Purpose
What is the greatest difference you can make?
- Happiness is a by-product – It is a by-product of a meaningful life filled with purpose. Doing what you love, makes you happy.
- A life worth living. – Happiness is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is a meaningful life filled with purpose. Having that purpose will bring you happiness. That is the real secret of life.
- With a big enough why, you can handle any what.
- Figure out what you’re good at. Figure out what you love to do. Figure out what the world needs. Figure out how to make money at it. If you figure those 4 things out, your passion becomes your purpose, becomes your living, becomes your life.
- Someone to love. A cause to embrace. Meaningful work.
- A life that is filled with purpose, is a full life.
As you get older, and slam into the mid-life crisis you never thought you’d experience, you begin to realize you might not be where you thought you should be at this point in your life. As a teenager, or even in your 20’s, you dream of changing the world. You dream of becoming someone. You dream for your future. And now, 20 years later, you might not be living that dream. You might have made a bad choice or two, or walked down the easier path, instead of the harder one that would have taken you to where you want to go. You made choices, and you are where you are.
This can be very difficult for people to reconcile. Very difficult for people to live with. But what you have to realize is this is not in vain. You are still the same person who had those dreams, and you can still achieve them. The huge advantage you have now is you know what you’re good at, what you can do, and how you can dream. You know a whole lot more about life, love, and belonging, and you know there is more to life than you thought.
But there’s a lot of pressure around purpose. There’s a lot of pressure around living a meaningful life. You’re surrounded by people who are broadcasting themselves, and everything they do. There are people who seem so much farther ahead then you are. But you have to stop and think for a moment, and ask yourself this question:
Am I living to my fullest potential? Success is only relevant when measured against one’s own potential.
Now people have high hopes, but sometimes not realistic dreams. So when finding your purpose, the very first thing you have to do is be realistic, almost harsh, around what you can do. Who you are. What your circumstances are. And what your next step might be.
The best definition I’ve ever heard of a purposeful life is the following:
Someone to love. Meaningful work. A cause to embrace.
If you have those three things, you are living with purpose. You might not be coming up with a vaccine during a pandemic. You might not be saving the whales. You might not be making a difference on a global scale, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t purposeful and live a life full of purpose.
You can love your family, your children, your partner. You can be working at something that is small, such as making the perfect burger, but that can mean an amazing meal for whomever you just served. You can have a cause that is small, such as giving a gift, and that can make all the difference in someone’s world.
Your purpose doesn’t have to be huge, it just has to be meaningful to you.
Sometimes there are exterior forces that give us our purpose. Maybe you lost someone you love to a terrible disease, and you want to cure it so no one else has to go through what you did. Maybe drugs or alcohol are an issue, and you need to fix that behaviour, no matter how hard it is. Maybe your family was poor, and you need to make money to provide for them, and you. That could be your purpose. It doesn’t have to be some grand plan. Just what makes a difference for you.
Here is a simple framework that may help you find your purpose.
Start simple. Figure out what you’re good at. Figure out what you love to do. Figure out what the world needs. Figure out how to make money at it. If you figure those 4 things out, your passion becomes your purpose, becomes your living, becomes your life.
The best thing about this framework above, is if you find yourself living a life full of purpose, happiness is a by-product. Sometimes searching for happiness makes it more difficult to find. But if you search for a purpose, you may just find happiness.