Uncover, Unlock, Discover Your Purpose – The Formative Years

Published: June 12, 2011

Your purpose is doled out in measures over time. You may wake up one morning with a eureka moment--you suddenly come to know what you’ve been designed to do, and what you’ve become passionate about. You may believe that it is a sudden revelation – that the realization of what is going to light you up and drive you forward happened suddenly. However, if you were to look back and reflect, you will likely notice that you were being prepared along the way. Preparation for your purpose starts in your formative years—between two to seventeen years old.

It comes to each person in different ways. For some individuals, insight into their purpose comes from the behavior of the people who raise them. Parents will groom their children to take over their businesses. If taking over the family business is their purpose, these children will run a successful business as the parents sail into the sunset of retirement. If it’s not their purpose, these children will bankrupt the business and watch their parents’ sun not rise. My dentist cut back on his office hours once his daughter joined his practice. The partnership is a few years old now and both father and daughter continue to thrive in their business.

Your purpose also comes from the way you’re trained while growing up—what you’ve been taught is correct or incorrect, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. Research indicates that whiz kids (computer programmer Bill Gates) and child protégés (golf pro Tiger Woods) are exposed to certain activities that thrust them into greatness. For others, it is getting their first job at a young age:

• Getting a job in your early years may lead to an interest that sparks a hobby, vocation or your purpose. Your paper-route boy may grow up to become the newspaper’s editor (or the neighbour who knows everybody’s business).

One of our neighbours had a Chinese chow puppy when my children were toddlers. They all grew together from puppy to dog, and toddlers to kids. It came a time when the family decided to put up their beloved pet for adoption. However, one of their adult children who was visiting his parents, our neighbour, had a eureka moment. So one day after my children returned from visiting this neighbour, they arrived singing, “we got jobs … we got jobs”. It turned out that the neighbour’s visiting son had suggested that since the children had grown up with the dog, they should be offered the position of looking after him by taking the dog for his daily walks.

My children were under the age of nine when they became dog-walkers and in less than a year, they had grown their business to walking up to seven dogs. I created a business card for them to let perspective clients know that they had to go through the parents first before they could approach the children, but the children negotiated their own fees and hours of operation with these potential clients.

Will the fact that they owned a dog-walking business in their formative years lead to an interest in becoming a veterinarian? As of today, when they speak of a future profession, being an animal doctor or a professional dog-walker is not in the running. They love dogs, interacting with other dog owners as well as the cash garnered from their job but it is not their purpose. In many cases, a career will align with an individual’s purpose (Oprah Winfrey). In my children’s case, their early job has allowed them to not waste time pursuing a vocation in the animal kingdom, and has ruled out a career that they would not enjoy.

On the other hand, there’s Bill Gates. In public school, he excelled in math and computing. When he was thirteen years old and attending private school, he became interesting in computer programming. This led to him and two friends building a profitable computer business while they were still in school. He left the prestigious Harvard University in his second year because he had a vision, and set about the business of getting it done. His vision: Every office desk and home would have a computer. That vision became reality.

In 2008 at the age of 52, Bill Gates stepped down from the daily grind of running Microsoft, the company he co-founded with his friend all those many years. At the time of his retirement, his net worth was a gazillion dollars but according to Forbes Magazine, it was actually a tidy sum of $56 billion. He’s now running his own charity with his wife.

What Bill Gates proved is that not every child is destined to achieve their purpose through higher education. However, every child must know their purpose to fulfill their God-given destiny.

You grow a child into his or her purpose by observing them closely. The plan is to discover what greatly interest them and which hobbies they enjoy immensely. Does the child enjoy music, dance, animals, crafts, reading, drawing, swimming, cooking or baking? Or does the child thrive in group sports and outdoor activities? Once it is determined what the child’s interests are, the next step is to steer him or her by exposing them to a variety of activities to broaden their prospects: Theatre, museums, libraries, church activities, sports venues.

Exposure to different cultures--people, foods and arts--is also another way to develop the prodigy child. However, fear on the parents’ or the child’s part or being unwilling to experience things that are unfamiliar will obstruct the growth of the child. Many cities now embrace their diversity by showcasing the different cultures within its boundaries.

In Toronto, Canada, there is “Taste of the Danforth” and “Taste of Lawrence” which features Greek and Middle Eastern cultures, respectively; also, there is “Festival of India”, “Taste of Little Italy”, and “Taste of Thailand”. “Conscious Food Festival” features local, natural and healthy foods while “Vegetarian Food Festival” welcomes herbivores and omnivores to enjoy a diversity of vegetarian cuisine.

Citizens and visitors to Toronto can visit “International BrazilFest”, “Irie Musical Festival”, and “Beaches International Jazz Festival”. If similar events are available in your city, a child can be exposed to diverse cultures, without the expense of travelling overseas,

A parent may naturally become the first instrumental mentor in his or her child’s life. However, as the child becomes an adolescent, it may be necessary to procure a more effective mentor who will be able to further narrow down, identify and develop the child’s skills and talents as well as his or her strengths and weaknesses. A good mentor will be influential in helping an adolescent determine his or her purpose by steering them towards an area their parents may have missed, or away from an area in which the parents were misled.

Volunteering in the formative years will help an adolescent develop his or her purpose because it opens the doors to developing good social and speaking skills, problem-solving, time management, project management and leadership abilities.

When teens volunteer, it will help them to further understand, hone and find their life’s purpose. Volunteer opportunities can be found in school clubs, church groups and civic organizations. It’s commonly believed that youth volunteers are more progressive developmentally than their non-volunteering peers. Volunteering also helps teens understand that life exists beyond them and it fosters their awareness of a greater good.

So you’ve long moved beyond the formative years and perhaps still searching for your purpose. What to do? What do you do? With pen and paper in hand, look back on the activities you enjoyed as you were growing up and write them down. Add to your list the things that “lit you up”—the things that you were passionate and excited about—as well as your dreams and aspirations. Compare your list to your work experiences, adolescent jobs and volunteer responsibilities to uncover which were more significant and more memorable.

Include on your list what others observed in you as a child. Parents will be helpful in this area as well as siblings, aunts, uncles, friends and other close family members. Your education, training and life experiences will pinpoint your natural abilities, gifts and talents. From this, you can determine if you have matured into your talents. Your list should indicate which single vocation you wanted to pursue in your formative years. Did you pursue that career and is now living in your purpose? If not, it may not be too late…