How To Find Your Purpose (Hint: You Don’t)

Purpose has become a popular topic over the last decade or so. And for the most part, this is excellent — it’s great to have purpose-driven organizations and it’s a wonderful thing for individuals to think about their purpose and focus their work in that direction.

But how does an energy-based approach to life and work intersect with the notion of purpose?

And can it help us find our purpose?

As mentioned in the title, one of the first things to realize is that we don’t actually seem to “find” purpose at all — many times, it’s more “emergent” than it is “discovered.”

Most often, we uncover meaning through movement in a direction that feels energizing to us.

And as we keep moving toward it, it often feels like it is finding us.

It’s often a flicker at first, and becomes brighter as we move closer… even though the full fire is probably a bit of a moving target as we grow, evolve, and continually learn more about what it is that actually burns inside us.

In our work, we also have a powerful tool — Strengthscope® — that helps with this process by providing a reliable “compass” for the journey.

As I learn the practice of paying attention to what energizes me (and what doesn’t), it illuminates a pathway I can follow in a more intentional and nuanced way, because I am deepening my awareness of what naturally moves me towards being my most energized, best self.

As I learn to notice my own energy along the path, I constantly “course-correct” to stay on the road that is most life-giving — and therefore, almost certainly more purposeful — for me.

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…AND WHEN I DO SEE IT, THEN WHAT?

Once we do have a sense of what our purpose is, it becomes somewhat like the sun — providing our “center,” and the “gravitational pull” that keeps us moving. This is why a shared purpose amongst work colleagues is so amazingly powerful — it provides alignment and trajectory and magnetism to keep a group of people “in orbit” and moving in a similar direction.

But also like the sun, purpose frankly isn’t something we’re likely to think about all the time. Yeah, we’re vaguely aware that there’s a big ball of energy out there providing life to all of us and everything… but you know, I just don’t think about it constantly.

I sure do appreciate it (!), but I don’t obsess about the sun itself all day long.

What I appreciate most about the sun is how it allows me to go on doing the things that are most important to me.

And purpose is a bit like this, too.

It provides light and illumination for the path I want to go down — and even though I don’t think about it all the time, knowing it’s there in the background, and all around, guiding me, might be exactly what it’s supposed to do.