You’ve been brought to this guide because you are ready to find your soul purpose in life. You want to do things that fill you with joy and make you feel like completely aligned with your highest self.
Some people are born with their soul purpose built in. They know from an early age that they want to be XYZ. The rest of us though have to figure it out ourselves. We have to test out different hats throughout our life to see what feels the best. A lot of us struggle to do it alone though.
Discovering your soul purpose in life is not easy. It can take time, inner work and a lot of overcoming long-standing beliefs. It’s like mining for precious metals, you have to chip away at a lot of solid rock to be able to find the value nestled deep within it.
In this guide, I’ll take you through all the questions you need to discover how to find your soul purpose. There will be practical tasks and a downloadable workbook so you can continue this work in your own time.
Make time to work through this guide. Really commit to doing the work to find your soul purpose in life and I promise you’ll leave feeling certain about how to move forward.
Download the FREE 31-page workbook to follow along with me ⬇️
What brings you joy?
Your soul purpose will be something that lights you up. That ignites a passion and fire within you like nothing else. That’s why the first step is to figure out what things bring you joy. This can help you see what you’re already intuitively drawn to. Your soul purpose in life will be burrowed into those things.
Journal prompts to understand what brings you joy
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Write down five times when you’ve felt truly happy. The type of happiness where you’ve lost track of time and are completely in the moment. Where you’re not thinking about the past, present or future, you’re just going with the flow and allowing the moment to carry you with it.
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Looking at those five things, break them down and highlight what activities you were doing. Are there any patterns between all five? Were you doing the same activity every time? Is there a theme you can spot between them?
With these journal prompts, you’re mining your best memories to see if there’s any clue as to what your soul purpose could be. Here’s an example of how that final prompt could work:
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Kayaking with friends in the Lake District
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Hiking up in the Pennines
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Sitting in the garden reading in the sunshine
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Going to a festival for 4 whole days
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Going on a Yoga retreat in the countryside
From those five happy memories I can glean the following themes:
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Nature and being immersed in nature
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Socialising with friends and new people
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Moving the body in different ways
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Travel maybe even specifically adventure travel
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Mindfulness and moving meditation
You can see that from those five simple happy memories I’ve already managed to start building a list of potential threads to follow. Maybe I could start looking into holistic therapies that work with nature. Things like forest bathing or nature retreats. Maybe I could get my yoga teacher certification so I could start running my own yoga retreats at home or even abroad.
This brings us to our next task. Idea mapping. You can do this in the form of a list, or if you like to be more creative, try an idea tree like the one illustrated below.
I’ve used the example list from earlier but you can fill these with your own (there’s a blank template in the free download). At this stage, we’re just getting all our ideas and thoughts down on paper. You can let yourself be guided by those themes towards job titles or general activities that come to mind when you think of those things.
It’s like a big brain dump, getting all our ideas out in the open so we can start to sift through them and narrow things down later on.
What sparks interest?
In that last task, we assessed the things we already have experience in, but what if our soul purpose in life is tied to something we haven’t yet tried? How do you know what you don’t know? Where do we look if we don’t know what direction we’re supposed to be looking in?
The next step is to look at your interests. Before we were working from your heart chakra, connecting with our emotional responses. Now, we’re looking at our intellectual realm.
Write a list of all the things you know you’re already interested in. Think about the books you read, what you find yourself Googling, what makes you sit up and listen when someone mentions it or if there’s a program to do with it on TV. Make sure to write down why you’re interested in those things as well, this can tell us a lot about our inner workings.
For me, this list would look a little something like this:
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Witchcraft & the history of witchcraft – because I practice witchcraft and I’m fascinated by the history of witch trials, especially in the UK
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British history – because we have thousands of years of it, from the Jurrasic period to the Tudors, civil wars to the pagans, there’s so much to dive into
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Tarot (obviously!) – because I am a Tarot reader and there are so many different layers and perspectives to take on it
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Historical fiction – because I find it gives you a more focused look at life during historical periods and I have a passion for history so this ticks all my boxes
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Psychology & Philosophy – because I want to know how the brain works, why we do what we do, think the way we do, how experiences affect our reality, asking questions about the bigger things in life
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Metaphysics – because it’s a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of reality and encompasses things like divination, energy and all things spiritual, all things that I work with on a day-to-day basis
Now you have a list of what sparks your interest and you know why it sparks interest. You can use this information to once again do that brainstorming exercise. This time use that list of interest in place of the themes used previously. What jobs come to mind, and what hobbies and activities spring up? Write it all down, either in list form or using the idea tree template.
