“The purposeful are those who have found something meaningful to dedicate themselves to, who have sustained this interest over a period of time, and who express a clear sense of what they are trying to accomplish in the world and why. They have found a cause or ultimate goal that inspires their efforts from day to day and helps them fashion a coherent future agenda. They know what they want to accomplish and why, and they have taken concerted steps to achieve their ambitions.” –William Damon, The Path to Purpose
Introduction
The Parts of Purpose page dives into the nitty-gritty of the make-up of purpose: it is a life aim that is personally meaningful, goal-oriented, and self-transcendent. One can have multiple of them in a lifetime (consecutively or concurrently). It’s also essential to keep in mind that purpose is itself a process and not a destination (a way of living versus a thing to achieve); it is a direction in life towards which we orient our efforts.
Aside from understanding the composition of purpose, it’s important to understand purpose in context. This page covers other fundamental facets to the concept of purpose that make it distinct and useful.
You’ll explore the difference between the ideas of “The” purpose and “A” purpose, that purpose is often incorrectly conflated with Meaning, Passion, and Happiness, how not all purposes are created equal (and that’s ok!), and that it is all heavily influenced by context.
There is a difference between “A” Purpose and “The” Purpose
Trying to answer, “What is the purpose of my life?” is similar to trying to answer, “What is the meaning of life?” These questions presume that purpose and meaning are inherent to our lives, a view that is typically spiritual or religious in nature.
While integral to many peoples’ lives, such questions are not empirically investigable. They assume that meaning and purpose are pre-determined beyond ourselves.
Asking, “What is a purpose in my life?” is a different type of question. It assumes agency on the part of the individual to create and choose purpose(s) within their life. It’s like asking, “What could be purposeful?” or, “How can I create purpose?”
“A Purpose” and “The Purpose” are not mutually exclusive. Thankfully for many of us, the two can co-exist. One can believe they have been endowed with a purpose as offered by the tenets of their faith, as well as cultivate other forms of purposeful living throughout their life (which those of strong faith would likely offer is also bestowed upon them through their faith).
Try This: Think About It
When you think about THE purpose of your life, what comes to mind? What were you taught?
When you consider crafting A purpose for yourself, does it look different from THE purpose of your life? If so, in what ways?
Talk about it: Think of someone in your life who is particularly driven. Ask them what they think the purpose of their life is, and what purpose they have created for themselves. Do they think there is a difference between the purpose OF life and purpose IN life?
Purpose is distinct from Passion, Meaning, and Happiness
Modern western culture romanticizes that having passion and being happy are all a part of the purpose package- but actually, they don’t have to be. All four of these concepts can exist independently or overlap with one another in various combinations.
This diagram illustrates how Passion, Happiness, and Meaning relate to purpose (but not necessarily to each other). See below for a more detailed explanation.
- Meaning is the sense that something matters. It is the foundation for purpose, and likely (but not requisite) a foundation for the things you are passionate about and that bring you joy (but possibly not happiness). Additionally, something can be meaningful but not a purpose.
You may find cooking meals for friends meaningful, but cooking for your friends is not a life purpose. - Purpose is inherently meaningful but does not necessitate that you will be happy or passionate.
Mother Teresa passionately lived her purpose serving the underprivileged, and her life was filled with hardship.
A soldier may feel purposeful fighting for his nation, however he may not be conventionally happy in his role. - Passion is, to put it very simply, an intense enthusiasm for doing something. It can be an input and/or an outcome of purpose. Passion does not necessarily lead to happiness or joy.
You may be passionate about playing video games. If this is an obsessive passion it will negatively impact your sense of happiness or joy. The act of engaging in this passion (if it is harmonious and not obsessive) isn’t necessarily purposeful. In order to be purposeful you would need to be playing video games as part of a life aim to benefit something larger than yourself. - “Happiness” is a complicated and oft misrepresented topic. As it relates to purpose, however, it is a possible outcome of purpose, but not necessarily. It is more likely that joy (or fulfillment) would be an outcome of purpose.
Eating ice cream may bring you temporary happiness. Eating ice cream is unlikely to be a part of an overarching life aim.
Parenting your children is one of your purposes. While parenting doesn’t make you happy all the time, it absolutely contributes joy to your life.
Another way to gain insight on their relationship is to explore what they become when they overlap:
*Curious about the other areas of this diagram? We break them down further on this page.
When all four of these concepts overlap we wind up with the main ingredients for Optimal Purpose.
Try This: Experimenting with the Diagram
Using the examples on this page (it breaks down the diagram in detail!) to help you understand the ideas a bit better, print out (or draw) your own version of the Purpose/Meaning/Passion/Happiness diagram and consider how the current parts of your life may fit into it.
