How to Find Your Purpose In Life

“How do I know what I am supposed to do? How do I find my purpose in life?”

I was asked this question, without so much as a preamble, by someone who had come up to me after I had been on a speaking panel for a business and entrepreneurship talk at Hanbury Hall. He had a bit of nervous energy and was clearly trying to discern what his next step should be in his career. He explained that the role he was currently in was something he never quite intended, and while he knew this didn’t seem like the right fit, he wasn’t sure what would be. 

It’s a common question - and an important one. From early days in school we are asked to choose what we want to study, which path we are going to take, what we want to be when we grow up, and so on. Many finish their studies and are left with the same questions and no more answers…

So how does anyone know what they are ‘supposed’ to be or do? How do you find your ‘purpose’ in life?  

I certainly don’t have all the answers but as I responded that night and then thought about it some more later that evening and into the next week, I think I have some thoughts. I’ve been confronted with similar moments in my life and career journey that caused me to think deeply about what I was doing and why I was doing it. 

Right and wrong v. Right and Left

People can often become paralysed when trying to make a “big” decision. I put big in quotes there because, with time, a lot of the decisions that seem so large to us at the moment end up being a footnote in our longer story arc - and some that we didn’t give nearly as much thought to end up being the major turning points in our lives. We want to make the RIGHT decision, and certainly want to avoid the WRONG decision. In our careers, as in life, we are faced with right vs. wrong decisions, but I would argue that those are in the minority and that more often than not we are being faced with RIGHT vs. LEFT decisions. That is, many of the decisions we are faced with are less an opportunity to take the ‘correct’ path but more about simply choosing a path to follow for a season and see where it leads. 

In this case, we should focus more on HOW we make the decision over WHICH decision we ultimately make. 

When I had the initial idea and opportunity to start my current business, it involved an international move with my family. I spent a lot of time considering whether it was the right decision. While I believed in the validity of what we would be building, there is always a chance that it wouldn’t work out in the way that I hoped. Even if it did, the move and transition might affect our family in some negative way. But what I realised is that even if we didn’t take this opportunity, I could still fail right where we were and that our family’s well being wasn’t guaranteed either way. 

The truth is that it was entirely possible that we would find success and our family would thrive no matter which we chose. There may not have been a right decision or a wrong decision, but simply a decision to take a certain path.  

Don’t get tied up in finding a career ‘purpose’ 

We all want to know what we are doing means something, but in search of the perfect and singular purpose for our career, we get lost in the searching and miss the forest for the trees. 

There is a story (legend?) of a time in the 1960s when President John F Kennedy went to visit the NASA Space Centre in Houston, TX. 

According to the story, President Kennedy was touring the facility and came across a janitor in one of the corridors of the expansive building. The President, being known for his charisma, personableness and interest in the space program, struck up a conversation with the man. During their brief interaction, President Kennedy asked what the man did at NASA. The janitor replied “Well, Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon!”

His response highlights the sense of dedication and purpose that had spread through the program at the time. Despite not being an astronaut, scientist or engineer, the janitor understood the significance of his contribution to the larger goal of landing on the moon.  

The fact that his specific role wasn’t designing the rocket, doing the navigation calculations, or piloting the moon lander didn’t diminish the part that he played in accomplishing the organisation's greater purpose.   

Like the janitor, we should focus less on finding the specific career path for some predetermined purpose, but approach each role or task we find ourselves with intention and purposefulness.

Macro vs. Micro

One of the dangers of the “Do what you love” philosophy is that it can be overly self focused. Getting lost in what we are supposed to do or finding our capital-P purpose in life can distract us from focusing on being present in the moment and truly seeing other people around us. If I were to spend all my time and energy searching for my purpose in life, I’d likely miss what was going on right around and in front me.  

Sometimes focusing on a daily micro-purpose may be better than your lifelong macro-purpose. 

The Japanese concept of Ikigai is a helpful model for understanding our life’s purpose with its overlapping circles (see diagram). 

I think there is incredible usefulness of this model to think about the different areas of our life and to even evaluate career paths we could follow. Its popularity and shareability across social media is easy to understand given its simplicity. 

The risk of this simple model is that if we are not careful we can misunderstand that everything we do should be in the ikigai centre of the circles, but that is just not reality. We will necessarily spend time in the passion (hobby) space because we enjoy doing things just for fun and the pure enjoyment of them. We should do many things that land in the mission category - things we won't be paid for and maybe aren’t in our particular skill set. 

Even for someone who has made a career out of something that they enjoy and that they are good at and that solves some need in the world - they will still have times that fall outside of the Ikigai centre. Think of when a creative artist has to complete their tax returns - this certainly isn’t in their Ikigai. But it is a necessary and unavoidable part of work and life. 

If we tell ourselves that everything we do should fill us with joy and tick every box, we’ll find ourselves disappointed and defeated.  

So instead of making ourselves crazy trying to make everything we do have to be in the centre of the model, we should notice and celebrate when an aspect of our day or week lands us in the centre - when the circles line up and we find ourselves in the sweet spot for even a few brief moments. 

The simple joys of experiencing these moments of alignment are the real Ikigai.   

As I wrapped up the conversation that evening after the talk, I wanted to leave him with a final thought, hopefully to help him think helpfully about what he is doing now and what he could do in the future…  

At the end of the day, work is - at its core - about serving people. 

Whether your work is a traditionally service focused role (teacher, nurse, first responder, et al) or you have a more business orientated role, each of our jobs is about serving someone else in some capacity. 

If you wake up every morning with the intention to serve that person as best you can, you’ll have found what you are supposed to be doing. 

So who is it that you serve? 

We would love to hear from you. Where are you in your career story arc? What is your experience finding the ikigai in what you are currently doing? Whether that is taking the path to your left or your right, we’d love to encourage you to keep finding purpose in your next steps, big or small.