Recently, one of my students said, "I wish I could have known you from before."

I was puzzled and asked, "Before? Before what?"

"Before you were living your Life Purpose so fully," he replied.

"I don’t know if you'd believe it even if you could see it," I said, shaking my head.

"Well, somehow I think it would be very interesting," he said sheepishly, his eyes twinkling and his lips grinning wryly under his handlebar mustache.

I moved recently, and my passport disappeared into the chaos (along with my car stereo faceplate, my partner's flight log book, and his favorite fishing reel). I keep randomly taking five minutes to search anywhere I can just in case it chooses to reveal itself. So much of my stuff is still jumbled up in boxes, and while rifling through one of them I came across some stray photos that must have been in a bottom drawer somewhere. And there it was, the picture of how I was before I began living my Life Purpose, the one mapped out in my fingerprints. I picked the photo up and took a good look. There she is, in a puffy-shouldered pink sweater with a pattern of darker bows across the chest, slumped so far down in a chair that her hands and elbows are supporting her by leaning on her lap. Knees together, head tilted down with eyes gazing sideways at something to the left of the camera. A wallflower succeeding at invisibility who doesn't feel at all comfortable or confident. She looks wilted, frightened, unsure, depressed, and flat-out miserable. I can tell the picture was taken during one of my college holidays, at my grandparent's house, when they were still alive. The table is laid out in the background and an antique lamp I now have in my office is also in the background. There is no one else in the picture. Despite the family holiday setting, the young woman looks desperately alone.

What a difference getting on purpose makes!

Twenty years later I am a successful business artist with my own business, trainings, public speaking events, private clients, and lots of travel. I meet thousands of people each year, and work with an average of five hundred as private consultation clients and students. I am confident about myself and make my living from my own creative self-expression, and I love getting up every morning to get the honor of stepping into others' lives with them and help them see their own highest potential by decoding their destiny—their Life Purpose—for them from their fingerprints. I get updates from clients about what they're up to and how helpful their sessions were for them; I simply love supporting my students along and getting the absolute privilege of seeing them take on their challenges, step into their own purposes over time, and simply blossom. And now, I'm the author of my first book, called Destiny at Your Fingertips, which I wrote for those who are tired of wondering what their purpose is and who are ready to find it out in order to live it.

It's been many years since I was depressed every moment of every day of my life. The road to inhabiting my Life Purpose was not an easy one. It takes effort to step into your Life Purpose and embody it over time, evolve into it. People are often surprised when they learn what I went through, because I was completely clueless about my purpose and resisted it tooth and nail until my life just stopped working entirely, especially my career and my health. I had to change…or either be physically ill the rest of my life, unable to work, and spend my life wanting to die. This is not an exaggeration. I spent the first thirty years of my life with a critical voice inside my head telling me I did not deserve to exist, want, or need anything, and that I should just get it over with. I even had a name for this habit of thinking—the "suicide tapes" I went through both a huge career crisis and a financial crisis, and finally found my purpose the hard way, the way most of us do. Once I started down this path I took a deep breath and haven't looked back; my life has just gotten better and better. Now I can't imagine living any other life than the one I've got. I know where I belong in the world and how to use my talents to make a contribution only I can make.

What would it mean to you to be able to know who you are, what direction your life wants to take, and what you need to do about it to get there? Can you imagine what it would be like to have an instruction manual for your life, available at all times, that you could consult at any time when making a decision or taking an action? How much would it be worth to you to know how to use your will power to begin taking conscious steps to make your Life Purpose happen? So many people are seeking the purpose of their life these days, probably in higher numbers than ever before. Humans have been asking, "Who am I? Why am I here? What is my life about?" for as long as we can all remember. But there has been no clear and definitive answer to these questions…until now.

Your fingerprints are formed five months before you are born and do not change. They go far beyond identifying you physically: they tell you who you are, what your enduring unchangeable transpersonal psychology is. We call this your Soul Psychology. It's the state of conscious awareness you want to live in where life feels best to you. It's your Zone of Fulfillment, your direct "aha!" spot. There are many misperceptions about what Life Purpose is—most of which are really about your changeable values, principles, beliefs, and goals. Wanting to buy a house or lose weight or find your life partner are all important goals, but any one of these is not your Life Purpose. Promoting peace, loving everyone, serving the world, and your personal spiritual belief system are essential to your well-being, but the fact that you can change what you believe indicates that these things are not your individual purpose either. Your aptitudes and skills are often mistaken for your purpose, but just because you're good at cleaning toilets doesn't mean that doing this all day gives you a deep sense of fulfillment. Your destiny is more specific than any of these things, and often isn't anything you even start off thinking you're good at or in which you're interested.

One of my clients is a life coach with a specialty in Attention Deficit Disorder. She wanted to make a training video and travel around the country to interview a bunch of authorities on the topic, but couldn't figure out how to raise the high quantities of money it would take to do this. When we had our session together we found that her fingerprints denoted that she is supposed to be doing her own creative self-expression in the spotlight as an authority. After our session she had a "eureka!" moment when she realized she's supposed to be the star of her training DVD. She then produced it in on a shoestring budget, in one day, and within a year was working on two more and spreading the word about her work. She is helping more people with ADD understand themselves and their special talents, and is being contacted and consulted as the expert she truly is. One year after our appointment she stopped to see me at the conference where we'd met the year before to show me what she'd accomplished. It was a wonderful moment for both of us and it was remarkable to me how different she looked, how bright and energetic she was compared to the previous year. She was the star she was born to be, and owning it was helping her to help more people and to do so more easily than she'd originally imagined. Finding this aspect of her purpose helped her become aware of her potential and to step into it with conscious awareness more quickly than she might have otherwise. Wow.

In my work with people, this type of extraordinary thing happens all the time. Learning your Life Purpose sheds light on your life; it gives you a larger and more compassionate viewpoint for own life and the lives of others. You appreciate what you're yearning to step up to and can better stop and acknowledge yourself as you choose to shape your life, rather than be driven by it. It gives you the encouragement, empowerment, and direction you need to determine your own life and face your challenges, rather than drifting along and taking the path of least resistance.

If you're ready to know your own personal destiny, your own Life Purpose, the life you ultimately would love to wake up and live, it's just waiting for you. All you have to do is translate it, and discovering your Life Purpose from your fingerprints isn't hard to do. What are you waiting for? Every minute of your finite life is precious. Why not find out how to wring every ounce of meaning out of it you can?