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What is the purpose of someone who is just a housewife. Home keeping, a good wife or husband, raising kids, cooking, farming, they went on and on to know if any of those could be one’s purpose in life. Yes, these sound like routine stuff, not as complicated as the purpose of the Wright Brothers, the two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are credited with inventing and building the world’s first successful airplane. 
But of course, some of these can be more than routine stuff. Farming is not because there are phenomenally successful farmers, and some people who have the gift to cook well have developed it into food franchises.
A better way to put all that is this: There is the basic human purpose and once this basic purpose has been achieved, human beings have to switch to a different type of purpose, or else they fall into purposelessness.
Varieties of Purpose
Dr Steve Taylor helps out with some varieties of purpose
Survival: This is the most basic level of purpose, common to all living things on this planet. It means the effort to meet basic physical needs for food, shelter, or to protect one’s survival in the face of others who threaten it. This level of purpose is common in very poor countries, or countries at war, or with brutally oppressive regimes, or for members of certain castes or ethnic groups which are oppressed by the majority.
Personal Accumulative: Attaining Wealth, Status and Success: Many people in our individualistic and competitive modern societies derive their sense of purpose in these ways. Encouraged by consumerism, their main purpose is to accumulate: to make money, to attract attention, to become famous, or rise to positions of status and power.
Altruistic/Idealistic: At a higher level of personal development and in developed societies, the desire for personal gain recedes, and one’s sense of purpose becomes much broader, not to improve one’s own situation but to try to improve the situations of others. There are possibly two different subgroups here: firstly, a sense of concern for one’s society or for the world in general, which creates a sense of idealism – a desire to improve society, to overcome injustice and oppression. Secondly, there may be a more human-centered desire to help other people, to alleviate their suffering and further their development.
Personal and Spiritual: There are two sub-groups here: Firstly, there is personal development in the sense of self-exploration and creativity. This could be an artist whose purpose is self-expression, or a person who is continuously absorbing new knowledge or interests, or developing new skills. Secondly, there is personal development in the sense of spiritual development – a person who feels a strong motivation to transform their state of being to a ‘higher’ level, through practices like meditation, or by following spiritual paths. However, in some people these two sub-groups can overlap.
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For most people in the developing world, including Nigeria, seem to be trapped between the Survival Purpose and the Personal Accumulation Purpose. And if you ask me, that is a major reason of our poor or stunted development. People blame it on slave trade, but taking Nigeria as an example, the slave traders did not take our oil away. It was discovered long after the trade, but what did we do with it?
Also, Nigerians overseas are some of the worlds brightest and the best, so it is neither a gene thing.
Agreed that we develop best in enabling environments, but in order not to wander aimlessly in life we have to know or define our purpose in life.
More Benefits
As we highlighted last week operation in your gift zone is easier, and enhances faster development than elsewhere.
•Operating in our purpose zone, gives us flow – the state of intense absorption in which we forget our surroundings and ourselves. flow is a powerful source of well-being. The more flow we experience, the happier we feel. It is why a writer can say he is going on vacation to write a novel, and you are like, ‘is that guy crazy? When did writing become fun?” It is! Some people can write all day, all night! Some of them keep their clothes out of reach to write naked so they can’t go out. It becomes some sort of ritual, but it is all fun.
•For good of society, aligning ourselves to a common purpose often makes us less self-centered. Experts say this way, we feel a part of something bigger, something outside ourselves, and this makes us less focused on our own worries and anxieties. Our own problems seem less significant, and we spend less time thinking about them, and so our sense of well-being increases. This is what develops a nation, not primitive acquisition.
•And as new research shows, no matter what your age, new research finds, having a sense of purpose helps you live longer.
