Do you feel like you’re struggling to find your purpose in life?
Well, if I might be so brazen, I know where you should look.
And it’s probably the last place most people think to go to find their purpose.
At least, I know it was for me.
On the Hunt for Purpose
If you’ve read my newest book, All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, you know I wasn’t exactly pursuing my purpose for many years. I felt stuck in a cubicle. I felt frustrated, bitter, and broken.
All the big dreams that once burned inside of me, began to sizzle out like a sparkler on a summer sidewalk.
I wanted to pursue my purpose and passion, but I began to wonder if the pursuit was pointless. That all this finding your passion and purpose talk was in fact a Millennial farce like so many people paint it to be.
So I began to write.
In a broken down motel room with four locks on the door is where I wrote my first page — as I stared at the door and wondered why three locks wasn’t enough?
From that night on, I wrote everywhere I went.
And yet for most of that first year writing, I didn’t even know what I was writing about.
So I wrote about the struggle. I wrote about the unanswered questions. I wrote about the frustration, the problems I was facing that I didn’t have an answer for.
That’s when it began to happen. I began to find my purpose in the least expected place.
I began to find my purpose in my biggest problems.
“We don’t find our purpose despite the struggle. We find our purpose smack dab in the middle of it.”
As I stared at my biggest questions and frustrations about trying to find my purpose, passion, and place in my 20s, and I failed to find any simple answers, a passion began to boil to help others who must be experiencing the same problems.
Often times our purpose is disguised as our biggest problems.
(Photo Credit: lab604 via Compfight cc)
Failure doesn’t ruin your story. Failure helps you write it.
“The most significant achievements typically aren’t birthed out of inspiration; they are squeezed out by necessity.”
You see this idea played out in most of the greatest inventions, movements, and social changes throughout history.
Two quick examples:
*I just watched the movie Joy — based on a true story of inventor and QVC host Joy Magnano. She stumbled upon her purpose as an inventor and TV host due to a problem she experienced daily in her home — her old mop was disgusting, she had to ring it out with her hands, and it didn’t work very well. So she invented the Miracle Mop on her path to becoming a millionaire entrepreneur.
*In the book, Red Notice, Bill Browder tells his amazing and harrowing true story of being the most successful US investor in Russia. Through his subsequent problems of then meeting the ugly face of corruption face to face and the people he loved who it tried to destroy, he went from making millions through investments to being one of the most vocal advocates in fighting for social justice and human rights in Russia.
What Are Your Problems Telling You?
If you’re struggling to find your purpose, look to your problems.
What are they telling you? Is there a path or solution waiting to be discovered that you just haven’t seen yet?
Your passion is driven by the deep desire to solve a deep need…
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