This exercise is designed to get your brain cooking, so don’t think too hard while coming up with answers by trying to find the right answers. If you’d like to come up with something more accurate, dig into the exercises in the Clarify section, which will help you understand how you relate to these concepts personally. Regardless, it is still useful (and fun!) to try and fill out the diagram with the knowledge you have now in order to get a better understanding of the pieces of your life as they currently stand. You can always come back and do it again later.
You can put as many things in each circle as come to mind (you are not limited to one of any of these things!)
Tip: Use a pencil! You may end up wanting to move things around as you get into it.
While not all Purposes are “Optimal,” we can still strive for them to be
The content in the purpose section is aimed at the cultivation of something called Optimal Purpose. Optimal Purpose is the most impactful form of purposefulness, and, there are many ways and amounts that purpose can show up in our lives with positive benefits.
- General Purpose: A meaningful life aim that is goal-oriented and impacts the world beyond yourself, but does not necessarily have to be something you are passionate about, or good at, or applies your skills, or is experienced joyfully (although any of those, in any amount or combination, could be present).
- Optimal Purpose: A meaningful life aim that is goal-oriented and impacts the world beyond yourself that you are passionate about, skilled in, facilitates growth and learning, is sustainable, and is experienced joyfully– all at once!
Purpose in other forms and amounts is still impactful, and after some reflection (in the Clarify section) you can learn what is appropriate and desirable for you in your own life. This caveat is offered to alert you to the fact that you can personalize your purpose journey. Perhaps you do not want to pursue Optimal Purpose at this time. That’s ok! You can take this framing with a grain of salt and choose what serves you today.
You can have multiple Purposes
The idea that you have one ultimate purpose implies that there is a single, best version of you. This dysfunctional belief creates a lot of pressure and may give you tunnel vision, thus cutting off possibilities. It may be more serving to the cultivation of fulfillment to consider that life is not a linear process to become one single thing, rather an opportunity to live into the many possible and worthy selves within you. One person can experience the same or different purposes concurrently in realms of motherhood, career, community, and through a passion.
If you have multiple purposes, they will probably not all be Optimal. They may even be unrelated! Let’s take Jerry as an example. Jerry used to experience purpose in his job as a criminal defender, but he’s not really as passionate about it as he used to be. Over the years the job has become more about the money and security it provides him. But at the same time Jerry runs a community game night that he’s passionate about organizing, enjoys thoroughly, and finds meaningful because it brings people together to form relationships and strengthens the community overall. If this purposeful side project also plays into an overarching life aim of bringing people together and creating understanding and connection, it could be part of an Optimal Purpose. Simultaneously, Jerry may also have a sense of duty to care for his aging parents, something he’s passionate about but doesn’t find sustainable (and according to the feedback from his parents, might not be very good at).
*This image of rings is a map of different regions Jerry impacts through his purposes. Impact is far more nuanced than this image lets on however. You can learn about the map above on the Parts of Purpose page, and you can dive into the nitty gritty details of analyzing your impact here.
*from ourworldindata.org
As is covered in the Happiness section, being “happy” can mean a lot of things, and it doesn’t necessarily preclude that life is meaningful or purposeful. Global studies of happiness don’t always focus on the roles of purpose and meaning in happiness (they can be hard to define cross-culturally), so it’s hard to tell from the most popular report numbers the real nuances of well-being that have been measured.
“…they have to assume that people around the world define happiness and answer happiness surveys in roughly the same way. If this assumption does not hold, then happiness indexes are about as reliable as a ranking of music quality based on how much residents of each country say they like their local songs.” –Arthur Brooks on Happiness Indexes
While you can have a happy life without purpose, having a sense of purpose will enhance your well-being more than being happy alone.5 Purpose doesn’t often lead to conventional happiness (a broken concept) mostly because it is challenging.6, 7
However, it harnesses the power of meaning, which is a better predictor of well-being than happiness alone (and that’s not to say that your purpose won’t make you happy, either; it totally can).
“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” –Helen Keller
There is nothing wrong with not having or not pursuing a purpose (eight out of ten people don’t report having a sense of purpose anyway3,4, and, as mentioned earlier, over 60% of people still report relatively high life satisfaction1,2). Even if conventional happiness is enough for you, it is still valuable to explore Purpose and choose that path intentionally rather than forfeiting your access to possibility by not exploring your options.
Happy But Not Purposeful
Patricia loves to travel. She has made sure she has a very flexible remote job that pays her enough to afford hopping from country to country for a few weeks to a few months at a time (which surprisingly costs less than you might think). This way she gets to learn new languages, go to exotic places, eat incredible foods and meet tons of interesting people. She is thrilled with her life.
