Your Basic Purpose

My personal opinion is that working on your basic purpose is one of the twelve pillars of optimal health.
A mother posed this question on Facebook:
Anyone with teens or having had teens able to advise me on how to balance allowing-them-to be-an-individual with not-growing-a-lazy-mooching-lay-around-and-still-expect-all-to-be-done-for-them-person and not-screaming-at-them-and-losing-the-plot-entirely???
I responded this way:
The most success I have had with people is when I have found out what they wanted to do then helped them attain it.
I must confess to having lost the plot entirely on more than one occasion and it did nobody any good – me included. I think it might have something to do with the quality, or lack thereof, of the affinity, reality (agreement) and communication on the comm line.
A very wise man wrote in 1950 that talent. personality and basic purpose were a package. I sometimes observe that when a person is working on their basic purpose, progress is like a hot knife through soft butter and when they are not, it is like walking through molasses in winter.
I have a couple of techniques I use to help people work out what their basic purpose is in life and get them moving in that direction.
One is to get them on the left side of a piece of paper to make a list of all their talents and on the right side to list their personality characteristics (you might have to clear both these definitions with them) then, having done that, look over the two lists to see what basic purpose that combination of talents and personality characteristics would forward.
Another is to look at all the things in the past at which they have excelled or thoroughly enjoyed and get into communication with them about what purpose they had at the time or what purpose would align with that activity.
Another is to explain the concept of Be, Do and Have (baker bakes bread) then ask them to make a list of 50 occupations.
That done, get them to write what the product is that each produces.
Then get them to rule a line through each that they would not consider doing.
Then get them to put a line through each that they are currently not suited or could not get themselves qualified to do by physical or mental capacity, education, funds etc.
Look over the remaining items and put a tick next to the profession\product they would enjoy doing\producing.
If there is one that they are grossly more interested in than the rest, there’s the one.
Otherwise pick a couple and get into communication with them. Find out what the income potential is, the qualifications required to start, the number of positions available on Seek.com etc.
The more into comm you get with an area the better you can make informed judgements.