When Joseph Campbell was a popular name, people would say, “Follow your bliss.” Then, as a career-development and self-help mantra, we moved to “Follow your passion.” Today, it seems like we have moved again. This time to “Follow your purpose.”
We are constantly told that a meaningful life requires us to “find our purpose.” College students are encouraged to identify it so that they can choose careers that speak to them. Professionals are told to connect their work to it. People facing transitions are advised to rediscover it, so that they can figure out what to do next.
“What is your purpose in life?” sounds like an inspiring question, but I think it is the wrong question to ask.
It’s not that purpose is unimportant. The problem lies in the assumption that your purpose is either hidden somewhere inside you or somewhere out there in the world. If you only searched hard enough, you could discover the one thing you were meant to do. Not only does this assumption place an enormous burden on you, but it is also unrealistic.
Here is a more useful approach: Stop trying to find your purpose and start trying to become more purposeful.
Purpose is not a goal
We often talk about purpose as if it were a particularly ambitious goal. I hear people say their purpose is to become a doctor, start a company, raise a family, or change the world. These are things that we may be able to attain, but they are not wholly in our control to accomplish. When these goals become our purpose, we are left in a double bind. If we don’t achieve them, we feel like we haven’t lived up to what we’re meant to do. If we have achieved them, we ask ourselves, “What now?”
Purpose works differently. I think of purpose as a self-defined, long-term intention that is both meaningful to you and impactful for your world. It can guide your decisions and goals, give your life direction, and help create a sense of meaning and coherence.
Unlike a goal, an intention is never completed nor something we check off a list. It is more like an orientation for how we want to engage the world around us. It helps us determine the choices we make and what goals are worth pursuing. As our circumstances change, the way we express that intention may change as well. If we don’t accomplish a goal, we can still find ways to fulfill our general intention for how we want to engage and what we want to pursue. When we do accomplish the goals we set, we can always find additional ways to pursue our intentions.
For example, someone who wants to spend their life helping others develop their potential might become a teacher, manager, parent, coach, physician, entrepreneur, or something else entirely. They may be all those things at different times in their life. Even when the role changes, the underlying orientation remains constant.
When purpose is about how we engage in life rather than the one thing we must accomplish, we no longer face the pressure to find the perfect career or make the perfect decision. Options open, and we can be more creative and flexible to pursue things that give our life meaning.
Being purposeful is something we practice
We can get better at living purposefully by developing the skills to make deliberate choices and pursue our intentions strategically.
Our experiences might reveal commitments we did not know we had or priorities we didn’t appreciate until they were tested. We might begin to examine our beliefs rather than simply taking them for granted. We learn to consider how our values are put into action and whether our goals actually express them. We develop a fuller sense of who we are, while still having the humility to recognize that our identity may change as we live our lives.
Because being purposeful gives us direction rather than a fixed destination, we also become better able to adapt. When a plan fails, we can pursue our intention another way. When pursuing something meaningful requires sacrifice, we learn to become better at regulating our immediate wants.
Because what we pursue purposefully is not simply an individual project, we work to develop interpersonal capacities as well, such as listening to others who may disagree with us, building relationships with those we hope to impact, collaborating with people who see the world differently, and articulating what matters to us without assuming that everyone else must care about the same things.
In practicing these intellectual, emotional, and interpersonal capabilities, we develop what I call a purpose mindset.
Changing the question
There is something appealing about believing that somewhere out there – or inside us – there is a clear answer to the question of what we should do with our lives. If such an answer exists, our task is simply to find it, and finding something that exists feels far more comfortable than accepting that we may have to create something for ourselves.
Yet, this is not how purpose works. We do not discover our purpose and then begin living according to it. Rather, we begin making intentional choices about what matters to us, and, over time, we recognize how we want to live through the choices we have made.
This means that – at any age – it is okay not to know your purpose right now. All we have to do is start living more purposefully, paying attention to what we value, how we contribute, and who we are becoming through the choices that we make. Over time, we may stop asking, “What is my purpose?” because we have become people who are already living purposefully.