Something that I notice when I do this is that my brain will bring up things I know I wouldn’t like. For example, when I think of Psychology I think of a Psychology professor. I know I wouldn’t like that because I wouldn’t like to be in an academic environment. However, write it down anyway. There could be something in that thought. There might be another way of looking at it that feels more aligned. Remember that right now it’s more about getting all these ideas and thoughts down on paper.
What are your core values?
The key to discovering your soul purpose is values. Your core values will be directly linked to your soul purpose, making up a considerable portion of the ‘why’ behind what you’re trying to uncover.
When we talk about core values we are talking about what you stand for. What are your beliefs, how do you live your life?
Here are a few examples of core values to give you a better idea of the kinds of things we’re looking at:
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Honesty
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Diversity
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Fairness
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Innovation
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Transparency
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Consistency
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Reliability
Your core values are the cement that holds your soul purpose together. It brings the intention to the table so you know why you want to do what you’re doing. They also help to give your purpose structure.
This next task is inspired by the Tarot, specifically the four suits and their elemental energies. You’re going to split your core values into four different categories. You’ll have:
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Emotional Realm – Cups/Water
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Material World – Pentacles/Earth
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Behaviours – Wands/Fire
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Ethics – Swords/Air
Below I show you an example of how this will look and I’ll give you some value examples for each, but I want you to fill these sections with your own ideas. Again, there is room to do this work in the free workbook. You don’t have to come up with hundreds, just three for each section will be enough.
Tip: It can sometimes help to finish the sentence ‘I am…’ to get a better idea of your values.
Emotional
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Compassionate
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Empathetic
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Kind
Material
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Loyal
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Honest
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Balanced
Behavioural
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Adventurous
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Fearless
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Independent
Ethical
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Charitable
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Open-minded
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Tolerant
Now you’ve got your lists of values, start to prioritise them. Which value do you focus on upholding the most in everything you do? You should have no more than 12, so start numbering them 1-12 with 1 being the value you hold highest and 12 being the value you have but don’t actively implement.
What are your strengths?
Now you know what your most important values are, you know what brings you joy and sparks interest. Now it’s time to think practically. What are your strengths?
When we talk about strengths we are looking both at the inner and external world. I bet there are strengths you have that you didn’t even recognise. Often we downplay our strengths so we don’t seem egotistical or big-headed. We don’t want to admit to ourselves that we’re really good at something because it opens us up to criticism, so it becomes safer to keep them under wraps.
We’re going to play them all out now though because they deserve to be seen. You deserve to be proud of them and shout about them to the world. Focusing on your strengths can help you to see where you already have a leg up.
We’re going to be looking at the following areas of our lives:
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Self-development
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Physical health
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Social
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Relationships
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Hobbies
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Spirituality
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Work
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Finances
This time though, we’re going to use something called a Wheel of Life template. Usually, this is used to see which areas of your life need focus, but I’ve adapted it to help you see which areas of your life house your biggest strengths.
You’ll think about how confident you feel within these 8 sections and fill in the wheel sections. Choose how confident you feel by filling in sections 1-10 with 1 being ‘not at all confident and 10 being ‘extremely confident.
Click the image below to print out and fill it in, or refer to your free workbook where you’ll find the template for you to use. It helps to use different colours for each of the 8 sections, so you can see the difference more clearly.
Take a look at which of these 8 sections has the most sections filled in. I’ve done it for myself below so you can see how it should look.
My results look like this:
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Self-development – 9 – I do it as a job and I work on it pretty much every single day
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Physical health – 6 – the pandemic made me very inactive but I still have some semblance of physical fitness
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Social – 5 – I rarely leave the house and socialise rarely
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Relationships – 7 – even though I’m not social, I have strong core relationships
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Hobbies – 8– I have a lot of them and I’m averagely talented at most creative things, but very much so with photography and painting
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Spirituality – 8 – I used to be a lot more spiritual but I feel like this could be stronger
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Work – 7 – I work a lot, but maybe too much, I’ve very work focused
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Finances – 6 – I have a lot of limiting beliefs around money so it’s not my strongest area
Looking at my wheel of life, I can determine that my main strengths lie in:
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Self-development
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Hobbies
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Spirituality
Once you’ve got your top three you can start to break this down further. Look into what exactly it is within those sectors that you feel most confident with. So for example, I would pick out things like limiting belief clearing in self-development because I’ve done A LOT of it and help others do it.
For hobbies, I can pick out creativity as a strength, as well as camera skills, painting skills and idea generation.
Make your top three headings and underneath each, write down where specifically your strengths are found in those areas.
What are your weaknesses?
We can use that same wheel of life to also pick out our weaknesses. We already know which areas of our life house the most strengths, but which house our weaknesses?
Again looking at my wheel of life, I can see that my top three areas of weakness are:
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Social
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Physical health
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Finances
Again, when you have these three areas nailed down, list under each where your weaknesses specifically lie. I would say that having the motivation to attend social gatherings was a weakness of mine for social. Or my cardio fitness would be a weakness within my physical health because I prefer to work on strength training.
Knowing where your weaknesses are not only helps you see things you aren’t as drawn to (you won’t catch me being a spinning instructor anytime soon) but it can also show you where you might need external help or support, should you be faced with these things on your journey towards your soul purpose.
If we refer back to those idea maps we did at the very beginning of this guide, we can review what we wrote down, look at our strengths and weaknesses and start to get a better feel of how we could practically take action on those ideas.
Example:
I said that landscape photography could be a way to be in nature more. Applying this to my interests I could evolve this idea into a historical landscape photographer, someone who travels around the UK taking photographs for English Heritage or even blogging about the country’s most fascinating historical landscapes and ruins.
Then I look at my strengths and weaknesses. Well, I have great creative skills so the photography part will be easy. I could tie this in with my strengths around spirituality by niching this down even further by focusing on historical landscapes and places that have a spiritual connection. Places like stone circles, old churches and cathedrals etc.
Looking at my weaknesses I might have to get a loan to help with buying camera equipment good enough to travel with. If these places are in remote locations I might have to work on my physical fitness in order to be able to reach them.
We’ll work on bringing everything together in a second, but this is just an example of how we can start to weave the thread between all the work we’ve already done.
What are your biggest obstacles when it comes to doing what you love?
We’ve already started to reveal the practical obstacles we might face by looking at our weaknesses, but there may be mental barriers as well. These limiting beliefs can make or break our ability to not only discover that soul’s purpose but also act on it.
We need to know what limiting beliefs we currently hold, the walls that separate us from what we need in order to feel fully aligned. Here is some journal prompts to help you do just that:
Journal prompts to uncover limiting beliefs
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Visualise yourself living one of those ideas that you uncovered in the previous tasks. What fears come up for you? What thoughts come in to stop you and make you think? What is that inner voice saying?
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Reflecting on past experiences, how have you self-sabotaged? What habits do you have that have caused conflict between you and your goals?
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When you think about completely flipping your life upside down, what thoughts and feelings come up? Do any thoughts start with the phrase ‘I can’t do that because…’? and if so, finish those thoughts and write them down.
Tackling limiting beliefs is extremely important because when you’ve discovered your soul purpose, you don’t want anything standing in your way. Especially not yourself!
Take a look at all the limiting beliefs those journal prompts brought up for you. Write them all down into a list so they are clearly laid out. If it helps, fill in the sentence ‘I can’t do X because…’
Once you have that list, start to counter those sentences with more affirming ones. Write down a positive response to them.
So, if you had a sentence such as:
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I can’t be a historic landscape photographer because I don’t have time to build a portfolio in order to get paid work
Your counter sentence would be something like this:
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I can be a historic landscape photographer because I can schedule time into my calendar to go on days out to historic landmarks to take photographs. I can start building a portfolio quickly and easily right from my phone, uploading my images to Instagram and tagging potential clients.
Your limiting belief created a problem. Your counter sentence solved that problem and now your limiting belief has nothing to support it. If another limiting belief arises off the back of your counter sentence, just repeat the exercise. Do it as many times as you need. Think of it as a debate with yourself. One where you refuse to let the negative opposition win the argument.
