Discovering Purpose: Start with Volume
What's Your Purpose?
Discovering one's purpose in life is truly liberating and invigorating. Whenever I come across an individual who appears to have a clear sense of purpose for their life, I can't help but ask how they got to their level of clarity. For me, there's nothing more empowering than to know who you are and why you exist (i.e., to what end). This type of knowledge has the power of infusing hope, inspiring actionable ideas, and guiding day-to-day decisions.
How Did You Discover Your Purpose?
One response I hear often from those with a clear sense of purpose is that purpose is discovered through spending a large volume of time and effort in developing one's (often potential) expertise. While it would seem ideal to know one's purpose before engaging a path of development, that is rarely (if ever) the case. We have to spend significant time developing multiple areas of expertise that might eventually help us discover our purpose. In addition, purpose itself can and should become more refined over time.Here's an animated video I came across a few years back that captures some great thoughts by Ira Glass on the importance of volume.
A Journey to Purpose
My personal purpose in life is to reduce the percentage of people who take their ideas to the grave. I not only find great satisfaction in helping others actualize their ideas, but truly believe that when people implement passion, our world becomes better as a result.My journey to this purpose took years of exploring multiple pathways in life and countless hours of developing my ability to help others execute on their ideas. I didn't initially understand why my path took me through learning and engaging multiple fields of study and industry. I felt more like a wandering generality than a meaningful specific. Nevertheless, over time, I realized that all of my experiences were culminating into creating a company that would help serve people and brands across industries to better implement and scale their ideas around products, services, and campaigns.I used to feel a lot of regret around what I thought was "wasted time". I used to wish that I had more direction during my childhood and young adult years to streamline my efforts. But now, I'm thankful for the path I took. It may have taken longer than most, but I feel much more prepared to handle any challenges that come my way when it comes to idea-making.I'm not sure if we're born with purpose, but I'm confident that purpose can be discovered when we put in the time and work it takes to see it clearly.