Dan just started a home renovation business and absolutely loves what he gets to do every day. He loves making spaces transform, the people he works with, and the type of projects he gets to learn from. He is also making great money from his work and has a lot of free time. In his free time, he gets to engage in his other hobbies and spend time with his friends and family.
It may be interesting to know how not having purpose affects people. Not having a sense of purpose at all tends to have negative psychological effects. Folks without any purpose are more likely to experience depression, boredom, loneliness, and anxiety.12, 13 They’re also more likely to do harmful things such as drugs or alcohol.14, 15, 16, 17
Leading purpose expert Dr. William Damon helps us conceptualize different life paths in relation to purpose in his book, “The Path to Purpose,” which focuses on the development of purpose in adolescents.
He suggests that there are four categories relating to purpose: Dreamers, Dabblers, Purposeful, and Disengaged.
Damon compares The Purposeful to the others as being the most effortful and self-defined; they are actively engaged in pursuing a vision they’ve tested and established for themselves:
“The purposeful are those who have found something meaningful to dedicate themselves to, who have sustained this interest over a period of time, and who express a clear sense of what they are trying to accomplish in the world and why. They have found a cause or ultimate goal that inspires their efforts from day to day and helps them fashion a coherent future agenda. They know what they want to accomplish and why, and they have taken concerted steps to achieve their ambitions.”
The other options are the Dabbler, the Disengaged, and the Dreamer.
- The Dabbler – Those who try many different things without committing to any single thing; they are without a unifying vision.
- The Disengaged – Those who do not define a path for themselves and tend to do what society prescribes. They put little effort into considering or engaging with their options. They tend to focus on themselves and their own enjoyment.
- The Dreamer – Those who are idealistic and have purposeful visions but are not actively engaged in pursuing them. They don’t have a plan to make their dreams happen.
One can be a Dabbler, Dreamer, or Disengaged and still have a happy and meaningful life. Adding Purpose to the equation increases the saturation and richness of your experiences.
Think About It
This reflection activity assumes you have read the Parts of Purpose page.
- Think of five friends or family members.
- For each person, write down what you imagine the most meaningful things are for them (remember, meaning is lived from the 4 Cornerstones and will incorporate their Values {“Needs”}), and if (and how) they are acting on their meaning.
- What do you imagine their life goals to be/ what are they aiming for in life?
- Based on what you’ve read above (and the Parts of Purpose page), do these life goals constitute purposes?
- If so, are they General or Optimal? If General, what’s missing?
- If not purposes, what is missing?
- If you had to categorize them as a Dreamer, Dabbler, Disengaged, or Purposeful, where would you put each of them?
Purpose Is a Process
The purpose journey is a process filled with twists and turns, course corrections, detours, and dead-ends. And it doesn’t end at a specific destination- it’s a journey you will be on your entire life!
Think of it as following a guiding star (or several if you have multiple purposes). The purpose journey is consistently directing yourself towards your distant star. You never actually reach the star (although you will achieve specific landmarks along the way, AKA ‘goals’), but it guides your actions and direction. You spend your life re-aligning your ship to pursue this vision as storms blow you off track, you take detours to explore, or change your mind and choose other stars.
The purpose journey has a few stages, and you can move through them over and over in an intentional life. Although they aren’t necessarily chronological, it can help to think of them in the following order:
- Clarify – Examining our stories about ourselves and the way the world works. Fleshing out what our strengths, interests, desires, and ways we like to impact the world are.
- Support – Creating circumstances in our lives that can support the process of purpose cultivation; such as seeking out mentors, challenges, passion, developing our self-knowledge, and more.
- Align – The process of designing potential courses of action, experimenting with them, reflecting, and adjusting accordingly.
You can dive into each of the above in their own specific sections (all though it is recommended you read the rest of the purpose section first).
It matters that we see and understand that purpose is a process because it helps us stay in it for the long haul. It can be easy to think, “I’ll find my purpose and then I’ll have it! Check!” But unfortunately, this mindset actually makes us less likely to cultivate purpose at all (it makes us think it is easier or simpler than it is, prompting us to give up when things get tough). When we instead understand that purpose is more like a way of approaching life than a goal we can complete, we empower ourselves to be resilient and increase our odds of cultivating purpose.
You can learn oodles more about the nature of the process on The Purpose Journey page where the challenges and changes are explored in more detail.
The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.” –Barbara Hall
Purpose is an idea; Ideas are influenced by context
In the context of homosapiens as a species (and even within the past 10,000 years since we began settling into civilizations) purpose is a relatively new concept. For most of humanity’s timeline, purpose was a given. In the present day, it is possible to ‘choose’ one. *Keep in mind that we’re talking about “A” Purpose here and not “The” Purpose.
