You Will Find Your Purpose When You Learn To Let Go

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman

Since I’ve written about purpose a few times, one of the questions readers and podcast hosts like to ask me is “How do I find my purpose?” Variations on this question are common as well, such as “What should I do if I don’t know what my purpose is?” And “Can you give me any advice for finding my purpose?”

For a long time, this question stumped me. I knew how I found my purpose, but that didn’t mean I had some reproducible process everyone else could follow.

The advice people usually give to those who don’t know what to do with theirs is to think. Think about what you are good at, think about what you love, think about what kind of life you want to lead. As others have said before, “find something at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs.”

But there are a couple of problems with this advice that leap out at me.

The first is that we are often good at things we love and bad at things we don’t love. If we love something, we’re willing to spend a lot of time doing it, and it’s hard to fail at getting better at something you do all the time. So it’s not very helpful to say “find something you love that you’re good at.”

The second is that there is room in the world for just about everything. You don’t need to worry much about “what the world needs,” because with seven billion people, there are enough to make you a millionaire doing just about anything. Every ludicrous career you can imagine exists in our big and beautiful world.

The third is that it’s all too easy to sit around thinking about oneself. It’s easy for us to tell ourselves stories, stories like “I would love to work out for a year and get in great shape” or “I would love to intern at Pixar as an animation expert” — but when it actually comes down to it, we would not love to do these things. We do not go to the gym every day, we do not study hard for the anatomy exams, and we do not go out and get high-profile internships. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves rarely reflect the truth of who we are, especially when we’re young and foolish and don’t even know what we’re doing with our lives.

My advice for people looking for their purpose

I’m not going to tell you to sit around and think and ponder and pontificate about the world that could be. Anyone can do that. My advice is much more practical, and it starts with action. Take a look at your life and decide what you don’t want.

People who haven’t decided on a direction for their life often have lives that reflect that lack of direction. They’re in several (or several dozen) clubs or local groups, they have a calendar full of all kinds of Meetups, and they have all kinds of friends from many different social circles. When you ask them what they like to do, their answer is “haha, a lot of stuff, I guess.”

When you ask someone with purpose what they like to do, you don’t receive vague answers about “a lot of stuff.” You get a concrete response. “I like to travel in my van, weightlift at the gym, and write.”

How to say goodbye to things you don’t want

Start by answering these questions:

• Are there any clubs, activities, or recreational commitments in your life that you routinely dread?
• Is there anything in your life like a hobby or friendship that feels like more of a burden than a joy?
• Are there any calendar commitments that make your shoulders feel heavy and your feet drag?

Physical sensations like this are a good clue as to what you shouldn’t be doing. It’s normal to feel unenthusiastic about something once in a while, but if there are things in your life about which you feel unenthusiastic nearly every time, it’s a clue that you don’t like doing it.

If something consistently makes you feel bad, then you shouldn’t spend your life doing it, no matter how good it looks on paper.

Which brings me to my most important point about finding your purpose for your life: What you do with your day is what you do with your life. Our lives are nothing more than an accumulation of days, one decades-long present moment.

People often treat their purpose as if it is some far off thing that at some point they will have to “decide,” but it’s not. You must decide now. And you are deciding, every moment of every day.

If you don’t enjoy most of your days, you are going to look back and say you didn’t enjoy most of your life. So first and foremost, before financial considerations and before wondering if your parents will approve of your choice and before wondering if it will look good on your Wikipedia page, you need to ask yourself if you will enjoy it. Because if you don’t, none of that other crap will matter.

The funny thing is, finding your purpose is about endlessly repeating these steps. Identify what you like least in your life, remove it to make space for stuff you like more, repeat.

At least, that’s what I did. First I removed every cultural expectation that didn’t work for me, like traditional academic education and W2 employment at a bank. Then, as an entrepreneur, I decided which kinds of companies I didn’t want to start. Then when I became a self-employed writer (a kind of entrepreneur), I decided which kinds of writing contracts I didn’t want to take. Now, as a self-directed writer, I am in the process of deciding what genre of articles and books I want to write. These sound like big decisions, but at each step of the process, all I did was ask myself which part of my life I liked the least and remove it.

As some of you reading may already know, I’m really enthusiastic about minimalism. The real reason I’m so enthusiastic about minimalism isn’t that it’s a financially advantageous decision or because it helps curb consumerism (although those are both true). The real reason I love minimalism is that minimalism teaches you how to make decisions about what you do and don’t want to keep. You start with the clutter in your closet, but you end up starting your dream job. That’s why so many of Marie Kondo’s clients say that she not only helped them clean their house, but also get them in shape, got them their dream jobs, or made their families happier too.

It’s really easy to get started. All you have to do is look at your life and pick one thing, no matter how small, give thanks for its time in your life, and say goodbye. If you feel sad, don’t; you are making space for better things to come.

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