I’m not sure where I heard it, but the following statements make enormous sense: Purpose leads to passion; passion leads to energy; energy leads to actions; action leads to opportunities; opportunities lead to success; success leads to significance; significance leads to happiness.

When considering each step in that litany of statements, the progression is true. It begins with understanding your purpose and the final outcome is happiness. Understanding these statements and following through with them will inspire us to make a difference in the world. Living them out each day is enormously satisfying. They will drive us, focus us, and consume us.

It begins with purpose. What’s yours?

Here are three steps to discovering a higher purpose.

Serve a higher good.
No greater purpose in life exists than to serve something that is beyond us. In fact, your life’s purpose to be truly meaningful must always have another-component, something larger than we are. We were created not to eat, breathe, then die. Or, to go to school, go to work, then go to a retirement home. We were created to serve a higher good.

Discover your talents, gifts, and personality to excel in what you were created to do.
Passion, energy, actions, opportunities, and success often follows you when you give yourself to the purpose for which you were created. Have you ever seen an Olympic gold medal winning gymnast also win the gold medal in the shot put; or the mechanic at the auto shop who also moonlights as an oral surgeon? It doesn’t happen. Everyone has a race he or she is created to run. Some run the 220; others excel in the marathon, while others do better in the sprints. Find your sweet spot that intertwines with your talents, gifts, and personality.

Get going.
Consider this simple formula: Dream Big, Start Small, Get Going. At some point, we have to take action. One day a man hit a golf ball in the rough and several ants went scrambling. When the hacker attempted to hit the ball, he swung several times missing the ball. One of the ants, said to the other: “If we don’t get on the ball, we’re going to die.” If you and I don’t get on the ball we, too, will not find our higher purpose. Actions move us in the right direction.

When we discover our higher purpose, we will experience intense satisfaction and pleasure—the best of all feelings.