Can I find my purpose?
As we start a new year, it’s a time to pause for reflection and think about the goals we will set ourselves for the year ahead. For me, 2022 was full of self-reflection - both personally and professionally - and with that, thoughts about my own purpose.
Where to start with purpose? As I set about writing this blog, I looked into the importance of purpose. There’s a plethora of research suggesting that organisations with a clear purpose outperform their competitors, so it’s no surprise that it’s an important topic for leaders. It does however remain a topic of polarised debate.
Perhaps it’s useful to firstly clarify our personal purpose. A friend of mine recently talked about this how she thinks of her purpose as a pie separated into different slices: job, friends, family, wellbeing, volunteering and so on. Sometimes we have a big, life changing event that forces us to rethink and revaluate our purpose – and our pie starts to look a little different.
I always wanted children, so when I had my two girls I thought this must be my purpose. I love being a mum to Olivia and Evie but also know that my purpose is not one dimensional and there are other things that make up my pie chart. When I decided to leave my role and set up HEX with Tom, it wasn’t because I disliked my job. Far from it – I loved my job and was privileged to work with brilliant, talented people in a great organisation that valued my talents and contribution. Age and experience allowed me to work out what I enjoy and am good at, and although I was adept at many elements of my job, I want to focus on the bits I loved. This is helping people and organisations to be at their best. By doing this with Tom through our new business HEX, I know this will help me fulfil my purpose.
In the Harvard Business Review, John Coleman talks about many of us suffering from a ’fundamental misconceptions about purpose’. He concluded we have three big misconceptions:
1) Purpose is only a thing you find;
2) Purpose is a single thing; and
3) Purpose is stable over time.
In achieving professional purpose, we should focus as much on making our work meaningful as in taking meaning from it. Put differently, Coleman said ‘purpose is a thing you build, not a thing you find’. In today’s modern world we are overwhelmed by images and messages on social media from people who appear to have found their overwhelming purpose, but for most of us, we have multiple sources. For me, I find purpose in my children, marriage, friendships, work and community, but it’s not always static or evenly distributed. It’s common now for people to have multiple careers in their lifetimes. This doesn’t demonstrate a lack of commitment or flakiness, but a recognition that it’s natural to find meaning in multiple places. The sources of that meaning can, and do, change over time.
So, how do you find your purpose? I think that’s the wrong question to ask. The definition of purpose is ‘the reason for which something is done, created or for which something exists’. This means that unpacking what we mean by ‘purpose’ can allow us to better understand its presence and role in our lives, ultimately helping us understand the actions and priorities we should focus on to have more purposeful careers and lives.
Have the slices in your pie chart changed recently? What proactive steps are you taking to find the balance and live more purposefully in 2023? I would love to hear how you’re achieving this.
Best wishes
