How to Find Your Purpose

Finding your purpose is complex, but not complicated. Complex means it has multiple parts. Complicated means it’s hard to understand. Finding your purpose is a process that has multiple steps and is easy to understand. Your purpose is the combination of four areas: your passion, your talent, valuable to others, and needed by others.

Your passion

Your passion is what you like to do. You likely have many passions. If you don’t, you may need to visit a doctor. I have a passion for anthropology, rock collecting, painting, drawing, helping people, teaching, and playing video games. Any of these items can be involved in my purpose, but none of them will be my purpose by themselves. My purpose will be the intersection of my passion and the other areas.

Your talent

People have several types of talents. For example, I’m highly skilled at computer programming, but I don’t like it. I have made several companies successful by what I’ve written for them, but I didn’t enjoy the process. That is the intersection of talent and value, and can provide a career. Sometimes you stay in that zone to make money while seeking your true purpose.

The intersection of talent and passion can also be a hobby. I enjoy drawing, and I’m good at it, but the things I draw don’t provide value to anyone. Just because I’m good at it and enjoy it doesn’t mean it’s my purpose.

Valuable to others

This is your day job. Most of the people I speak with do a day job they don’t like. It’s the intersection of their talent and a value to others. It’s possible, however, that your talent-passion intersection provides value, and you don’t realize it. I’m blown away that Tyler Blevins found a way to play a video game well and make money doing it.

Needed by others

This is a critical point you don’t want to miss. You can enjoy doing something profitable that you’re good at, and still not be aligned with your purpose. If what you’re doing is wanted, but not needed, you’ll feel out of alignment with yourself.

Many of the people I speak with start searching for purpose by looking at the talent/value combination and trying to fit passion/need into the equation. If that’s you, then you already know a lot about your talent and profitability. Start from the other side.

Start by looking at what’s needed in the world, and finding things you’re passionate about. From there, it’s easy to find profitable skills and apply them to the current need.

Pivot

Your purpose may change periodically. You need to be prepared to pivot. Wherever you start, if you start well, you’ll be aligned with passion, talent, need, and value. However, you may find people stop valuing what you’re providing. At that point, you’ll need to find another way to make it valuable.

Other times, you may find your purpose was meeting a need that no longer exists. You can either choose to keep your existing passion + talent + value trio and find another need to apply it to, or you can re-evaluate your purpose.

Good — better — best

Don’t worry if you can’t find the quadfecta at the start. If you can do something that supports you economically, start there. Then try to shift around until you make it meet a need you’re passionate about. It’s not binary: you don’t feel horrible until you have all four aligned, then feel perfect. Instead, each time you match with more categories, you feel better and better until it clicks.

For me there was a sensation of completeness when I found my click. I always felt like what I did mattered, but it felt like something was missing. When I aligned all four categories, I felt a sudden surge of energy and drive. That’s purpose.