Part of pursuing a focused life of purpose may include an expansion of your perspective. Expanding your worldview may help you find your niche. Here are some ways to make your world a little larger.

Host a foreign exchange student. Not only will you help make someone’s dream come true, you and your family will learn just as much as your host student, as you learn to communicate with each other and learn about his/her country’s customs.

Eat local. Eat at a restaurant that offers locally grown food, or start to grow your own. The average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles, according to CleanOurAir.com. Eating locally not only has health benefits, but will also take you one step closer to understanding the affect our choices have on the world around us.

Visit a different church. It’s hard to grow in your own faith without discovering it for yourself. Part of that journey is to discover what others believe and how they practice it. Visiting another’s place of worship might shed light not only on what you believe, but how it feels to be a visitor. Are you aware of visitors to your own congregation? How are they treated?

Volunteer. Nothing puts your problems in perspective faster than helping another with his/her problems. Volunteering is on the rise since the recession, and with the mounting economic needs, opportunities abound to make a difference in the life of someone else.

Read the BBC. While it doesn’t have to be the BBC, reading a non-American source of news can help put our own news in context. Make sure the news you consume doesn’t only deal with what’s happening on our home turf, but the world around us.

Hang out with people who don’t look like you. Many of us find it more comfortable to talk with and hang out with people who are like us – and look like us. If you don’t have a regular opportunity to befriend or at least have conversations with others who are from different ethnic backgrounds than yours, put yourself in situations that will. Take a free class from the library or visit a lecture or community event.