111 Questions to Help You Find Your Life Purpose

Questions are spiritual keys that can unlock your inner doors and reveal the answers hidden within you.

However, just like you need the right key to open the right door, you also need the right questions to reveal the right answers to lead you to your purpose in life.

When I say “purpose,” I mean any layer of purpose that matters to you. This can include your higher purpose, passion, calling, mission, or ikigai. It can also include combining your purpose with your work, your life’s work, your life goals, or the legacy you want to leave.

It can include the core values you want to use to help guide your life and decision-making, or anything related to the clarity you seek about your life’s purpose and direction.

Except for my higher purpose, which came to me through a spiritual experience in Southeast Asia, I identified all my layers of purpose by asking myself the right questions and writing down my answers. I’ve also helped my students and clients do the same using this process.

So don’t underestimate the power of the right questions. They are spiritual keys that can unlock your inner doors and reveal the clarity you seek, which can change your life.

Even if the exact answers you’re looking for don’t reveal themselves right away, the right questions can open your energy so the answers can come to you when the time is right.

To help you get started, I’ve created a list of 111 of the most powerful questions I’ve used to find my purpose and help others do the same.

Take your time to go through these questions, contemplate your answers, and write them down. You can also use them as daily journal prompts.

This will help you gain the right clarity that can lead you to your purpose in life, your passion, your calling, your mission, your purposeful work, or any layer of purpose that matters to you.

You can also download 10 more questions and a worksheet to go along with them using the form below.

Table of Contents

111 Questions to Help You Find Your Purpose in Life

The questions are separated into categories. These categories are the building blocks that can create a powerful purpose in your life.

Let’s begin:

Love and Passion

Almost all purposes involve doing something you love or are passionate about. Love is the action energy that propels you forward and gives you near-limitless motivation.

It’s the excitement. It’s the joy. It’s the intrinsic value. It’s a big part of what makes you excited to wake up in the morning.

Here are some powerful questions to help you identify what you love to do and are most passionate about:

What activities bring you the most joy and make you the happiest?

Why do you love doing these things?

What activities give you energy when you engage in them? (Consider moving toward these.)

What activities drain your energy when you engage in them? (Consider moving away from these.)

What interests you in life?

What are you most fascinated by?

What are you most passionate about in life?

What do you care about?

What activities make you feel like a kid again and bring out your inner child?

What activities are the most fun or creative for you?

How could you do more things that bring out your inner child?

What activities put you into a flow state and cause you to lose track of time?

What opens your heart and makes it come alive? (Consider moving toward these.)

What closes your heart or causes it to try to protect itself? (Consider moving away from these.)

Gifts and Abilities

Next up are strengths, gifts, talents, and abilities or simply, skills.

A powerful purpose also tends to involve something you’re good at, want to get good at, or are getting better at. This is a big part of the satisfaction.

These can be innate gifts and talents you were born with or they can be skills and abilities you’ve developed over time. Or both.

Here are some powerful questions to help you identify your strengths, gifts, talents, and abilities or the ones you want to build:

What are your beneficial qualities or attributes (strengths)?

What do you believe your weaknesses are?

How could you turn your perceived weaknesses into strengths?

In what situations could the things you think are weaknesses be strengths, instead?

What things are you naturally good at and come to you with the least effort?

What skills have you developed over time or worked on?

What areas of life do you have above-average experience in (your “areas of expertise”)?

What do you have an above-average level of knowledge or wisdom about?

What past experiences make you unique or different from other people?

What strengths, skills, and abilities do you want to build and develop?

What do you want to learn or get better at?

What do you want to reach a high level of skill and expertise in?

If you could master anything in life, what would it be and why?

How could you start diving more into that area and develop your mastery?

How could you do more of what you love and what you’re best at in life?

Service to Others

“Service to others” is where most people’s higher purposes come to life.

When you’re doing what you love and are most passionate about, what you’re best at, and you’re using your gifts and talents to help others or serve the world, you often have a very powerful purpose that can fuel you for the rest of your life.

Here are some questions to help you identify how you might like to serve the world or help others:

If you could send one uplifting message to the everyone in the world, what would it be?

If you could help one person today, how would you do it?

What are the biggest needs or problems you see in the world right now?

How could you help fill those needs or solve those problems?

What pain, challenges, or obstacles have you overcome in your life?

How could you help others overcome the same pain, challenges, or obstacles?

What have you achieved or succeeded at in life so far?

How could you help others achieve or succeed at the same thing(s)?

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned in life so far?

How could you share those lessons to uplift others?

What social or cultural issues are you passionate about?

What environmental issues are you passionate about?

How could you help resolve those issues?

What people would you love to help in this world, and how would you love to help them?

What actions could you take to start helping these people?

Core Values

Our values act as “life guides” helping us make decisions and choose between different options.

What we value most will determine how we act and our decisions. However, what most people think they value isn’t usually aligned with what they want, so they end up on paths that aren’t right for them.

By identifying your values and aligning them with your desires, you can use them to make better decisions about what’s best for you.

Here are some questions to help you do this:

What do you value most in life?

How can you describe what’s most important to you in three words or phrases?

How do these values align with what you want in life?

How can you take more actions and make more decisions that are aligned with those values?

What would your life be like if you were living in total alignment with your three core values? Describe it in detail.

What could you do differently to live in more alignment with this vision?

Purposeful Work

Many people want to combine their purpose with their work so they can leave work that doesn’t make them happy and get into work that excites them.

To do this, you need to identify what types of work would be most purposeful to you (your answers to the previous questions will help) and research opportunities to get into it.

Here are some questions to help you do this:

If you could do anything for a living without limitations, what would you do and why?

What does meaningful work look like to you?

How would your life be different if you were doing work you find meaningful and fulfilling?

How could you make money doing what you love, what you’re best at (or want to get good at), and how you want to help others?

Who is already doing work that’s similar to what you love, what you’re best at (or want to get good at), and how you want to help others?

How could you do something similar to what they’re doing?

Which of these opportunities are you willing to invest the time and energy necessary to build into a career or business?

What could you do today to be happier in your work?

Life Goals

One of the first questions I got when I started helping people find their purpose was, “How do I identify my life goals?”

Life goals are the bigger, longer-term goals you have for your life. They can act as guiding lights for many years as you work on these goals and set new ones once you accomplish them.

They can guide your personal and spiritual development, and they can help you uplift your life as you continue to make progress toward them and reach each milestone.

Here are some questions to help you identify your life goals in three of the most important areas of life:

What is a big goal you would like to achieve in your health and well-being?

What is a big goal you would like to achieve in your wealth and work?

What is a big goal you would like to achieve in your relationships?

Life’s Work

A person’s life’s work is their contribution to a field or to humanity over many years.

It’s typically the thing most people look back on and see as a person’s crowning achievement or the thing their work contributed most to the world.

Identifying what you want your life’s work to be can give you a deep sense of purpose as you work on it and bring it to life.

Here are some questions to help you identify your life’s work:

What work makes you the happiest?

What work do you want to dedicate a large portion of your life to?

What type of contribution do you want to make to the world?

What type of contribution do you want to leave for future generations?

Legacy

Legacy is similar to your life’s work except it doesn’t have to be your work. It could be anything you want to leave behind for future generations to benefit from.

Here are some questions to help you identify the legacy you might want to leave behind:

What is something positive you would like to pass on to future generations?

What wisdom would you like to leave behind for future generations?

What better ways of doing things would you like to leave behind for future generations?

What actions could you start taking to leave behind the legacy you want to leave?

Wants and Desires

Our desires can be useful tools to guide our lives. The knowledge of what you want in life can sometimes be all you need to navigate your life in the direction you want to go.

Here are some questions to help you identify your biggest wants and desires:

What do you REALLY want in life (in general)?

What physical things do you want to bring into your life?

What do you want your relationships to look like?

What do you want your health to look like?

What do you want your financial life to look like?

What do you want your spiritual life to look like?

What places would you like to go in the world?

What is your dream lifestyle?

What unique and interesting experiences would you like to have?

What people would you like to meet?

What are the top things you would put on your bucket list?

If you could have any experience in the world, and money wasn’t an object, what would that be?

What could you do differently to align yourself and your actions with more of what you want (and less of what you don’t want)?

Future Vision

A vision of the future that excites you is another form of purpose. It might not be a specific higher purpose, but it’s still a purpose.

Clarifying your vision of the future can give you purpose in the present moment as you take action to fulfill that vision.

Here are some questions to help you clarify your future vision (think about the different areas of your life and be as detailed as possible):

What do you want your life to look like 1 year from now?

What do you want your life to look like 5 years from now?

What do you want your life to look like 10 years from now?

How do you need to grow and evolve to fulfill this vision?

What actions can you take today to start bringing your future vision to life?

What’s Most Important to You

Things that are important to us are usually aligned with our purpose in some way.

By paying attention to what’s important to you already, you can sometimes recognize the purpose that was there all along.

Here are some questions to help you get clear on what’s important to you in your life right now:

What are the three most important things to you in life?

What’s most important to you when it comes to your relationships?

What’s most important to you when it comes to your work?

What’s most important to you when it comes to your health and well-being?

What’s most important to you when it comes to your happiness?

What’s most important to you when it comes to your spirituality?

What’s most important to you when it comes to your daily life?

The Purpose That Already Exists in Your Life

If you see purpose in everything you do, it’s impossible not to live a purposeful life.

The key here is to pay attention to the purpose in everything you’re already doing in life.

You can use the power of your perspective to see the meaning that’s already present in your life.

Here are some questions to help you gain clarity on the purpose that already exists in your life:

What purpose already exists in your relationships?

What purpose already exists in your work?

What purpose already exists in your health and well-being?

What purpose already exists in your spiritual life?

What purpose already exists in your daily life?

What purpose already exists in the simple things in your life?

How can you pay more attention to the purpose that already exists in your life and receive the benefits of it?

Next Steps

Congratulations on going through these questions! I hope they were eye-opening for you.

Next, I recommend downloading my self-discovery workbook below.

It will help you gain even more clarity, start taking action on what you’ve learned, and help you further align with what you really want in life.