Living with Purpose: Finding Purpose
About two years ago, the quest to find my life purpose suddenly became a topic of great interest to me.
It wasn’t as if I was drifting rudderless across the vast ocean of life, but I felt the urge to express something meaningful about the direction of my life. As this urge grew, I found myself reading, writing, talking to others and brainstorming obsessively around the topic of purpose.
An insight that came to me in the middle of this perfect storm of curiosity was the following:
The great work of your life is finding the path to your real purpose and your ultimate expression of creativity is to design and live a life of meaning.
The great teacher and mythologist, Joseph Campbell, said it best:
“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning, and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
An interpretation I took from his words is that life in itself is meaningless except for the meaning that we create. So at the very least, the meaning that we attach to our experience of life is under our control.
The psychiatrist David Viscott in his book, Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations, writes:
“The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.”
He neatly summarizes a recipe for our our creative journey to purposeful living: Discover purpose, develop it, live it!
Stage One: Discover Purpose
Without overthinking it, complete the following sentence for yourself using less than ten words:
It is my true life purpose to …!
And there you have a purpose for your life!
Can it be that simple?
Let’s explore this a little more:
An in vogue representation of the quest to finding purpose reduces it to four basic questions:
• What does the world need?
• What do you love to do?
• What can you do well?
• What can others reward you for doing?
It is a simple process that prompt thinking on the clues of what your purpose might be. Although the questions traditionally appear on a diagram which allows the reader to choose the order in which to answer these questions, I like to do it in the order I list above.
This order eliminates the option to start with the money question first and by doing that, reducing the possibilities that may light your way.
1. What does the world need?
This question carries with it two implications.
The first is that there is a world which has a need. This world may be the world as it is, or it may be a world of your choosing — a world that you want to be a part of becoming.
The second is that the world may need things, skills, services, or gifts that only you can provide. And the magic is in figuring out what those valuable things are.
2. What do you love to do?
Another way to phrase this can be: If there were no constraints on you, how would you choose to spend your time?
This question is about finding those things that entice you. It may be things that you are passionate about or something that brings you enjoyment, or deep meaning.
3. What can you do well?
Over time, we build skills and capabilities. Some of those turn out to be strengths — thing we can do better than our peers. The kind of activities that others rely on us doing for them.
What are your strengths and capabilities?
4. What can others reward you for doing?
The original question centred around the concept of: What can others pay you for doing?
Not everyone attaches meaning and reward to money so the incarnation of the question that deals with money, was a difficult one for some to answer.
Substituting the word “money” with “reward” suggests that you receive in return something that has value to you, which may have a monetary value, or not.
What can you do that is valuable enough so that others would pay, or reward you?
Using the four question process is an exercise in building your awareness about what the essential things are that sets your soul alight.
Once you have cycled through the four questions, you may revise your purpose statement:
It is my true life purpose to …!
And then …!
Cycle through the four questions again.
Rinse!
Repeat!
By working through the four questions iteratively, you will develop a clear purpose statement over time. One that resonates with what you must do with your life to create meaning.
A quick example:
Let us hypothesize about these questions from a business perspective:
The question: “What does the world need?” provides you with an answer to the audience and market you want to serve.
The questions: “What do you love to do?” and “What are you good at doing?” gives you clues to the products or services you can provide.
The question: “How can others reward you?” gives you answers to how you may be paid for what you do.
Stage Two: Develop It
Knowing your purpose is great, but you will find that there are still gaps between knowing and doing.
Stage two is about finding out what is needed that you do not have at the present moment. It is those things, skills and abilities necessary for living your purpose, but you either lack it or need to expand on it.
Using the information coming out of the four questions, you may then investigate the gap between what you can do and what you need to do to offer the world what it needs.
Then see what is necessary to develop those skills and competencies for yourself, and in others, and plan to gradually acquire it over time.
Following our example:
You may decide to become a leadership coach to senior executives in corporate companies, assisting them in creative thinking with management issues that halt their career progression.
You may know how to coach, understand leadership issues and have an excellent facilitation process to identify career issues and how to action corrective steps.
The skills you lack may be about how to market to senior executives.
It is a learnable skill. Or, outsource it to a trusted partner whose life purpose includes marketing to senior leaders.
Stage Three: Do It
The sooner you start living a life of purpose, the sooner you will have the benefit of meaning joy and fulfilment. It is not necessary to perfect skills and abilities to live a life of purpose. So while you are learning, do it anyway.
Allow yourself to run Stage Two and Three, side by side.
I hope you work on your life purpose. And even more, I hope you find it.
We all deserve lives filled with joy, happiness and fulfilment.
Good luck on your journey!
