This note is for you if you’ve ever wondered if you aren’t as happy as you could be because you’re not yet “living your purpose”.
The short answer is, no, finding your purpose is NOT the thing keeping you from happiness. I actually think it’s a lot simpler than that.
When I graduated from college, I was hell-bent on finding my purpose. I knew without a doubt that I was meant to live a purposeful life and have a career based on my most meaningful and important work. I had gone to high school with a performing arts program and focused on creative writing, so I assumed that writing would likely be a part of the work that I did one day to create my most fulfilling career.
In addition, I knew that plenty of people felt like writing was an impossible way to make ends meet, and extremely competitive at that. It was poorly paid and hard to break into. (As I applied for publishing jobs after graduation, I found that to be fairly true.) No matter, I thought, as I kept up a blog, submitted to literary journals, and continued to apply for jobs while temping on the side. One day I knew I would find something that was the perfect mix of all of my talents, my creative potential, and my purpose; it was only because I was so hell-bent on finding it that I did.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that there was a fundamental misunderstanding at the root of my desire to find my purpose. I thought that if I found my purpose and was able to land a job in that particular channel or field, it would allow me to have the most fulfilling and satisfying life possible.
I really thought there was a correlation between self-awareness and understanding of my own skills and future happiness.
To some degree, I was correct. When I am working with clients who don’t truly understand how their own brain works and how they most want to spend their time, I see people get stuck chasing after goals that don’t matter. This has them stressing themselves out about people and projects, and impossible standards they’ve inherited from other people or society. They drag themselves over the coals about as opposed to just enjoying where they are and what they’re already doing.
There is a lot of heartache and waste of time and energy in the field of not understanding what you’re all about, what your values truly are, and how those can show up in your day-to-day life.
However, when it comes to finding your purpose or finding your one perfect job, title or description, or even industry, there’s an inherent challenge peaked into that kind of perfectionism. It’s like trying to find the perfect soulmate before you get married. You’re so locked in on identifying what is by nature impossible to define that you will drive yourself mad, attempting to get clear on what it is you want the most and then match that impossible standard up to these very flawed yet accessible real-life opportunities all around you.
There will not come a day when you find your purpose in a blaze of glory and decide that you have unlocked the secret to happiness and career contentment forevermore.
Even if it wasn’t impossible to pick one thing that could be your everything, professionally or creatively, it’s also bananas to think that you yourself won’t change over time. Your interests will evolve.
For example, I no longer enjoy creative writing as my main source of creative expression. I far prefer to decorate a room, plan a big party, or assemble a collage than sitting down to write a poem, an essay, or a story to be told on stage. Of course, I have thoughts that I like to express, as evidenced by this newsletter you’re currently reading, but I don’t pursue writing with the kind of pleasure I used to. It just doesn’t do it for me anymore.
All the more reason why you shouldn’t hang your hopes for future satisfaction on a single idea or concept, especially one as nebulous as the idea of purpose.
So do yourself a favor and stop trying to find your purpose. Choose to live purposefully instead.
What does that mean?
Basically, choose to do things on purpose.
You look at the surrounding circumstances, notice what works for you and what doesn’t, and make choices and changes to better align your immediate circumstances with the reality you want to experience most.
For example, if you’ve been working in a particular job for a long time and you’re feeling dissatisfied with certain elements of it, then you can do a high-level assessment of what’s working and what isn’t. Maybe you like the pay, but you don’t like your coworkers. Maybe you like the type of projects you have to do, but not some of the tools you have to use as part of that process. Maybe you don’t like anything about it. Or maybe you like pretty much everything except the fact that you have a commute that feels like a chore. Whatever the case may be, you get to do a high-level analysis to decide what’s working for you and what isn’t.
From there, the goal is not to update absolutely everything while optimizing each element of your job so that it perfectly satisfies your every need. The goal is to make peace with the things that you are willing to tolerate even if you don’t love it, and find ways to enjoy the things you do like even more.
That may be deciding that the one colleague you can’t stand is someone who you’ll do your best to tune out, except for when you’re forced to work together on something. Maybe you take a course to learn how to use a particular tool more effectively so that it doesn’t feel so exhausting for you to try to wrap your head around it every time you need to do so. Or maybe look at the overall picture and decide that the drain on your emotional and mental well-being isn’t worth the money, and you’d rather experience financial pressure or the stress that can come from reducing your household income to mitigate the stress you feel from your existing role or job.
There is no wrong answer, and there are just a lot of flexible options for you to find a way to optimize what’s currently available to you. If you don’t like any of what’s in front of you, expand your horizons so that you can access new and different opportunities so you can do more of the things you love and less of what you are told to do.
That in a nutshell is living and working on your purpose. I’m talking here about it in terms of your career job, but of course, it applies to your personal relationships, your parenting style, your friendships, the way you are in your household, your health, and wellness, and pretty much everything in your life.
When you choose to take charge and live purposefully, you can create more and more opportunities in moments where you are fully satisfied because you’ve done what matters to you and you’ve done it in a way that generally works for your mental and emotional health.
To me, that kind of fulfillment and satisfaction is exactly what people are looking for when they say they want to find their purpose. By choosing to live your life purposefully, it’s an easier and more accessible path to this kind of satisfaction.
So what about you? Have you ever fallen into the trap of wanting to find your purpose or believing that there was some new bit of information you had to uncover about yourself or your strengths before you could find satisfaction in your career? I’d love to hear from you.