And yes, purpose is a concept. While it has historically been considered an inherent part of our lives (along the lines of “The” Purpose), today it operates as the idea that we can have a meaningful mission to accomplish in our lives.
What constitutes the nuances of “meaningful” for the individual is directed by the context of the individual’s life. What you will consider purposeful will be distinct for you and influenced by your culture, what your parents taught you, your spiritual or religious beliefs, and various life circumstances.
Curious about all the things that may influence your sense of purpose? They are broken down on the Purpose in Context page.
Summary
- “The” Purpose of your life is something addressed in religious and spiritual doctrines. The subject of this section explores cultivating “A” Purpose in life, which is within the individual’s power to design, test, choose, and align with according to their will.
- Purpose is distinct from meaning, happiness, and passion. Purpose always includes meaning, but may not always involve happiness or passion.
- You can have multiple purposes, and some of them will be Optimal while others may fulfill the basic prerequisites of purpose.
- Purpose is an idea that is influenced by our culture, era, experiences, and perhaps our biology. You can explore how that works and what may be influencing your sense of purpose by clicking on to the next section, Purpose in Context.
Bibliography
- Helliwell, John F., Richard Layard, Jeffrey Sachs, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, eds. 2021. World Happiness Report 2021. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2021/WHR+21.pdf
- “Global Happiness Study.” 2019. IPSOS. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2019-08/Happiness-Study-report-August-2019.pdf
- Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. Free Press, 2009.
- Khullar D. Finding Purpose for a Good Life. But Also a Healthy One. The New York Times. The Upshot. Jan. 1, 2018:1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/upshot/finding-purpose-for-a-good-life-but-also-a-healthy-one.html
- Jachimowicz, J., To, C., Menges, J., & Akinola, M. (2017, December 7). Igniting Passion from Within: How Lay Beliefs Guide the Pursuit of Work Passion and Influence Turnover. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qj6y9
- Pollet, E., Schnell, T. Brilliant: But What For? Meaning and Subjective Well-Being in the Lives of Intellectually Gifted and Academically High-Achieving Adults. J Happiness Stud 18, 1459–1484 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-016-9783-4
- Ryan D. Duffy, William E. Sedlacek, The presence of and search for a calling: Connections to career development, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Volume 70, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 590-601, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.03.007.
- Harlow, L. L., Newcomb, M. D., & Bentler, P. M. (1986). Depression, self- derogation, substance use, and suicide ideation: Lack of purpose in life as a mediational factor. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 5-21.
- Nicholson, T., Higgins, W., Turner, P., James, S., Stickle, F., & Pruitt, T. (1994). The relation between meaning in life and occurrence of drug abuse: A retrospective study. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 8, 24-28.
- Roos, C. R., Kirouac, M., Pearson, M. R., Fink, B. C., & Witkiewitz, K. (2015). Examining temptation to drink from an existential perspective: Associations among temptation, purpose in life, and drinking outcomes. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 29, 716-724.
- Marsh, A., Smith, L., Piek, J., & Saunders, B. (2003). The Purpose in Life Scale: Psychometric Properties for Social Drinkers and Drinkers in Alcohol Treatment. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 63(5), 859–871. doi:10.1177/0013164403251040
- Bigler, M., Neimeyer, G. J., & Brown, E. (2001). The divided self revisited: Effects of self-concept clarity and self-concept differentiation on psychological adjustment. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 20, 396- 415.
- Fahlman, S. A., Mercer, K. B., Gaskovski, P., Eastwood, A. E., & Eastwood, J. D. (2009). Does a lack of life meaning cause boredom? Results from psychometric, longitudinal, and experimental analyses. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 28, 307-340.
- Harlow, L. L., Newcomb, M. D., & Bentler, P. M. (1986). Depression, self- derogation, substance use, and suicide ideation: Lack of purpose in life as a mediational factor. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 5-21.
- Nicholson, T., Higgins, W., Turner, P., James, S., Stickle, F., & Pruitt, T. (1994). The relation between meaning in life and occurrence of drug abuse: A retrospective study. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 8, 24-28.
- Roos, C. R., Kirouac, M., Pearson, M. R., Fink, B. C., & Witkiewitz, K. (2015). Examining temptation to drink from an existential perspective: Associations among temptation, purpose in life, and drinking outcomes. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 29, 716-724.
- Marsh, A., Smith, L., Piek, J., & Saunders, B. (2003). The Purpose in Life Scale: Psychometric Properties for Social Drinkers and Drinkers in Alcohol Treatment. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 63(5), 859–871. doi:10.1177/0013164403251040
- McKnight, P. E., & Kashdan, T. B. (2009). Purpose in life as a system that creates and sustains health and well-being: An integrative, testable theory. Review of General Psychology, 13(3), 242–251. doi:10.1037/a0017152