This Is How To Finally Find Purpose In Life
Just 7% of people believe that they can be fulfilled in life without being fulfilled at work. People with a sense of purpose in life are at lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease. Purpose is good for employers, too: in 1992, researchers investigated purpose-driven organizations, and found that companies with a purpose and values-based culture achieved 400% higher revenues, 700% greater job growth and 1200% higher stock prices than those without.
People want purpose so badly that a recent study found that 9 out of 10 employees would take a pay cut to have a lifetime guarantee of meaningful work, foregoing up to 23% of their lifetime incomes.
But what is purpose, and how is it different than meaning? How does one find it? What happens when you don’t connect with your organization’s purpose? Is it really that important to find meaningful work? What if you think you have a purpose, but aren’t sure how to live it?
These are deep, complex topics that have produced a dizzying amount of research over the past thirty years. I’m here to break it down for you and make it useful.
MEANING & PURPOSE 101
What is meaning, and what is purpose?
Meaning is the end-result of having made sense of something or what that something signifies. An example would be interpreting the relationship between your life and your work. Individuals determine meaning for themselves, though it is impacted by their environment and social context. This gives you the power to define meaning in your life for your self.
Purpose has two components:
A stable and long-reaching goal, something that we use to organize our lives.
A contribution to the world that extends beyond our own selves. Your purpose could be being a good parent, creating a positive environment for your team at work, or ending cancer.
Purpose is a pathway to meaning in life, but it is not the only one. My friend Emily Esfehani Smith discovered that there are three other paths to meaning: a sense of belonging, transcendence, and storytelling. Having at least one pathway is a good idea, as meaning is important to your overall well-being.
4 in 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose, and 25% of Americans don’t have a strong sense of what makes their life meaningful. You might be one of them.
While I don’t like to stereotype, in my work I’ve come across four different profiles of purpose. Figuring out your profile can help you take specific steps to make a difference.
Group One: People who have a purpose, and a job or hobby to express it within.
Group Two: People who have a purpose, and don’t have a venue to practice it.
Group Three: People who are not sure what their purpose is, but really want to find it.
Group Four: People who don’t feel like they need an overarching purpose, as they find meaning from one of the other sources.
If you’re in Group Four, the rest of this newsletter might not be as relevant for you, as we’ll be focusing on purpose as a source of meaning. (I’d love to hear your stories about how you find meaning through one of the other sources, if you’re so inclined!)
Group One: You’ve Found Your Purpose, and A Venue
Lucky you!
People who have meaningful and purposeful work are more likely to:
Be more resilient
Be more motivated
Have higher engagement at work
Have a greater sense of empowerment
Perform at a higher level
Experience greater fulfillment
Interestingly, purpose doesn’t protect you explicitly against work-related chronic stress. Autonomy does. For those of you in Group One, who have found your purpose and a venue, a common challenge is an increased level of stress to match your heightened level of commitment to your purpose. The best way to protect against stress is to find ways to have more control over your time and activities.
Group One, keep on keeping on, and try to cultivate more autonomy if you’re stressed.
Group Two: You Have a Purpose, But Nowhere To Take It
There are three paths you could consider:
The first: you can take your job as it is today and make it more meaningful by aligning it to your purpose.
One of the best research discoveries in the field of positive psychology was that meaningful work can be crafted.
Amy Wrzesniewski, a professor at Yale, discovered that there are three orientations to work:
Job: Work provides income and resources
Career: Advancement in your occupation, towards the next job or rung in the ladder
Calling: Fulfillment from the work itself, and a belief that your work makes the world a better place
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that people who view their work as a calling have higher work satisfaction and life satisfaction.
What’s fascinating about this is that across multiple occupations, the distribution between job/career/calling is relatively evenly split. Roles we think of as being callings (doctors, nurses, teachers) are evenly split; and roles that we think of as jobs (janitors, electricians) are too.
To job craft, you can change the tasks you do, the way you do them, or the way you think about them. I’ll use myself as an example. I work in product marketing, for a purpose-driven company, but my real passion is helping other people to thrive. How could I make my job more purposeful?
We are capable of turning even the most disconnected-from-our-purpose jobs into something that is deeply meaningful and fulfilling. It turns out that it is your relationship to your work that matters more than the type of work that you do. However, this might not be enough for you - and that’s okay.
The second path: you can find another venue outside of your job for your purpose.
