How I Found My Purpose
Summary
Why purpose isn't something to be suddenly found but a general direction to be followed:
Purpose never arrives as a lightning bolt. It starts as a direction, followed one curious step at a time.
Think of it as a quest: something meaningful worth moving towards, that gives life colour and helps you choose which struggles are worth it.
A quest is a filter. It does not remove distractions, it makes them easier to spot and easier to say no to.
Your purpose does not have to be your job. It can live outside your nine-to-five, or your job can be what makes it possible.
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A sensible choice
When I graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2018, I made a sensible decision: I became an accountant. My dad and grandad had both started their careers in accountancy. It promised a good qualification and a steady, reliable job. By 2021, I was a chartered accountant working for one of the famous Big 4, with a clear progression path ahead of me.
I didn't dislike my job. In fact, I mostly enjoyed it. I worked with some brilliant, inspiring people and leaders who taught me a huge amount. Many of whom I am still close with today and I wouldn't be where I am without them.
But as I started exploring the world of personal development, I kept hearing people talk about this mysterious, seemingly "fluffy" thing called "purpose".
A few years into my corporate career, I began to realise that while I had no idea what my version of this "purpose" thing was, accountancy likely was not it. That was a scary thought, so I did what many of us do with scary thoughts. I parked it, tucked it away in the top drawer and carried on with my life.
Then, after delivering an online wellbeing talk to my team in PwC on The Power of Movement, I sat alone in the office booth and thought, "This is it." What was "this"? I was not entirely sure. Something to do with educating, inspiring or empowering people through wellbeing. And what was "it"? My purpose.
A direction, not a destination
It would be tempting to tell you that everything became crystal clear in that moment. It did not. I had stumbled across something I genuinely cared about, but I had no grand plan or vision, there was no clarity. What I did have though, was a direction.
I delivered another talk, then another. I met an executive coach over breakfast at a triathlon in Oman and he recommended a coaching course. I signed up. While still working full time as an accountant, I began coaching clients in the evenings and at weekends. Eventually, I left accountancy to coach full time. A year later, I co-founded Wildest Dream.
It took around four years to move from that office booth to doing work each day aligned with my purpose: inspiring others to live more fulfilling lives.
I arrived at my purpose not by having a perfected and well articulated response to the question "what is your purpose?" I arrived at it by finding something that I was curious about and then continuing to follow that curiosity, one step at a time.
Your life's quest
Ask someone, "What is your purpose in life?" And it can feel, for many, a bit daunting. Which is why I quite like to think of a purpose as a quest: something meaningful that gives your life direction.
Its exact form will evolve and change as you navigate through life, but it gives you something worth moving towards.
Why bother finding one? Because a quest gives life colour. It helps us decide what matters and makes our time here feel meaningful. Without one, we are questless, aimless, drifting through our days, complaining to our friends about our job, while waiting for the weekend or the next holiday to provide a brief escape from our everyday.
It's going to be hard either way
Life will involve struggle either way. We can either choose to face the dull ache of having no direction, or the discomfort of discovering and pursuing something meaningful. Because having a quest does not remove suffering, it instead helps us choose which suffering is worth enduring.
Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, explored and demonstrated this in his incredibly powerful Man's Search for Meaning. In which he shares his philosophy of logotherapy - built upon the belief that the human being's primary motivational force in life is to find meaning. We experience hunger to drive us to eat, loneliness to push us to connect and emptiness to nudge us to find meaning.
We are wired to crave meaning and that having a quest, having a reason for why we are here, can help us better withstand the hardships life inevitably brings.
Quest as a filter
There is something else incredibly helpful that having a quest (or purpose) does for us. It gives us a filter.
Mark Manson uses the analogy of sitting at your laptop with thirty tabs open. Everything appears urgent. Your attention is scattered in every direction and you cannot decide where to begin.
Now imagine having the clarity and conviction to be able to close, with confidence, twenty-nine of those thirty tabs, to leave just one tab remaining. The only one that was important in the first place. That is what having a quest does.
It does not make distractions magically disappear, but it does make them easier to identify. When you know what you are moving towards, you can see more clearly which opportunities deserve a yes, which demands require a no and where your energy is best spent. But you first need something to be distracted from, before you can recognise a distraction for what it is.
Your purpose does not have to be your job
It would also be easy for me to sit here today and tell you to find your purpose, quit your job and turn it into a career. But I had privileges that made my change possible. I had savings, financial support, no dependants relying solely on my income and an unbelievably supportive partner and family who backed me. Not everyone has that privilege or freedom.
You may have a mortgage, children or an elderly parent who depends on you. Your stable job may be what keeps your family afloat. Walking away might be a risk you simply cannot and should not take.
So here is a myth I want to bust right now before we go any further: your job does not have to be your purpose. Your purpose can live outside of your nine-to-five. It might be found in raising your children with more love and patience than you were raised with, coaching your daughter's football team, caring for a parent or serving your community over tea and biscuits on a Sunday.
Your work may even support your purpose in providing the financial freedom to be able to do what you love outside of work. Or maybe the work that you do isn't something that you love, but it provides the financial income and security needed in order to support your family and children through school, university and to set them up for the best possible future. Maybe that is your purpose? In which case your job is now a pivotal part of it.
Follow the nudge
Becoming an accountant was not the wrong decision. It was the right decision at the time. It did many things for me, including taking me to Dubai and to the best thing that ever happened to me - my now wife, Majd. It also pulled me beyond the bubble I had known in London. It helped me begin to uncover who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.
The wrong decision however, would have been staying in that job after I had found a direction worth pursuing and knew that I had the means to explore it.
Deepen Your Curiosity
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is one of the most powerful books I have ever read, all about meaning, purpose & suffering.
Light Watkins' Knowing Where To Look is an excellent one to pick up with your morning coffee for a short hit of inspiration each day, to help spark something which might just nudge you to your purpose.
