How to align with your purpose
Have you ever felt like what you do serves no purpose? Like it doesn’t really matter or the impact you have on the world is minimal? For years I felt this way and couldn’t understand how everybody else seemingly had it all sorted out from a very early age. As a teenager and young man, I felt so inadequate most of the time that I basically forced myself into a box so I could feel aligned to something, know my contribution, and feel like what I was doing served a purpose. While this strategy kept me busy, I became a social chameleon, priding myself on my ability to blend in, go unnoticed and fit within any context. While this sounds like a great quality, which it is, it came at a cost of losing my core identity and not knowing my purpose in the world. When I look back on my teens and early twenties I was pretty anxious and depressed most of the time. I put much of my angst down to two things. 1) I was asking the question about purpose and 2) I didn’t have an answer.
"In my experience, those that can clearly articulate their purpose report better quality of life, express more gratitude and are generally happier."
What’s all the fuss about purpose…does it really matter?
'Purpose' is a huge component of the work I do when coaching and mentoring individuals but also in helping businesses align their culture to strategic priorities. My focus on purpose comes with good reason. Research shows that organisations with a clear and driving sense of purpose, beyond simply making money, outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of 14 between 1998 and 2013 (Sisodia & Sheth, 2014). In my experience, those that can clearly articulate their purpose report better quality of life, express more gratitude and are generally happier. Great thinkers of past and present have popularised the importance of purpose with statements such as Friedrich Nietzsche's “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” or Viktor Frankl’s insight in Man’s search for meaning “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” Joseph Campbell also shares his wisdom by encouraging one to “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.” A much more recent perspective on purpose is Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk where he articulates the power of the golden circle by asserting that “people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it”. With such powerful evidence and so many great thinkers all articulating the importance of purpose in being happy and successful, how then do you go about ensuring that you’ve got your purpose sorted
Ok…so purpose seems important, help me gain clarity
My first word of warning, once you ask the question, you can’t go back. To simply throw it out there an leave the answer flapping in the breeze won’t cut it. Articulating your purpose takes deliberate and careful attention. I liken the process of discovering a fossil. To reveal the entirety of the fossil, you need to carefully work with appropriate tools to separate the dirt from the specimen being careful not to damage it. It takes patience and skill. If you rush the process, you’ll gloss right over it and likely won’t get any clarity at all. If however, you’ve boldly asked the question about your purpose but are having some trouble unearthing it, here is a process I use to help people gain clarity.
1) Identify your purpose through your values- What you most deeply value is often a great starting point in identifying your purpose. I like to start with some Values Cards. Firstly, lay them all out and create two piles. One pile represents the must have values for you while the second pile, while important, don’t resonate as deeply for you. Now turn your attention to the first pile and lay them all out in rank order, from the most important to the least important. Now that you have your rank-ordered list, you need to reduce it down to the top 5 values…top 3 is even better.
2) Articulate your purpose statement- Now that you have your top values, you should have a strong sense of what your purpose might sound like. Don’t worry about wordsmithing at this stage, it’s about throwing out a general statement that incorporates the values that you resonate with most deeply.
3) Test and simplify- Now that you have your values statement, it’s time to break it down into a much simpler and punchy statement. Keep in mind that the purpose of your purpose statement is not to broadcast it to the world. It’s a private affirmation for you to remind yourself what it is that you stand for and what gives you energy. Simply saying your purpose should stir something deep within you that makes you want to get going. You should have an emotional connection with your purpose. If you’re struggling, you can always test it with a few close friends or family to get an external perspective. The feedback you’d hope to hear from them is “that’s so you” or “Yes, you absolutely do that”. If you don’t see much of a reaction from them, it’s simply a reflection of the emotional connection you have to your purpose. If you don’t feel it, neither will they.
So I’ve got a purpose statement…. now what?
As you can see, there is quite a bit of work involved in truly identifying your purpose statement. Without bursting your bubble of achievement, this is the easy part. Once you’ve identified what your purpose is, you need to align who you are with what you do. To do this, ask yourself how much of your time is spent in alignment with your purpose. In many cases, what we define as our purpose is quite aspirational and therefore represents a gap between who we are and who we want to be. Regardless of your occupation, status, wealth, age, gender, etc. All the predominant wisdom suggests that we are at our best (in terms of how we feel in ourselves and how we impact the world) when we embody our purpose and live in alignment with it.
But I’m happy, why do I need to define my purpose?
Sadly, the society we live in is feeding our insatiable appetites to consume, be it information, entertainment, food, or resources. We are a mass population acting on impulse and seeking instant gratification. Most of my clients are facing some form of challenge with regard to their purpose and contribution. Some describe this as emptiness with regard to their goals and having achieved them while others simply feel like they are on a treadmill that up until now has kept them focussed on putting one foot after the other. Above all, people aren’t happy, yet they struggle to explain why.
My challenge to you is to not wait until a catastrophic life event takes place for you to recognise how important purpose is. We’ve all been inspired by stories of great hardship where people have faced death, adversity, relentless challenge thus enabling them to find their purpose and generate a more powerful existence. Don’t wait for death, challenge or adversity. Choose to live with purpose now so you can enhance your existence and positively impact those around you. While overplaying purpose can be perceived as a narcissistic exercise, I’d much rather work toward closing the gap between who I am and who I want to be than live a superficial existence filled with stuff I don’t need, people I don’t love doing things that don’t matter.