15 Powerful Questions to Discover Your Life’s Work
Introduction: The Search for Your Life’s Work
There’s a reason the search for purpose can feel so consuming. At some point, most of us sense there’s something we’re here to do—something beyond ticking boxes, collecting titles, or living out someone else’s script. We want our work to mean something. We want to feel alive inside it.
But here’s the truth: discovering your life’s work is rarely straightforward. It’s not a lightning-bolt revelation or a single aha moment. It’s an ongoing inquiry—a conversation with yourself that deepens over time.
And the most powerful way to begin? Asking better questions.
Below are 15 questions to guide you toward the core of who you are and what you’re here to express. These aren’t quick fixes or personality-test answers. They’re doorways—each one an invitation to explore, uncover, and remember what’s always been within you.
So, grab a notebook, pour something warm, and give yourself permission to go slow.
~
~
Why Finding Your Life’s Work Feels So Hard
Most people set out to find their purpose full of excitement and possibility… but quit the moment it gets uncomfortable. They hit obstacles, confusion, doubt—and assume they “must not have a purpose after all.”
But that’s not true.
Your purpose isn’t missing. It isn’t hiding. It’s been shaping you all along. Every decision, every heartbreak, every moment of awe or loss—your entire life is the curriculum.
Your job isn’t to invent your purpose. It’s to listen closely enough to recognize what’s already there.
15 Questions to Discover Your Life’s Work
Uncovering Your Core Values & Patterns
1. What Are My Core Values?
Your values are the compass for your life’s work. They’re the principles that govern how you want to live, create, and serve. To find them, look at the moments that moved you most deeply—both painful and beautiful. What made you angry? What filled you with awe? Those reactions reveal what matters most.
Tip: Get specific. Courage is different from bravery. Freedom is different from independence. Precise language clarifies purpose.
2. What Are the Great Themes of My Life?
Patterns leave footprints. Think about the desires, challenges, and fascinations that have pulled you back, again and again, in different forms.
What have you always been drawn to?
What experiences or sensations do you keep seeking?
What coincidences keep repeating, almost like breadcrumbs?
These themes reveal the threads that weave your life together—and point directly to the shape of your purpose.
3. What Is My Existential Question?
Beneath everything you’ve done lies a central inquiry, a question you’ve been unconsciously asking your entire life.
Why am I here?
What is truth?
How do we heal?
What is my place in the whole?
Your existential question is the driving force behind your curiosity and choices. When you name it, your life’s work starts to make sense.
Identifying Your Strengths, Talents & Inspirations
4. What Are My Strengths and Talents?
Some gifts are obvious. Others hide in plain sight.
Surface-level strengths might include writing, design, speaking, or technical skills. But deeper gifts often reveal more about your purpose:
Are you the one friends confide in?
Do you see patterns others miss?
Do you create calm in chaotic spaces?
Your life’s work asks you to honor your natural genius, not force yourself into someone else’s mold.
5. What Inspires Me?
Look at what lights you up. Who are the people, places, and ideas that make you want to create, grow, or contribute? Inspiration leaves clues.
Instead of chasing every shiny thing, ask:
What’s constant in what inspires me?
What values or visions do these sources embody?
Often, your deepest inspiration points to the same currents your purpose wants to flow through.
6. What Are My Intuitive Feelings?
Intuition is your built-in compass. When you tune into it, you often know when something is right—or when it’s not—even before you can explain why.
Sometimes it’s easier to start by asking:
Where do I feel most misaligned?
Which choices drain me, even if they “make sense” on paper?
Your intuition is rarely wrong. Trust the pull.
Exploring Your Dreams, Challenges & Impact
7. What Are My Dreams and Aspirations?
What visions keep nudging you? They don’t need to be grand or “realistic.” Maybe it’s starting a community, publishing a book, creating a retreat center, or simply having more freedom in your days.
Even dreams from childhood hold keys. If you once wanted to be an astronaut, perhaps your purpose involves exploration or discovery. Follow the essence beneath the image.
8. What Challenges Have I Overcome?
Your wounds often point to your work. Look back at the obstacles, heartbreaks, or struggles that shaped you:
What did you learn through them?
What strengths emerged because of them?
How do they help you serve others now?
Your life’s work often asks you to guide others through the terrain you’ve already crossed.
9. What Impact Do I Want to Have?
Legacy lives in small acts, not just sweeping gestures.
Ask yourself:
Who do I want to help?
How do I want to make people feel?
What contribution would make my life feel meaningful?
Impact clarifies purpose. What matters most when you’re gone points to what matters most right now.
~
~
10. What Causes Am I Passionate About?
What injustice makes your blood boil? What beauty do you ache to protect? Whether it’s environmental restoration, mental health advocacy, or healing ancestral patterns—your purpose often lives where your heartbreak meets your longing.
Defining Success & Future Vision
11. What Activities Bring Me Joy?
Joy is a compass. When you lose track of time, when you feel most alive—pay attention. These activities whisper the truth about what nourishes your spirit.
12. What Did I Love as a Child?
Before conditioning, you were already you. Revisiting what you loved as a kid can reconnect you to what’s always been essential: play, curiosity, and wonder.
13. What Am I Willing to Sacrifice For?
Purpose requires devotion. What’s so important you’d trade time, comfort, or stability for it? The thing worth your sacrifices often holds the center of your life’s work.
14. What Do I Want to Learn or Experience?
Your purpose lives in your curiosity. Where do you want to grow? What knowledge or skills call to you—not out of obligation, but desire? Lean into what fascinates you.
15. What Does Success Mean to Me?
Strip away the cultural noise. Forget what you’ve been told to want.
What does a meaningful life look like for you?
What would “enough” feel like?
Your definition of success is the frame through which your purpose emerges. Make sure it’s yours.
Integrating What You Discover
Answering these questions isn’t the end—it’s the beginning of a deeper relationship with yourself. Your answers will evolve as you do. Revisit them often. Let them guide your decisions, shape your boundaries, and clarify what you’re building.
Your life’s work isn’t a destination. It’s a lifelong unfolding—a conversation between who you’ve been, who you are, and who you’re becoming.
Take the Next Step Toward Your Life’s Work
Your voice, your values, and your lived experience are your greatest assets—but clarity comes faster with support.
Join our free, 5-day training designed for wellness and transformation professionals. Together, we’ll:
Unearth the patterns shaping your purpose.
Clarify your message so it resonates.
Build the confidence to share your voice.
Your life’s work is already here, waiting to be claimed. Let’s uncover it—together.
-
Your life’s work is the unique expression of who you are through what you create, contribute, and share with the world. It’s not just a career or a job title—it’s the deeper purpose that ties your personal transformation, natural gifts, and lived experiences into a thread of meaning.
-
You’ll rarely get a single lightning-bolt moment of clarity. Instead, you’ll notice alignment:
Your values and work feel connected
Your natural strengths are being used
Your contribution feels meaningful
Your curiosity keeps pulling you deeper
If your work feels both energizing and like an extension of who you are, you’re on the path.
-
Absolutely. As you evolve, so does the expression of your purpose. The deeper “throughline” of your life’s work usually stays the same, but the form—your business, creative projects, offers, or roles—will expand and shift as you grow.
-
Start with curiosity, not passion. Passion can feel overwhelming, but curiosity is quieter and more sustainable. Follow the activities, conversations, and ideas that make you feel alive, even in small ways. Over time, those threads weave into clarity about your bigger work.
-
Often, your greatest challenges contain the seeds of your purpose. The experiences you’ve moved through—the wounds you’ve healed, the obstacles you’ve faced—can become your deepest sources of wisdom. Your life’s work frequently asks you to teach or guide others through terrain you’ve already crossed.
-
There’s no shortcut—but there is a path of acceleration. Ask powerful questions (like the 15 in this guide), create space for reflection, and surround yourself with others doing the same work. That’s why I created the free 5-day training—to give you the structure, tools, and community that make clarity inevitable.