spreadsheet in Excel) and categorize everything. Then I look and see if my percentages fit the 60% solution, and if so, I’m golden. If not, I figure out what areas I’m spending more in, and work on doing better for the new month.

So, by now you’re wondering what exactly the 60% solution is (assuming you haven’t followed the link to it). Basically, you assign 60% of your monthly income to the things you must pay (taxes, rent/mortgage, insurance, utilities, etc). The remaining 40% is divided into 4 categories of 10%:

1. “Irregular” Expenses (unexpected, usually critical, very irregular stuff: accidents, repairs, major medical, etc. Since they won’t repeat, I also lump big entertainment and household purchases into this category.)
2. Paying Down Debt / Long Term Savings (If you’ve got debt, you should be paying way more than the minimum payments, but I’ll talk about that later.)
3. Retirement (yes, really!)
4. Regular Fun Money (Amazing! I’d never seen a “budget”-ish thing that said it was Ok to still have fun!)

The first month I did it, the previous month was already pretty close to these numbers. Talk about positive feedback; I didn’t even know about the system during that month, and I was almost following it!

It’s not only helped me to keep track of where I’m spending too much money, but it’s also made me feel a lot more in control. And that’s a good feeling to have.