For a great example of this, and some very practical advice, I’d point you to our interview with my friend Maya Appiah. Maya has a purpose - helping refugee and immigrant communities - and while her day job at LinkedIn sometimes touched on it, it wasn’t enough to truly fulfill her. She reached out to an organization that was working on this topic, Upwardly Global, and has become a leader there. Check it out for more!
The third path: you can create something to deliver your purpose.
The realm of the side-hustle that maybe one day becomes the main hustle. For example, I started The New Happy to help fulfill my purpose.
I have a friend, a very talented artist, who started a brand to deliver her purpose of creating a more beautiful and equitable world. Another friend started his own company, coaching leaders on how to bring out the best in their teams.
For the second and third paths, the help of a good coach or friend to bounce ideas off of can be extremely valuable. Is there anyone you can reach out to who’d be willing to dig into this topic with you? Send them an email now! If you don’t have someone, send me an email and I’ll work with you to help you figure it out!
Group Three: You Don’t Have a Purpose and You REALLY Want One, Dammit
Ah, Group Three. It is hard to be you sometimes. Many of my coaching clients are stuck here simply because they want a purpose so badly, and they become resentful at how hard it feels to find it. Let’s get you unstuck.
Unhelpful Belief: "My calling is a thing that is out there, waiting for me to discover it.”
Better Belief: “It is my job to craft my calling.”
If you spend your life waiting for your purpose to alight upon you, you will be waiting a long time. The secret to finding your purpose is to go out and try as many things as you possibly can until one hooks you in a bit more than the others. You have to follow your blisters, not your bliss.
If you’ve ever even had a passing interest in a topic, it’s time to start playing with it. What are you interested in? Interest begins as a whisper, as a door quietly opening, usually in places that might be unexpected. In her excellent book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert describes how interest blossomed for her she came decided to write a novel about the history of botany, The Signature of All Things.
Elizabeth moved into a new house, and she was staring out at her new garden, and decided to buy some plants for it. Then, she got a little bit curious about the plants that she had bought, heirloom irises. She googled it and discovered that these irises had originated in Syria. She thought that was interesting. That was it for the moment. Then, slowly, she began to explore the history of the other plants in her garden, and she began to discover the secret history of botany: “a wild and little-known tale of trade and adventure and global intrigue.”
She describes this journey:
“My search for more information about botanical exploration eventually led me around the planet – from my backyard in New Jersey to the horticultural libraries of England; from the horticultural libraries of England to the medieval pharmaceutical gardens of Holland; from the medieval pharmaceutical gardens of Holland to the moss-covered caves of French Polynesia. Three years of research and travel and investigation later, I finally sat down to begin writing a novel about a fictional family of nineteenth-century botanical explorers.
It was a novel I never saw coming. It had started with nearly nothing… but by the time I looked up from my scavenger hunt and began to write, I was completely consumed with passion about nineteenth century botanical exploration.”
Unhelpful Belief: If I just sit here and think enough about my purpose, or read yet another article on the internet about it, I will figure it out.
Better Belief: Introspection doesn’t lead to interest; interest comes from trying stuff.
Most of the people who are purposeful and passionate about something did not get to be that way through a magical lightbulb moment, but because they tried stuff, they got curious, and they started to investigate the topic, which led to more interest, and more curiosity, and more investigation…
It is our interaction with the outside world that provokes us into the state of interest, and we simply cannot predict what that interest is going to be; we can only be on the lookout for those tiny little whispers, and then follow them wherever they may lead.
As you begin to follow your interests, something else interesting happens… you start to get good at whatever it is you are pursuing. And that’s yet another path to well-being.
Unhelpful Belief: Purposeful work has to be hard and serious.
Better Belief: You can (and deserve to) find joy in the doing.
Studies have found that the most intrinsically motivated painters and sculptors are more professionally successful than those who are extrinsically motivated.
“Those artists who pursued their painting and sculpture more for the pleasure of the activity itself than for extrinsic rewards have produced art that has been socially recognized as superior. It is those who are least motivated to pursue extrinsic rewards who eventually receive them.”
What are the activities where time stops for you, where you are most engaged, where you feel most alive, where you are happiest?
tart by making a list of any small moment over the next week that is joyful, energizing, or engaging. Next Sunday, take a look back over the list. You will find patterns, things that jump out at you, and maybe even something that you circle as something to dive more deeply into.
I’ll leave you with the wise word of Viktor Frankl, who wrote the definitive word on meaning in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning:
“By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche…
Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.
The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”
This is why we seek meaning. It helps us to forget our small needs and to connect to the great web of the world. By forgetting ourselves, we find ourselves.