When I felt I didn’t know my purpose it used to hold me back from achieving as much as I wanted. I’m sharing hoping it will help others with the same problems. Comments, issues, questions all welcome to open discussion.
Here’s what my thought process used to be: I don’t know what to do with my life and hate my job. People talk about finding their purpose so, ‘When I find my true purpose I’ll find a job I love and I’ll be happy’.
As the measure of success for this belief was happiness I could only judge whether I’d made it or not by how I felt about the job I did. It’s a bit like someone desperate to improve their life through a relationship but they only believe in love at first sight.
Unless you’re one of those people who have always appeared to know what you want to do with your life you don’t understand that purpose isn’t found, it’s discovered. That’s a subtle but important difference. Let’s say you’re looking for both your car keys, and your purpose. You think of places your keys would normally be: coat pocket, bowl on the shelf by the door, bedside table. You know where keys typically live so you look in those places. It all makes sense, so why can’t you find your purpose? Because you have no logical idea where your purpose hangs out. You need to think about finding your purpose so you go to a place where you find thoughts, like a comfy chair by the window and you start thinking. And thinking. You went to the place where thoughts are found and before long you come up with “If only I could find a job I love….”.
I used to do that a lot. There are times I still do.
Firstly, let’s be clear about what you’re really looking for. When you search for purpose you are not looking for the meaning of life. You’re looking to give your life meaning. You’re looking specifically for internal validation and self-worth (the feeling inside you’re doing something worthwhile) and external validation from providing a service to the world around you.
This doesn’t mean that only actions with billion-person outcomes have value. It means that when you take action that generates meaning for others and improves their lives even a little, this increases your worth on the planet. The more worth you have, and greater the contribution you make, the happier you will be because people are called to be both consumers and creators.
So how do you discover purpose? Not by sitting in a chair by the window. You find it by doing things and taking action.
Now we know what we’re really seeking (discovery through action) let’s get three more misconceptions out of the way.
Purpose and Passion are not the same thing. People use them interchangeably (along with the unhelpful but feel-good “Bliss”). Purpose is defined as ‘the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc’. Passion is ‘a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything’. They’re not interchangeable.
Your purpose in life and your job are not the same thing. There’s a relationship but not an unbreakable chain.
You don’t have to exercise your purpose in life in a singular way. It doesn’t have to exclude anything. You can define it singularly if you like but you have the power to define your life as singularly or as broadly as you wish.
That’s all well and good you’re saying, but I don’t know what I enjoy most. I don’t create anything. I’m not good at anything. I’m not a leader. People don’t listen to me. Or: I have so many ideas all the time I don’t know which to focus on. I don’t know the right one so I just procrastinate and do nothing. I don’t know where to start.
What hid my purpose from me was all the noise around me like the three points above. What helped unblock it was taking action on even the smallest opportunities.
Let me explain how I found one of my passions that led to discovering my purpose.
I enjoy writing fiction. I discovered this in school, thought nothing of it and after school did not write at all. Years later I went to a funeral for a friend who had died young. It had such an impact on me I wrote about it when I got home so I didn’t forget. Just a paragraph. But it wasn’t worded quite right. I revised it. I worked on it until it felt truer to the memory of the experience. As time passed I became more interested in how words could capture meanings and experiences. I started writing again, both short stories and later novels. Some of my work is published online and some isn’t. Some is liked, and some isn’t.
I didn’t arrive at this by thinking hard about it. It happened by me doing something. I found the smallest spark and fanned the flame. Based on this you’d think from the old way of thinking that I found a passion, and now I have the purpose of becoming a full-time writer.
But in fact that has little to do with purpose as I discovered this when I stopped writing for a year. I didn’t miss the task of writing at all.
What I missed was a way to communicate ideas and help people understand the world around them. The really important aspects of my life are in helping people better communicate with themselves, with others, and with the world around them. It just so happens that writing, if done well, can achieve all three. But if I carry out any task that can achieve any one of those, I find I’m happy doing it. I feel fulfilled because I’m following a purpose I believe in. But my writing is not my purpose. It’s an action that helps me to create value. Purpose gives my life context. Writing helps deliver the content.
And I believe this is the problem of looking for a job you love as an indicator of success in finding your purpose. You look for a job you love. You measure this by happiness. And you hope this expected happiness will validate that you have found your purpose. But life doesn’t work like that. Instead I found something to work on (communicating to myself a life truth after a funeral) and the more I worked on this the more I discovered how important I felt this type of communication was and how I wanted to help others. And carrying out this task in any situation makes me happy and adds value to others. You have to keep experimenting to discover it, not thinking about how you’ll find it.
TLDR: You discover your purpose by taking action. You don’t find it through thought. Maybe the part of your life you enjoy is solving people’s problems. So start helping people. You might find you end up working in an elderly neighbour’s garden. While you work she talks about her life. She talks about the loneliness of living on her own since her husband passed away. Your heart goes out to her because you remember what it was like when you were single. Suddenly it occurs to you that no one should be alone. You help her organise a garden party for people nearby of her age. Next you invite a load of friends with an open invitation to go for a walk in the countryside, or have a BBQ in the local park and suddenly you have formed a micro-community. You discover you like helping form communities and being in the hub of a community. You can create communities anywhere. And the only way you discovered this was by helping an elderly neighbour in her garden. You wouldn’t have arrived there by sitting in a chair trying to figure it out.