How to bring all your findings together to outline your soul purpose
We’ve done a lot of work there. There’s a lot of stuff out on the table that we now need to pick through and sort into something more tangible. It’s like doing a big bedroom deep clean. You have to make a huge mess so you can see what to keep and what to get rid of.
To make things easier, here are steps to take to bring all your findings together.
Step 1: Link what brings you joy and your interests
Spend some time looking at everything you wrote down in the first two exercises. What connections could you make between the two groups of answers? Referring back to the example idea trees, I could link my joy of yoga to my interest in reiki. Or, connect my idea of being a shop owner and my interest in antiques.
Start to build a list of these connections so you can dive into them more in the next few steps.
Step 2: Which of your ideas aligns with your values?
Start assigning your values to those ideas you’ve come up with. Using those previous examples, I might assign my values of compassion, balance and fearlessness to my idea of combining yoga and reiki. Or for my second idea of joining my idea of shop ownership and antiques I might apply my values of honesty, charity and independence.
These ideas then become even more fleshed out, supported by our core values, leading them to look like this:
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Idea 1 – Becoming a yoga instructor that combines yoga and reiki healing, to help people feel more balanced, connect with their deepest selves and clear out negativity. Values applied: Balance, spirituality and self-development
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Idea 2 – Opening up an independent antique shop that buys antiques from people in the community and uses a portion of the profits to support a local charity. Values applied: Charitable, honest and independent
See how adding those values to your ideas gives them more heart? You can start to feel more connected with them, try them on and see which feels like the best fit. Having ideas supported by your values makes them so much stronger than just the ideas on their own.
Step 3: How do your strengths and weaknesses come into play?
Review those strengths and weaknesses lists and start to identify them in your ideas.
For example:
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Idea 1 – My strengths would come into play around self-development, helping people to leave a session feeling like they have evolved in some way. To feel more connected, to offer people a more creative way to connect with themselves. My weaknesses might come in because I might not yet have the stamina to run a whole session of yoga, or I might not be able to price the sessions correctly because of my limiting beliefs around money.
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Idea 2 – My strengths would come into play regarding creativity, being creative with window displays, and the layout of the shop. Connect with the people who bring the antiques and the meaning behind the pieces, so I can market them effectively. My weaknesses may pop up around finances, renting shop space and managing inventory and customer service/ dealing with the public.
It will be up to you to decide whether your strengths outweigh your weaknesses. Looking at the two ideas above, I can already see that my weaknesses wouldn’t be as big of an obstacle in idea 1 as those outlined in idea 2. Just reading those paragraphs I already feel pulled more towards idea 1 than 2.
This is the point where you start to narrow down those ideas further. You start to feel which ones are on the right track and which ones aren’t. Which ones feel easy and which ones already feel like a hassle.
Step 4: Tackling the limiting beliefs around your ideas
Once you’ve got that condensed list of fleshed-out ideas of what you want to pursue in life, it’s time to tackle the limiting beliefs that come up around those things.
Work on each idea at a time and write down all the limiting beliefs that come up when you think about bringing them to life. What evidence is your mind giving you around why you have those limiting beliefs? What evidence can you find to counteract those beliefs?
Use the techniques we learned before to start breaking down these limiting beliefs.
Once you’ve completed all these four steps, you’ll have an amazing list of potential soul purposes that you can start to follow up on. Like I said at the very beginning of this guide, our soul purpose in life is not something we can figure out overnight. Come back to all the ideas you’ve come up with at another time and see how they feel. Which ones do you still feel excited about and which ones have lost their spark?
Remember that if you set out on one path and it starts to feel wrong, it’s never too late to choose another path. You haven’t failed, you’ve experimented and your findings were that it wasn’t the right fit for you at that time. Now you know and what you’ve learned from this experience can inform your decisions in the future, to help give you a better outcome.
If you’ve worked through this guide with me, well done you on reaching the end! If you feel like you didn’t quite hit the nail on the head, why not explore my Soul Tarot Coaching? A one-off coaching session that combines the wisdom of the Tarot and Spiritual/Soul Purpose coaching techniques to help you find ultimate clarity.