Ask that question to a group of people at any gathering and you will most likely get a variety of answers as to why someone is in attendance there. But if you say, “No. I mean why are you on earth? What is your purpose in life?” you will probably get a lot of blank stares. It has been my experience that most people don’t know how to respond to that question because they haven’t given much thought as to why they are here and what it is that they should be doing. But if we want to be truly successful in life we need to discover the reason we are here and what it is that is expected of us. It is my belief that each and every one of us has a unique set of talents, abilities, strengths, experience and God-given gifts that is meant to fill a specific need. Finding out where that need is and satisfying it is then our purpose in life. As Richard Nelson Bolles says in his highly acclaimed book “What Color is Your Parachute? – A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers.”:

What the world most needs from you is not to add to their number, but to figure out, and then contribute to the world, what you came into this world to do.

While his book is primarily intended to provide a framework for job seekers to find the employment opportunities for which they are  best suited, Bolles takes the process a step further in the appendix. Here he speaks of marrying your religious beliefs with your work by undertaking a search for a sense of mission – a continuing task or responsibility that you are destined of fitted to do.  Your mission in life, he says, has three parts:

First, to seek to stand hour by hour in the conscious presence of God, the One from whom your Mission is derived.

Second, to do what you can, moment by moment, day by day, step by step to make this world a better place, following the leading and guidance of God’s Spirit within you and around you.

          Third, 

• to exercise that Talent which you particularly came to Earth to use…your greatest gift, which you most delight to use
• in the place(s) or setting(s) which God has caused to appeal to you the most
• and for those purposes which God most needs to have done in the world.

Discovering your mission or purpose in life then provides the answer to the question of why you are here. And accomplishing that mission, fulfilling that purpose is the means of achieving success in life. Do you know why you are here?