Everyone has had dreams and ambitions at some point in their life.   An idea of who they want to become and what they want to accomplish while they are here.  You may be currently on fire and living your life to the fullest chasing after your dreams and making them a reality.  Or you may be like most who at some point along the line has lost touch with their dreams and slowly let them fade into the background of your life.

Regardless of where you are currently at in your life, the good news is that it is never too late to rekindle old dreams and turn them into a reality.  And, it can be much easier than you may have ever imagined, with just a shift in our thinking.  Below are 5 questions that will help you get back in touch with the deep part of you that is yearning for adventure and more of life.

The 5 Questions

1. What experiences do I want in life?
2. How do I want to grow?
3. How do I want to contribute?
4. If I were lying on my death bed right now, could I say that I lived a fulfilling life, true to myself, and experienced everything I wanted to?
5. If I were in front of God right now, could I look him in the eyes and tell him I am living my life on purpose for him and that I put him first, others second, and myself third?

Below is a breakdown of each of these questions to help get your back in touch with your childhood dreams so that you can live a life of purpose.

 

What experiences do I want in life?

This question is all about adventure and making the most out of this life while we are here.  Although most of us have put together a long bucket list of everything we want to experience in this life, if we are honest, most of us have had this list tucked away for some time now.  At one point in our life we were driven by experiences and following our hearts, but somewhere along our journey the pressures of life began slowly taking hold and we lost touch with the things that truly mattered to us.

When was the last time you took a well deserved vacation?

Do you have plans to travel around the world and see all this planet has to offer?  If so, what are you doing right now to make this all happen?

Are you waiting to experience life until you are “ready”?

One of the most common reasons we miss out on all this life has to offer is that we wait until we are “ready” to experience it.  We have to be more financially secure.  Or we have this crazy idea that once we retire, we will have enough time to travel and enjoy this world.

If there is one piece of advice I can offer, it is that there will never come a time when you’re more ready to start living than right now.  Life is not meant to be experienced later.  It is meant to be experienced right now.  If you are waiting for some time in the future to have the freedom to experience life, I urge you to question this and decide if you have bought into the same lie that too many have.  This lie has robbed life from far too many, but it does not have to hold you back as well.  You have the power to take back control of your life and start to experience it the way it was designed.

 

How do I want to grow?

I firmly believe that if we are not growing and constantly evolving, we will become stagnant and lose our sense of purpose in this life.  For this reason, I have dedicated much of my life to personal and spiritual growth.  Although we want to avoid falling into the trap of waiting until we “get there” to experience freedom and abundance, setting clear goals on how we want to grow is extremely important for our overall sense of purpose.

Each of us has unique goals but I think it is safe to safe that to some degree, all of want to grow both personally and spiritually. 

Personal growth can include anything from learning a new skill, to improving relationships, to loving ourselves more, to learning a completely new things such as a new language, becoming healthier, becoming more financially stable, etc. 

Spiritual growth includes the things we do to become closer with our creator and become a more open and loving person.  Growing spiritually will look different to everyone, but common areas in this category include, learning to meditate, spending more time in solitude with God, starting a nonprofit, becoming more loving, helping others/charitable work, reading our Bibles more, attending church, comforting widows and elderly, helping give children the resources they need to be successful, etc.

You know what is most important to you and so asking these questions can help you put together a game plan for growing in this area.  Perhaps you want to set a goal to read one new book every month.  Or you are going to spend 30 minutes every day alone with God and make it nonnegotiable.  Whatever it is that you do, it all starts with asking the question.

 

How do I want to contribute?

Giving back to others and making a positive impact in this world is vital if we are going to experience an abundant life.  The concept of reaping what you sow is woven into the very fabric of our existence.  If we do not give back in some way, we will never feel the true sense of purpose we were created for and no matter how much we accomplish, something will always be missing.

We’re not all called to be missionaries and move to foreign countries to feed the poor, but we are all called to serve.  This will look different for everyone but finding our gifts and how we can offer them to this world is the only way we will ever be whole.  What we give we get in return, so if we never offer anything, we will always find ourselves lacking.  Perhaps this won’t be a lack of material possessions, but rather a lack of love or fulfillment.  However, you can rest assured that if you are not serving others you are missing out on the thing that will give you more satisfaction than anything else you could be doing.

 

If I were lying on my death bed right now, could I say that I lived a fulfilling life, true to myself, and experienced everything I wanted to?

When looking at this question, we are not going back and looking at everything we did or did not do in our past.  We can’t change our past and this question is not designed to condemn us about what we should or could have done.  It is designed to look at our life right NOW, so we can determine where we currently are.  I like to look at the past 24 hours, week, or month at the very most when answering this question.

By far, the most common things that people say on their death beds is that they wish they spent less time working and more time experiencing life with their loved ones.  And that they wished they lived a life that was true to them, rather than conforming to meet the needs (or perceived needs) of others.

This question is not an easy question to answer, but I figured I would save you the trouble of waiting until you are on your death bed to answer it.  I haven’t been there yet, but from what I have heard you don’t want to wait until you’re there to consider this question.

If your answer to this question is that there is definitely some room to improve, my advice is to really start looking deep into your life and figure out what you are really working so hard for.  Many of us keep working and working and working and we don’t realize that we are getting no further ahead.  Many work their fingers to the bone, day in and day out and never really get any further ahead.  Sure, some acquire more material possessions and wealth, but many get no further ahead at all, they just keep the wheels turning because they are afraid that everything will fall apart if they stop.  This is one of most common lies people buy into and unfortunately this has robbed the peace and stolen the lives of billions who have been deceived by it.

 

If I were in front of God right now, could I look him in the eyes and tell him I am living my life on purpose for him and that I put him first, others second, and myself third?

I realize that not all who read this will have faith in God, or even believe that there is a God who exists.  And that is okay.  If you are not a spiritual person you can skip over this question, and my prayer is that some day soon you will experience the love of our Father.  At some point, you will.

For those who do believe we have a creator and heavenly Father who loves us, how often do you consider this question?  If you are like most people, the answer is rarely.  Although we all try to be the best person we can, this is not a common question we ask ourselves during the course of our busy lives.

Many of us are so busy and stressed out trying to manage our own lives that we never take a second to consider the lives of others.  Although we have told ourselves that we love God and he is first in our lives, the harsh reality is that for most of us this simply isn’t true.  This, as with anything I will ever write, is not to cause condemnation.  Condemnation is not from God and any time we feel condemned we are entertaining a lie.

Putting God first doesn’t mean fitting him in the 5 or 10 minutes after we wake up or the short time we have just before bed.  Putting God first means keeping our focus on him and hearing his guiding voice throughout the entire course of our day.

Putting others above ourselves doesn’t mean setting up an automatic tithe withdrawal to give some of our money to those in need.  Although this is wonderful, I believe God is calling us for more.  We aren’t all here to start ministries or nonprofits, but God wants our hearts and knows that the only way our hearts will stay pure and full of love is by putting others above ourselves.  If we don’t follow this biblical law, we will end up chasing the wrong things and will find ourselves following the patterns of this world and suffering like the others.

Are you putting God first, others second and yourself third?  If the answer is no, what steps are you going to take to start getting your life back in order?

Conclusion

These questions resonate with me as some of the most important questions we could ever ask ourselves.  They will help us get back in touch with our childhood dreams so we can put plans in place for how we are going to experience this wonderful world we have been so fortunate to be a part of.  They will also help us think about our current path and question whether if we continue to follow it, we will be able to say we lived our best lives when we are on our death beds.  And most importantly, they get us to question whether or not we are living on purpose for God.  We can experience everything this world has to offer, but without a personal relationship with our creator where we receive divine guidance, we will never know which path is best and will always have a piece of our lives that is missing.