How exactly find your passion? Check this out
* กระทู้นี้สามารถใช้งานได้เฉพาะผู้ที่มี Link นี้เท่านั้นค่ะHere’s what my thought process used to be: I don’t know what to do with my life and hate my job. People talk about finding their purpose so, ‘When I find my true purpose I’ll find a job I love and I’ll be happy’.
As the measure of success for this belief was happiness I could only judge whether I’d made it or not by how I felt about the job I did. It’s a bit like someone desperate to improve their life through a relationship but they only believe in love at first sight.
Unless you’re one of those people who have always appeared to know what you want to do with your life you don’t understand that purpose isn’t found, it’s discovered. That’s a subtle but important difference. Let’s say you’re looking for both your car keys, and your purpose. You think of places your keys would normally be: coat pocket, bowl on the shelf by the door, bedside table. You know where keys typically live so you look in those places. It all makes sense, so why can’t you find your purpose? Because you have no logical idea where your purpose hangs out. You need to think about finding your purpose so you go to a place where you find thoughts, like a comfy chair by the window and you start thinking. And thinking. You went to the place where thoughts are found and before long you come up with “If only I could find a job I love….”.
I used to do that a lot. There are times I still do.
Firstly, let’s be clear about what you’re really looking for. When you search for purpose you are not looking for the meaning of life. You’re looking to give your life meaning. You’re looking specifically for internal validation and self-worth (the feeling inside you’re doing something worthwhile) and external validation from providing a service to the world around you.
This doesn’t mean that only actions with billion-person outcomes have value. It means that when you take action that generates meaning for others and improves their lives even a little, this increases your worth on the planet. The more worth you have, and greater the contribution you make, the happier you will be because people are called to be both consumers and creators.
So how do you discover purpose? Not by sitting in a chair by the window. You find it by doing things and taking action.
Now we know what we’re really seeking (discovery through action) let’s get three more misconceptions out of the way.
Purpose and Passion are not the same thing. People use them interchangeably (along with the unhelpful but feel-good “Bliss”). Purpose is defined as ‘the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc’. Passion is ‘a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything’. They’re not interchangeable.
Your purpose in life and your job are not the same thing. There’s a relationship but not an unbreakable chain.
You don’t have to exercise your purpose in life in a singular way. It doesn’t have to exclude anything. You can define it singularly if you like but you have the power to define your life as singularly or as broadly as you wish.
That’s all well and good you’re saying, but I don’t know what I enjoy most. I don’t create anything. I’m not good at anything. I’m not a leader. People don’t listen to me. Or: I have so many ideas all the time I don’t know which to focus on. I don’t know the right one so I just procrastinate and do nothing. I don’t know where to start.
What hid my purpose from me was all the noise around me like the three points above. What helped unblock it was taking action on even the smallest opportunities.
Let me explain how I found one of my passions that led to discovering my purpose.
I enjoy writing fiction. I discovered this in school, thought nothing of it and after school did not write at all. Years later I went to a funeral for a friend who had died young. It had such an impact on me I wrote about it when I got home so I didn’t forget. Just a paragraph. But it wasn’t worded quite right. I revised it. I worked on it until it felt truer to the memory of the experience. As time passed I became more interested in how words could capture meanings and experiences. I started writing again, both short stories and later novels. Some of my work is published online and some isn’t. Some is liked, and some isn’t.
I didn’t arrive at this by thinking hard about it. It happened by me doing something. I found the smallest spark and fanned the flame. Based on this you’d think from the old way of thinking that I found a passion, and now I have the purpose of becoming a full-time writer.
But in fact that has little to do with purpose as I discovered this when I stopped writing for a year. I didn’t miss the task of writing at all.
What I missed was a way to communicate ideas and help people understand the world around them. The really important aspects of my life are in helping people better communicate with themselves, with others, and with the world around them. It just so happens that writing, if done well, can achieve all three. But if I carry out any task that can achieve any one of those, I find I’m happy doing it. I feel fulfilled because I’m following a purpose I believe in. But my writing is not my purpose. It’s an action that helps me to create value. Purpose gives my life context. Writing helps deliver the content.
And I believe this is the problem of looking for a job you love as an indicator of success in finding your purpose. You look for a job you love. You measure this by happiness. And you hope this expected happiness will validate that you have found your purpose. But life doesn’t work like that. Instead I found something to work on (communicating to myself a life truth after a funeral) and the more I worked on this the more I discovered how important I felt this type of communication was and how I wanted to help others. And carrying out this task in any situation makes me happy and adds value to others. You have to keep experimenting to discover it, not thinking about how you’ll find it.
TLDR: You discover your purpose by taking action. You don’t find it through thought. Maybe the part of your life you enjoy is solving people’s problems. So start helping people. You might find you end up working in an elderly neighbour’s garden. While you work she talks about her life. She talks about the loneliness of living on her own since her husband passed away. Your heart goes out to her because you remember what it was like when you were single. Suddenly it occurs to you that no one should be alone. You help her organise a garden party for people nearby of her age. Next you invite a load of friends with an open invitation to go for a walk in the countryside, or have a BBQ in the local park and suddenly you have formed a micro-community. You discover you like helping form communities and being in the hub of a community. You can create communities anywhere. And the only way you discovered this was by helping an elderly neighbour in her garden. You wouldn’t have arrived there by sitting in a chair trying to figure it out.