A Reframe of "Finding Your Purpose"
Maybe its more about permission to discover
“When do you feel like you’ve found your purpose?” my client asked a few weeks ago. She leaned in as if she stretched the word “purpose” on a taffy pull, sounding somewhat like a cat when they’re very content.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I usually respond with “tell me more,” but I’ve recently become aware of how I overuse that phrase with my son. “Tell me more,” is the gateway to an open-ended labyrinth of possibilities. “What do you mean?” narrows us down to a few specific options.
“It’s just that… in my late 40s, I feel like I should have discovered by now. You know, the reason for working so hard. The thing that I’m going to leave behind when all this is dust.” She closed her eyes and let out a deep exhale. “I just don’t want this all to go to waste.”
I got where she was coming from. In the very Mary Oliver “one wild and precious life” of it all, we want to make sure what we’re doing matters. That it has weight and heft. Purpose is often cited as the driving force for some to start their own companies, while for others, it is the motivation to leave existing companies.
I’m noticing that the pursuit of “purpose” is having its moment in the sun lately. Clips of Elizabeth Gilbert extrapolating on purpose anxiety from Tim Ferris’s 2024 podcast episode are recirculating through my Instagram feed.
, host of LinkedIn’s Hello Monday, sat down with neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff and made a solid case for bypassing our desire for purpose in favor of tiny experiments. Peloton celebrity Robin Arzon has a Masterclass designed to help you unlock your true potential. Even as I write this, my Instagram discover section is full of quotables and memes, documenting the euphoria of finding a main intention for our life (and the three handy steps to unlock that intention in five minutes or less with trending hashtags and the latest cool music).So if there’s all this conversation swirling around about not finding our purpose, why are we still so hellbent on excavating until we discover that one thing we’re destined to do with our lives?
Why does our purpose only have to include one thing? I was
And, why are we in a rush to find it now in the last eight weeks of the year, as if turning a calendar page without it means we’ll cease to exist, or worse, be irrelevant?
I believe that in times of uncertainty - and look around us - we’re clinging to something we can control. And if it doesn’t come with ease, then we believe it must not be right or meant for us.
I played out this scenario in my morning pages the other day, just to see what would happen if I followed the rabbit hole a bit. What would’ve changed if I had given my 13-year-old self permission not to have it all figured out? What would have relaxed had I granted a little freedom to that 26-year-old woman fresh out of graduate school (in the middle of an economic recession) the chance to be curious instead of being productive and purposeful?
What would happen if I give the almost 44-year-old woman furiously typing this - and my client as well - the liberty of knowing that there’s no wrong answer?
This permission is a privilege when it happens in the moment. When it happens in the rearview mirror, it’s healing. I loved how Jodi-Ann Burey framed her “Experiment Season” as a time that allowed her to heal and curiously uncover what lit her up - ultimately leading her to write AUTHENTIC.
Sitting with my client, I could sense that she wanted me to put a stake in the ground and give her a solid answer. “The thing is,” I replied, “nothing we do is ever wasted. We’re just pulling the thread to figure out what’s best for us and what’s next.”
Our “purpose” can be a moving target. Here’s our permission slip to be content with not knowing and figuring it out as we go.
Things I loved this week:
To Read: A few of my friends published incredible books over the past few weeks. You must pick these up!
AUTHENTIC by Jodi-Ann Burey. In her masterful way of describing issues around race, class, gender, and disability, my friend Jodi-Ann adeptly widens your view of the myth of bringing your full self to work (and life) and inspires you to investigate how you support others in true community. I’ve read this twice and marked up/post-it noted my copy beyond oblivion - gotta buy a new one! Buy it here
UNCOMPETE by Ruchika T. Malhotra. Her Seattle launch event at Town Hall was inspiring and thought-provoking. What I love about Ruchika’s work is her generous and graceful way of holding space and explaining frameworks around inclusion that are applicable everywhere. Buy it here, and more soon from me once I devour it fully.
To Listen:
Brandi Carlyle’s new album, Returning to Myself, is breathtaking. It reverberates in my bones.
This week on LinkedIn’s Hello Monday,
sat down with the Holderness Family (love them) for a conversation that gave me a newfound permission slip to restructure my work around my recent ADHD diagnosis. Listen here.
To Care For Yourself: We recently started a subscription for Flewd bath salts that include an immense amount of magnesium. It wasn’t until I started soaking in these that I realized how depleted my body was.
November Reads
You can check out these titles and all of my past recommendations on Bookshop.org.
- (the way I squealed opening this package made 13-year-old Amy proud)
MOTHERS AND OTHER FICTIONAL CHARACTERS, by
(a re-read for the essay collection)- (another re-read, this time with highlighters and sticky notes!)
DEAD AND ALIVE by Zadie Smith (I scored a signed copy!)
UNCOMPETE by Ruchika T. Malhorta
AWAKE by
(it’s finally from my library holds!)
How are you taking care of yourself this week after rolling back the clocks and detoxing from the Halloween sugar rush? I’d love to hear in the comments on Substack or reply directly to this email.
Cheering for you as if you’re running the NYC Marathon, cowbells and all,
The shift from finding to allowing yourself permision to discover is such a subtle but powerful distinction. So much of the pressure around purpose comes from treating it like a destinaton rather than something that reveals itself through experince. This reframe actually lets you engage with life instead of constantly searching for some external validation.
As someone who recently left the corporate world there is a presumption and pressure that I should have this figured out. This resonates deeply with me, viewing my experiments into new things as that vs failures to find “my thing”