How do I know if I'm living my mission in life?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches that every soul comes down with a mission only it can do, and Hashem gives each person the exact strengths and tools to fulfill it. To know whether you are really living it, he gives four signs.
First, you love it. As the Torah says, “V'samachta b'chol hatov,” you shall rejoice in all the good. When you are in the right zone there is a natural joy; you can do it all day and think, “Yes, this is why I'm here.” Second, you're good at it. “B'chochmah yibaneh bayis,” with wisdom a house is built: Hashem gave you the tools to fit your mission perfectly, and “it flows from you.”
Third, it serves others. “Olam chesed yibaneh,” the world is built on kindness. “That's the whole creation of the world,” he says. Whatever you teach, help, build or inspire, it is all part of that chesed.
The fourth sign is the most important: your soul feels alive. The words of Torah are called “our life and the length of our days.” Even when the work is hard, deep down there is life and a quiet joy: “I'm doing what I was born to do.”
Related concepts: A mission with your name on it · Purpose
In A Soul at Peace: Four Signs That You Have Found Your Mission
Also answered in this teaching
What if one of the signs is missing?
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that a missing sign is not a final verdict but an invitation to stop and ask what is missing. The four signs are four faces of one life lived as a mission.
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
There are four signs of living your mission: you love it, you're good at it, it serves others, and your soul feels alive.
Underlying need or longing
Every soul came down with a mission that only it can do, and it longs to know that it is doing it.
What may be behind it
Hashem gives each person the exact strengths and tools for his mission, which is why the right work flows from you. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the talent and the mission were created together.
Deepest human truth
Why does the right work feel alive even when it is hard?
A soul living its mission feels alive and quietly joyful even in hard work: “I'm doing what I was born to do.”
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Purpose, Character, and Masculine Leadership · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz