Whenever I ask a Muslim what the purpose of their life is, they usually know the ‘correct’ answer, that requires zero introspection, thought, or depth to recite, if they happen to know the commonly cited verse of the Quran:
“We created mankind and jinn to worship Us”.
If they’ve looked into the exegesis of the verse, they might also know that the deeper meaning of ‘worship’ in this context is to ‘know’ God (ma’arifa).
But, that’s about it.
When I was younger, to me, this seemed to have no connection to everyday life.
No connection to the struggles and pains I was going through, or the work I was actually trying do every day to make my own little corner of the world a better place.
For the record, as I mentioned earlier, this answer is completely ‘correct’.
When we go more deeply into it, we’re not human doings.
We’re human beings.
We have knowledge, free thought and free will. In that respect, we have the opportunity to understand Allah in a way in which most of creation can’t, as they were not given these gifts in the same way we were.
And boy was that a risk! There are certainly people using these gifts in destructive ways, as the angels were concerned about before the creation of Adam (as), in the Quran’s telling of our origin story. The idea is that using them to come closer to Allah throughout our lives can be so powerful, it’s truly worth it.
My clients sometimes tell me that all the pain and suffering they’ve been through in their lives was worth it, now that they finally truly understand the power and beauty of the God-given gift of thought.
In other words, they gained a deeper understanding of Allah.
And that made everything else worth it.
That brings us to the true purpose of my own life: the specific way in which I personally plan to continue to devote myself to Allah’s worship as I go through this world, until the end of my life.
I recently hired a coach to go through Simon Sinek’s process to find my ‘Why’, based on his book, “Start with Why”. After several hours of digging deep into the most meaningful experiences, positive and negative, in my life, the gems of the most emotionally touching and important words eventually came out, completely unconsciously. (The coach had to point them out to me based on the notes taken during the process).
To be clear, your “Why” is not an aspiration.
It’s not something you’re hoping you’ll do one day.
It’s who you already are, when you’re at your natural best.
Here’s my ‘Why’, the purpose of my existence, as best as I can articulate it:
“To have life-changing conversations that fill people with pure spiritual energy and insights, that relieve needless suffering, so that they can see what’s truly possible for them and feel free to live their best life.”
This isn’t something ‘cool’ we came up with to try and describe my coaching work. Nor could we have deduced this from studying the Quran alone.
This statement has always been true for me, long before I figured out what to do with it. This is literally why I ended up becoming a professional coach in the first place, as well as why I get out of bed every morning and write blog posts every day.
Naturally, the ‘conversations’ in question aren’t limited to coaching sessions. To me, they include my prayers, opening up to my wife, hanging out with friends and playing with my kids.
This is what I’m here to do.
If you’d like to do it with me – to have a potentially life-changing conversation yourself – perhaps in the context of improving your love life and relationships, then be warned:
It might just fill you up with spiritual energy and insights that relieve any needless suffering, open your mind to what’s truly possible for you and leave you feeling free to live your best life.
I was born to do this.
Let’s go:
