Don't get me wrong – I'm not throwing blame or fault. In most cases, they probably don't know any better. This was how their parents lived each day; this was how they grew up. Maybe they think this is it – this is all life has to offer. 

Well, I'm here to sound the wake-up call. 

There's a great scene in the movie "The Matrix" between Morpheus, a mentor, and Neo, his student. Neo has just woken up and discovered that what he thought was reality was just a world 'that had been pulled over his eyes to shield him from the truth.' Morpheus wants Neo to let go of what he used to think of as "reality," his mundane, day-to-day existence, where his true purpose was neither recognized nor realized. I want you to create a new world, a new reality, where you recognize that you have a purpose for being on this planet, and realize that your purpose is waiting for you to figure it out. 

If you don't know your purpose, then your first purpose is to get a purpose. 

When you look at the lives of the most successful people who ever lived, you can see that they had a definite purpose and they knew it. Some examples are: Christ – His purpose was spiritual, and stated in John 10:10, which reads: "I am come that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly." 

Walt Disney's purpose: "To make people happy." 

Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller's purpose: "Humanity's comprehensive welfare on spaceship earth." 

Henry Ford's purpose: "To mass produce, mass distribute and have cars mass consumed." 

Andrew Carnegie's purpose: "To manufacture and market steel." 

Mother Teresa's purpose: "To care for and comfort the poor, sick and needy all over the world."

I don't want you to confuse a purpose with a goal. Goals are great! I teach goal setting, and believe it is crucial to achieving any kind of success. But goals alone, left by themselves, can be indiscriminate and undirected. We can have hundreds of goals (and I hope you do), but we may only have one purpose that we work for our entire life. That purpose should be the underlying core that gives our goals direction and meaning. 

Discovering your purpose will put your life into crystal-clear perspective. You won't see the world you once knew. You will see another world, one in which you are a necessary and intricate spoke in the wheel. 

The saddest places on earth are graveyards. Not because people are buried there, but because dreams, talents and purposes that never came to fruition are buried there. Graveyards are filled with books that were never written, songs that were never sung, words that were never spoken, things that were never done.

You have talents and gifts that no one else can offer. There are things you can do that no one else is capable of doing quite the way YOU can do them. Don't rob this earth of your purpose by taking it to the grave with you. You see, we all have a purpose, a reason for living, breathing and existing. We all have unique talents and gifts that were created and given to us to be shared. Our task is to understand this and figure out what our purpose is. We owe it to the Universe AND to ourselves!

Mark Victor Hansen