o.k. so, i have this assignment where they ask me to write down my purpose in life. basically, it's about career purpose.

so, if i say that i would like to help other people by teaching them how to deal with their fears and that i would like to be a mentor for others who would like to become therapists, does this sound like a purpose?

This sounds like a purpose. Have you been doing anything alreadu that supports this purpose, or are you just now thinking about it? Do you currently help mentor people younger than yourself?

well, yes, i'm a psychology major. i'm graduating this semester and i'm applying to graduate school in clinical psychology. so, if i do end up teaching or providing clinical training to graduate students (this is more like a long term goal), then it would be fine to say that.

i guess i was just confussed since an earlier inquiry in my book asked me to say what my mission in life was and it sounded kind of the same

mission, purpose they sound pretty much the same to me

or does mission refer more to the financial part..like "my mission is to make X amount of money per year"
it's a little confussing

Mission or purpose have the same meaning to me. Making $xxK per year is a goal in my book. How you want to serve society is a purpose. What kind of a difference you want to make in people's lives is a mission.

Im working towards my psychotherapy degree. My purpose is close to yours. I intend to spend my life helping others. For me its a natural progression as i spent my childhood being my mum's therapist, comes comes naturally to me now.

Im currently working on experience. I've mentored a 14 years old for over a year now and i currently work for a young persons charity.

Other than that. My purpose in life is to try and fix the depressional illness in me. doubtful. But i can but try!

Are you familiar with the author Alice Miller and her book "The drama of the gifted child"?

I understand depression is a time for healing of wounds, leading one to growth. I don't know if curing depression is as important as learning to endure through that period of recovery. Maybe we can try to change how we see rather than changing how we look. I believe it is very common and easy for a woman in today's world to be overly conscious of how she looks. You sound like a person with an admirable purpose--working on one's self is paramount to helping others work on themselves.

Personal opinion: therapy is the enemy of personal growth.

But what do I know?

It sounds like a reasonable purpose to have in life, wanting to help people. I can think of worse ones.

write about being on whatever path jesus chooses for you.
nobody can argue with that one, they'll fear bringing up the whole religion debate.

__________________

that's right. but you see can't really do that. the assignment is made up by 31 little inquires through which we are supposed to discover different things about ourselves (e.g. values, mission etc). at one point, one of the inquires is asking to come up with 8 careers that sound attractive to me and then norrow them down to 1 or 2. it is such an annoying assignment and it is working so backwards since i already know what i want to do. so, for me to invent at this point what i might like it is pointless. this assignment will work well with sophomores but not for seniors like me. but i'll have to do it anyway. if we'll have to evaluate the professor at the end of the semester i'll say then how i feel about this.
it's worse than a writing intensive class

I was reading a newspaper yesterday and I read an article about decreasing hunger. Or more specificly increasing the availability of food. That the problem with that is it isn't going to be as safe as it was. The quality will drop. This isn't actually a purpose in life from my stand point and I can't remember who wrote about this or even what it was about. I think though that they were talking about allowing food to be processed and distributed with fewer safeguards. I think by changing the laws. It would seem then that it would be much more important the mission rather than the goal of fulfulling a purpose. It would be tragic hurting the people that you're trying to help especially since they can least afford being hurt, many of them.

I don't know that I could think of eight.

That worries me.

Im very familiar with Alice Miller. I love her books. I want to be comfortable with my past and to have mourned it enough to not have it effecting my future. I enjoy working my demons.

[quote=Ophiel Ophiuci]Personal opinion: therapy is the enemy of personal growth.QUOTE]

Hardly. To me its been the biggest release of personal growth. Before i was totally blocked. 3 years on im doing things that id never dreamed of doing before.

Purpose in life is very individual. Perhaps the ultimate purpose is to find
G-d within this world, even in the places that seem so dark. But one's individual purpose I think varies because it is likely that no two people are exactly alike. To confine everyone to the same individual purpose, is to try to make G-d's creation uniform, something that we can understand within our limited consciousness but to realize that people can take different paths in life and get to the same goal is to aknowledge that the creator of this world is beyond our comprehension and beyond our desire to have everything be exactly alike. Wanting people to be like us is natural because it creates less conflict and allows us to not work as hard to understand them. But to use our intellect to appreciate the unique divine spark in others is to want to reach above the simplistic desire to have everyone be uniform.

Perhaps to find your individual purpose in life, you have to get to know yourself better. You have to challenge yourself. Not distance yourself from this world. If you distance yourself from this world hypotetically than there is nothing to tell you that you haven't made the right decision. It's through conflict and challenge that we know ourselves however, perhaps some people's path is to remain distant. But I don't believe that is the path for everyone and I don't believe it should be because this is a world of action. In stillness there is death. In life there is movement. The trees are constantly moving. The sky is constantly moving. Things are constantly growing out of our control. To separate yourself from that for life is to try to control this world, because in your mindset you think the best life would be non-action. However, in this world we need to act. It is through looking at nature that one realizes that things can't be still. Even a rock degrades with time. To be still is death, to embrace life is to embrace the world of movement and dance with full flame.

And in the above, I'm talking about separating yourself permenantly from this world not the separation that occurs when one goes in solitude to reflect. We need solitude and perhaps we need periods of observation where we restrain from action but I think the desirable course in this would be to achieve a sort of balance between inaction and action.