Don't Waste Your Life – What Color Is Your Parachute – Finding Your Mission In Life

The Orange Pages Excerpt

FINDING YOUR MISSION IN LIFE

From the Original Writings of Richard N. Bolles, What Color Is Your Parachute

Turning Point
For many of us, the job hunt offers a chance to make some fundamental changes in our whole life. It marks a turning point in how we live our life. It gives us a chance to ponder and reflect, to extend our mental horizons, to go deeper into the subsoil of our soul. It gives us a chance to wrestle with the question, "Why am I here on Earth?" We don't want to feel that we are just another grain of sand lying on the beach called humanity, unnumbered and lost in the billions of other human beings. We want to do more than plod through life, going to work, coming home from work. We want to find that special joy "that no one can take from us," which comes from having a sense of Mission in our life. We want to feel we were put here on Earth for some special purpose, to do some unique work that only we can accomplish. We want to know what our Mission is.

The Meaning of the Word Mission
When used with respect to our life and work, Mission has always been a religious concept, from beginning to end. It is defined by Webster's as "a continuing task or responsibility that one is destined or fitted to do or specially called upon to undertake," and historically has had two major synonyms: Calling and Vocation. These, of course, are the same word in two different languages, English and Latin. Both imply God. To be given a Vocation or Calling implies Someone who calls. To have a Destiny implies Someone who determined the destination for us. Thus, the concept of Mission lands us inevitably in the lap of God, before we have hardly begun.

I emphasize this, because there is an increasing trend in our culture to try to speak about religious subjects without reference to God. This is true of "spirituality," "soul," and "Mission," in particular. More and more books talk about Mission as though it were simply "a purpose you choose for your own life, by identifying your enthusiasms."

This attempt to obliterate all reference to God from the originally religious concept of Mission is particularly ironic because the proposed substitute word - enthusiasms - is derived from two Greek words, en theos, and means "God in us." In the midst of this increasingly secular culture, we find an oasis that - along with athletics - is very hospitable toward belief in God. That oasis is job hunting. Most of the leaders who have evolved creative job-hunting ideas were - from the beginning - people who believed firmly in God, and said so.

Unemployment gives us a chance to contemplate why we are here on Earth, and what our Calling, Vocation, or Mission is, uniquely, for each of us. Unemployment becomes life transition, when we can't find a job doing the same work we've always done. Since we have to rethink one thing, many of us elect to rethink everything. Something awakens within us. Call it yearning. Call it hope. We come to realize the dream we dreamed has never died. And we go back to get it. We decide to resume our search for the life we know within our heart that we were meant to live. Now we have a chance to marry our work and our religious beliefs, to talk about Calling, and Vocation, and Mission in life - to think out why we are here, and what plans God has for us. That's why a period of unemployment can absolutely change our life.

The Secret to Finding Your Mission in Life: Taking It in Stages
I will explain the steps toward finding your Mission in life that I have learned in all my years on Earth. I speak from a lifelong Christian perspective, and trust you to translate this into your own thought-forms.

There are usually three stages to learning what your Mission in life is:

Your first Mission here on Earth is one that you share with the rest of the human race: to seek to stand hour by hour in the conscious presence of God, the One from whom your Mission is derived. The Missioner before the Mission, is the rule. In religious language, your Mission here is: to know God, and enjoy Him forever, and to see His hand in all His works.

Your second Mission here on Earth is also one that you share with the rest of the human race: to do what you can, moment by moment, day by day, step by step, to make this world a better place, following the leading and guidance of God's Spirit within you and around you.

Your third Mission here on Earth is one that is uniquely yours: to exercise the Talent that you particularly came to Earth to use - your greatest gift, which you most delight to use, in the place or setting that God has caused to appeal to you the most, and for those purposes that God most needs to have done in the world.

READ MORE in the book (Amazon link below).