The crazy thing: your purpose in life is not “out there” hiding behind some mountain in Tibet. It’s already inside you, like a pressure cooker of energy trying to explode out. Your job isn’t to “figure it out” with a spreadsheet — your job is to uncover, remove distractions, and follow the trail of your own insane aliveness.
Let’s go deep.
1. First, delete the bullshit myths about “purpose”
Most people are stuck because they’re chasing fake ideas of purpose:
- Myth 1: “Purpose is a job title.”
Surgeon, CEO, influencer, photographer, whatever. A purpose is not a LinkedIn headline. Careers are containers. Purpose is the energy that fills the container. - Myth 2: “Purpose is singular and fixed.”
That idea makes people feel broken. Your purpose shifts with age, environment, health, responsibilities. What’s constant isn’t the specific activity, but the direction of your inner drive: create, protect, heal, build, explore, teach, lead, etc. - Myth 3: “Once I find my purpose, life will be easy.”
No. Real purpose adds weight to your barbell. More responsibility, more intensity, more risk. But also more meaning, more strength, more reason to get up and go hard.
So instead of asking, “What is my One True Purpose?” ask:
“What gives me so much energy that I’m willing to suffer for it, repeatedly, and still want more?”
That’s the real signal.
2. Purpose = Desire × Responsibility × Repetition
Think of purpose as a three-part equation:
- Desire: What do you want to do, deeply, instinctively?
- Responsibility: Who or what are you willing to take care of?
- Repetition: What can you do over and over without getting bored to death?
If something hits all three — you crave it, you feel responsible around it, and you can do it daily — that’s purpose territory.
Examples:
- A person obsessed with teaching kids to read:
- Desire: loves language and kids.
- Responsibility: feels compelled to help kids not get left behind.
- Repetition: can teach every day, every year, with renewed fire.
- A person obsessed with building companies:
- Desire: loves problem-solving and creation.
- Responsibility: feels duty to employees, customers, investors.
- Repetition: can spend decades building, pivoting, launching.
Your job: hunt the intersection of these three. That’s the compass.
3. Follow your curiosities like a bloodhound
Most people kill their purpose by ignoring their own curiosity.
Purpose doesn’t usually arrive as a full, perfect sentence like “I am destined to be a world-class…”. It arrives as:
- Weird obsessions
- Things you Google at 2am
- Stuff you’d do for free
- Things you can’t stop ranting about
Grab a notebook or your notes app and answer, raw and unfiltered:
- What do I search on YouTube when nobody’s watching?
- What did I obsess over as a kid before the world told me to be “realistic”?
- If I had all my bills paid for 5 years, how would I spend my days?
- What topics make me angry or frustrated because nobody is doing them right?
Patterns will pop up. That’s not random. That’s your inner GPS screaming.
4. Study your energy, not your résumé
Forget “What am I good at?” for a second. Instead, track energy.
For 7–14 days straight, run this experiment:
- Every 2–3 hours, ask:
- “Energy ++ / + / 0 / – / – – ?”
- “What am I doing right now?”
You might discover things like:
- Talking one-on-one with someone about their life → Energy ++
- Writing long essays → Energy ++
- Sitting in meetings with 8 people → Energy – –
- Doing hands-on, physical work → Energy +
- Answering emails → Energy –
Over a week or two, you’ll see which activities feed you and which drain you. Purpose lives in the “Energy ++ / +” bucket, especially where the world also benefits.
5. Find your “pain you’re willing to endure”
Purpose always includes pain. That’s how you know it’s real.
- Athletes endure pain of training, injuries, sacrifice.
- Artists endure criticism, insecurity, poverty phases.
- Entrepreneurs endure uncertainty, stress, failure.
- Parents endure sleepless nights, worry, constant pressure.
Ask yourself:
- What kind of pain am I weirdly okay with?
- Physical pain? Social rejection? Long hours? Financial risk? Mental challenge?
- What pain have I already endured voluntarily, more than once?
When you find a pain you keep returning to — that’s not masochism, that’s alignment. Your nervous system is telling you: “This suffering is worth it.”
6. Purpose is discovered through action, not thinking
You will never think your way into your purpose while sitting perfectly still. Clarity comes from collisions with reality.
So instead of overthinking:
- Start projects.
- Volunteer.
- Shadow people.
- Take short contracts.
- Launch tiny experiments.
Treat your life like a lab:
- 30-day experiments
- 90-day challenges
- 1-year obsessions
You’re not committing forever. You’re running high-intensity experiments where the data is your own joy, energy and growth.
7. Reject the pressure to “monetize” immediately
One of the fastest ways to kill your purpose:
“How can I turn this into money right now?”
Yes, eventually you want money + purpose to intersect. But at the beginning, treat your purpose like a sacred thing that needs time to grow roots.
