Your life's purpose may be to identify and study a particular gene, which leads to preventing the onset of a childhood disease. It may be to write and perform music that provides comfort and solace for others. Your life's purpose may be to inspire others to think differently about their self and their life. It may be to save lives, to teach, or to help a community build homes and schools for its people.

How you define your purpose is largely shaped by the unique abilities or talents that you possess. These are your gifts. You use your free will to acknowledge and share these gifts with the world. In using your gifts, you see purpose and meaning in your existence. While your gifts are predetermined (they are predestined), whether or not you choose to share these gifts is up to you.

Your gifts have nothing to do with intelligence, wealth, privilege or physical attractiveness. These things may help you to utilize or share your gifts, but they do not determine what your gifts actually are. Instead, your gifts are inherent qualities that have always been a part of you. They are often uncomplicated and unassuming, often requiring little effort at best. It is in how you use your gifts to make a difference in the world that they in turn become distinctive and extraordinary. And by defining your gifts, you can begin to define how you may live your purpose.

How you go about identifying your innate gifts begins with looking at distinctive patterns. For example:

As a child perhaps there were occasions when relatives would come to visit and you would have lengthy conversations with them. You would listen as your aunts or uncles confided in you as though you were another adult. Consider for a moment that it was in being a good listener that others found it easy to open up and talk to you. Acknowledge that it