Just a couple of PURPOSE kits remain. Click here to get yours; if you start a new subscription before the end of the day on Nov 1, we'll ship the October and November kits together and waive one of your shipping charges - a savings of $9! This offer is available in the continental US only. Email me at rachinla
Design Team Creations
For more from the Design Team, and detailed close-ups, check out the
October 2010 Design Team Gallery
Journaling Prompts
Intention: One definition for purpose is intention. How do you participate in creating your future by setting intentions? Do you think your life is haphazard or guided by decisions that you make? Are there methods you use to focus your plans – are you a list maker, a planner, a dreamer? Or do you prefer to let the wind and waves of life carry you? Do you feel different about this question in different areas of your life?
Meaning: Do you know what your purpose is? Does your work, your family life, your avocation give you a sense of meaning and value? What parts of your life aren’t working, and what could you do to change that? Do you believe that there’s a purpose for your life that was decided for you by a greater force, or do you determine your own meaning? Is there such a thing as ‘mattering’? How would you know if you did matter?
Resolved: How do you know when you’ve made a decision you can live with? Do you prefer to keep things flexible until it’s totally necessary to settle on one thing or another, or are you quick to make your decisions and move on? Has someone in your life ever made a decision that has impacted you in a major way, for better or for worse, and what was your response?
Tenacity: Are you like a dog with a bone in any part of your life? What have you accomplished by being tenacious? Do you wish you were more tenacious in some regard? Who in your life is truly tenacious, and what have you learned from their example? Can you ever be too tenacious – too tied to an outcome and its implementation by your efforts?
Goals: What are your main goals? Are they equally distributed between the personal and professional areas of your life? What have you accomplished in the last year, and what do you hope to accomplish this coming year? Do you share your goals with people in your life, or do you keep them to yourself – are you ever afraid that letting them be known will diminish your chances of fulfilling them?
Music
Quotes
My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? Charles M. Schulz
The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours. Bertrand Russell
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us. Quentin Crisp
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose. Bette Davis
The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose. William Cowper
Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes. Kenneth Hildebrand
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Helen Keller
This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. Oswald Spengler
The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes. Henry Kissinger
Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation. Woodrow Wilson
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
To want to be what one can be is purpose in life. Cynthia Ozick
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt
The secret of success is constancy of purpose. Benjamin Disraeli
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity. Friedrich Nietzsche
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. George Eliot
Any ideas, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought. Napoleon Hill
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Carl Jung
Nature is not cruel, pitiless, indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous -- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. Richard Dawkins
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. Eric Hoffer
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. George Bernard Shaw
The history of the human race, viewed as a whole may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed. Immanuel Kant
Unless a life is activated by sustained purpose it can become a depressingly haphazard affair. Richard Guggenheimer
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? William Hart Coleridge
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. Kurt Vonnegut
Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Washington Irving
This is the true joy in life -- being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. George Bernard Shaw
Make your life a mission - not an intermission. Arnold Glasgow
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. Dalai Lama
Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky. American Proverb
The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body. Mohandas Gandhi
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.Mohandas Gandhi
When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. W. Clement Stone
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. Viktor E. Frankl
Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't. Richard Bach
I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. Augusten Burroughs
If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger - we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to recommit, to be whole-hearted once again. Sharon Salzberg
Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles. Jawaharal Nehru
You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success - or are they holding you back. Clement Stone
Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time. Marabel Morgan
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. Unknown
Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance. Anthony J. D'Angelo
Energy and persistence conquer all things. Benjamin Franklin
Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time. Marabel Morgan
Stubbornness is also determination. It's simply a matter of shifting from "won't power" to "will power." Peter McWilliams
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough. Og Mandino
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. Calvin Coolidge
If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, "Here comes number seventy-one!" Richard M. DeVos
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. Timothy Leary
Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping. Jonathan Swift
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. Mark Twain
A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. Having been alive, it won't be so hard in the end to lie down and rest. Pearl Bailey
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. Sir William Osler
Sometimes creativity is a compulsion, not an ambition. Ed Norton
When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope still is to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here. It's a wonderful life and I love it. Jim Henson
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Helen Keller
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