Phases:
- Play phase (0–2 years):
- Explore obsessively, cheaply.
- Don’t over-optimize.
- Build skill, taste, and confidence.
- Craft phase (2–5 years):
- Take it seriously as a craft.
- Learn from the best.
- Show your work publicly.
- Integration phase (3–10+ years):
- Merge your craft with economic reality.
- Find where the world needs what you love doing.
- Spin it into products, services, roles, businesses.
If you try to jump straight to “integration” on day one, you suffocate the whole thing.
8. Scan your life for “purpose signals” you’ve been ignoring
Sometimes your purpose has been screaming at you for years, and you’ve just been too busy or scared to listen.
Look for:
- Compliments you keep brushing off.
- “You’re really good at explaining things.”
- “I feel so calm after talking to you.”
- “You see things nobody else notices.”
- Work you do that feels effortless but blows people’s minds.
- Situations where people naturally come to you for help.
- Things you do without being asked that make big positive impact.
Write them all down. That list is a mirror reflecting your unique gift set.
9. Align purpose with three levels: Self, Others, World
To feel deeply “on-purpose,” you want alignment at three levels:
- Self-level:
- Does this give you energy, joy, challenge, growth?
- Does it make you feel more alive and powerful?
- Others-level:
- Does it clearly help, serve, or uplift actual humans?
- Can you see the faces of people who benefit?
- World-level:
- Do you feel you’re pushing the world slightly in the direction you believe it should go?
- Even in a tiny way?
When those three line up, your nervous system goes: “Yes. This.” That’s the feeling people call “meaning.”
10. Design your environment to pull your purpose out
You cannot discover or live your purpose if your environment is actively killing you. You need to rig the game in your favor.
Audit and adjust:
- People:
- Who makes you feel more ambitious, creative, brave?
- Who makes you feel small, stupid, tired?
- Ruthlessly reduce exposure to the second group.
- Space:
- Do you have a dedicated corner/table/room for your “purpose work”?
- Can you make it sacred — no distractions, no doom-scroll?
- Time:
- When are you most mentally sharp?
- Block that time every day for what might be your purpose, even if it’s just 30–60 minutes.
- Digital:
- Unfollow feeds that drag you into comparison and misery.
- Follow people who are actually living in a way that resonates with your soul.
Purpose is not just internal. It’s situational. Change your surroundings, and your inner drive wakes up.
11. Accept that purpose is a path, not a destination
You will not wake up one day with the final, permanent answer like:
“My purpose is X, full stop, forever.”
Instead, think in chapters:
- Chapter 1: Learn and survive.
- Chapter 2: Build skills and explore.
- Chapter 3: Create and serve.
- Chapter 4: Mentor and multiply.
At each chapter, the form of your purpose changes, but the core pattern stays similar — maybe you always end up teaching, building, healing, creating, or leading, just through new vehicles.
The key is to keep asking, every few years:
“Given who I am now and what the world needs now, how should I express my purpose?”
That question will keep you evolving instead of getting stuck.
12. A simple, brutal exercise to get clarity
Grab paper or your notes and answer, without editing:
- “If I died 5 years from now, what would I regret not doing?”
List 10 items. Don’t censor. - Circle the top 3 that:
- Make your heart beat faster.
- Feel scary.
- Feel deeply right.
- For each of those 3, write:
- One action you can take this week.
- One action you can take this month.
- One action you can take this year.
Now you have a purpose attack plan, not just thoughts.
13. When you still feel lost
If after all of this you still feel lost, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It usually means:
- You’re too tired (fix sleep, health, basic stability first).
- You’re over-stimulated (too much social media, comparison, noise).
- You’re frozen by perfectionism (“If it’s not the perfect purpose, I won’t start.”).
So:
- Handle your physiology.
- Sleep more. Move more. Get sunlight. Eat better.
- A tired brain cannot hear subtle inner signals.
- Turn down the noise.
- Take a 7–30 day social media detox.
- Replace scrolling with reading, walking, journaling.
- Allow imperfection.
- Choose a good enough direction and sprint 90 days.
- At the end, evaluate: more of this, or less?
Purpose rewards those who move, not those who freeze.
14. The real truth: your purpose is already leaking out
Look at your life carefully and you’ll see it:
- In the way you naturally talk to friends.
- In the things you always come back to, year after year.
- In the projects you start “just for fun.”
- In the battles you choose to fight.
You don’t “invent” purpose. You recognize it.
So the game now is:
- Pay radical attention to your own energy and obsessions.
- Run bold experiments where your curiosity meets real-world service.
- Keep iterating, chapter by chapter, increasing the share of your day that is aligned with your inner drive.
Do that for years and one day you’ll look up and realize:
“Oh. This is it. I’m already living my purpose.”
And then your only question becomes:
“How can I do it even bigger, even bolder, even more intensely — for myself, for others, for the world?”