I’ve never asked myself what my purpose in life is, and I don’t know if it’s strange that I haven’t. Apparently it’s a question that drives many people, but it’s not one that has ever come up in my many conversations with myself.1
The question I do tend to ask myself is: Do I like what I’m doing? And usually, the answer is yes. Maybe I’ve picked my endeavours well. Maybe I just like everything (at least for a while). Or maybe I’ve learned the art of willing myself to like something when circumstance demands it.
Today at work I was prepping the replay video2 for a member webinar we had on finding purpose. For two hours, my boss answered all sorts of questions on purpose—why it’s important, how to find it, how to make it pay. And working on that replay got me wondering why I never thought about my life in those terms.
So… what’s my purpose?
If purpose is something that we’re passionate about, that drives us, then I guess “writing” would be a good candidate for being my purpose. However, I find it strange to think of it as such. Purpose to me seems more like a goal to strive towards. Writing is just something I do that I enjoy. It’s an activity, not a goal.
Then what is a goal that I’m happy to dedicate my life to? The first thing that comes to mind is helping people. No, I am not a particularly generous person. But I do like my activities to bring some sort of benefit to myself and others.
If I look back at all the different roles I’ve held in my work life, the ones I’ve found most fulfilling are when my efforts created a positive impact for others: teaching English (so my students could have better life chances), translating subtitles (so the Thai public could have access to entertainment from all over the world), creating training programmes (so employees could upskill themselves), running engagement surveys (so employees could tell their company what they’d like to be done differently), and my current job where our mission is to help people lead better lives while giving fewer fucks.
Clearly, I’m driven by the knowledge that I’m having a positive impact on others. On second thought, maybe “helping” is a bad word—too many connotations and implications. What matters to me, really, is the positive impact itself. Whether the people on the receiving end find it helpful is beside the point.3
So there we have it:
My purpose is having a positive impact on others’ lives.
How to get there?
Now the ever important question: How do we find our purpose? How do we know this is it, this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life?
Honestly, I have no idea. What I can offer is this: I have never set out to find my purpose. All I’ve done in life is trying out different things and discovering what I like and don’t like. Then I simply keep doing the things I like and stop doing the things I don’t like.
I discovered I like subtitles translation, so I keep doing it. Even though it doesn’t pay nearly as much as my other jobs, I keep toiling at it4 because I enjoy it.
I discovered I dislike all other translation work, so I stopped doing it. No matter how well paid it is, I don’t take it. If you handed me $1 million a month to do translation as a full-time job for the rest of my life, I will have no hesitation turning you down and referring you to a friend who will gladly take you up on your generous offer.
I discovered I like tailoring lessons for my learners, so I began offering bespoke English lessons as opposed to standard ones taken from textbooks (booooring).
I discovered I don’t like learners who don’t take their lessons and homework seriously, so I started screening for those learners and rejecting them. If they somehow slip through, I will give them three strikes before I respectfully end our relationship and offer a full refund.5
It’s been through this decade-long process of trying different things (marketing, translating, human resources, teaching, writing,…) that I’ve discovered what motivates me is less the activity, but more the positive impact that activity has on others.
And I genuinely don’t know if I would have gotten there if I approached it the other way around: start out looking for purpose and letting it guide me. And if you asked for my advice for doing it that way, I’d have none.
What do you think?
So there you have it—my brain dump on purpose. Now I turn the thinking hat over to you. I’d be honoured if you’d let me know:
What is your purpose? How did you find it?
Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with someone who might benefit from my haphazard way of finding purpose.
Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,
Val
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
Not in conversations with my friends either. I’m tempted to say it’s a cultural thing and that it’s mostly people in the West who constantly ask themselves what their purpose is in life, but I also have many Western friends who don’t talk about purpose. So I really don’t know what to think. Maybe you can enlighten me.
You can watch the first 30 minutes for free. You’re welcome.
But then you could argue that I might have a fucked up vision of what “positive” impact constitutes, that maybe I’m a tyrant imposing my worldview on the lives of everyone I touch (not literally). But I digress.
And believe me, it is toil. It’s not nearly as glamorous as you might think. Yes, you do get early access to some very cool stuff, but there’s a lot of just sitting and thinking and typing and getting frustrated and achy bums.
In fact, I just ended another one this week. Which has freed me up to take back a returning learner who does value their lessons and put in the requisite effort. Ah, isn’t it wonderful how things work out sometimes?
I, too, have sorta kinda accidentally stumbled across my purpose without truly meaning to. A lot of my discovery involved "re-remembering" what I loved as a kid and returning to it. The biggest thing I've come to understand is that purpose can't be neatly/succinctly defined, and it has the ability to change.
It feels reductive/simplistic to say that writing or yoga or teaching or tarot is my purpose...but I can see how they all connect together to where I feel the most authentic: helping other people explore their inner worlds and understand themselves in new ways.
I wrote a little bit more about it here: https://everydaywoo.substack.com/p/everyday-woo-volume-8?s=w