When you start to experience deep unhappiness with your work/career you’ll likely begin asking yourself what you’re doing and why. Like, what is the point of this?
It’s big stuff. When you get right down to it, you’re basically asking yourself the existential questions and the point of life.
It’s distressing to say the least. On top of the grieving process you’ve entered as you come to terms with the fact that your current path is reaching its end, you’re also completely disoriented and looking for an idea or concept to guide you out of the confusion and free-fall.
Years ago, when I walked away from my last "regular corporate job" I remember asking my therapist and coach again and again week after week through a mess of tears, "What is the point? What are we doing here? Like, what's the point of life?"
I'd never asked these questions before because up till then life was just one long string of hoops to jump in the quest for "success," to make something of myself and justify my existence, earn acceptance, be “good enough.” The logic goes “I’ll feel ok with myself, get to rest and enjoy my life once I get ‘there’ and ‘arrive.’” But I was so busy on this quest that I never stopped to ask any deeper questions. I just kept my head down and there was no time or space to breathe never mind reflect on my logic and examine at a deeper level what the hell I was actually doing and why. And space never came, as “there” was kept forever off in the future.
Until all of a sudden, there was lots of time and space.
I hit a wall with all the pushing and striving and exhausting myself working away to hit markers and milestones I only cared about to be able to say I reached them.
Then I started asking myself (and others like my coach and therapist) all the questions.
Their answer?
To enjoy. The point is to enjoy your life.
They could have said things like "to find your purpose” or "to be of service in what you can offer the world" (which often means through your career/work). These are the common ideas or concepts that one might be directed to reach for when trying to find one’s way to something more fulfilling.
But I lucked out and they didn't point me there.
Because your purpose for existing is not a job, a company you start/run, or even in how you can be of service to others.
Your reason for existing is not for something outside of yourself. That is a form of martyrdom. Concepts of purpose and service (in the way mainstream culture often has us think of them) are creations of the mind and often just more painful identity project stuff.
Acting from the idea of needing to be of service is not much different than acting from fear, unworthiness, needing to prove etc. if both are coming from a mental directive overriding what's actually true for you, what's actually fulfilling, nourishing, and fills your cup. And further, sometimes coming from a place of needing to "make a difference" can be just a transmutation of needing to be "successful" - it's the ego looking for personal significance, markers of worth, and rooted in pain.
And while your mind is working on coming up with what purpose/service story it will use and cling to, you can find yourself very distressed. Just as I was distressed when I had just pulled out the lynchpin of my life and was no longer motivated by hollow milestones and names/titles on my resume. It's disorienting to realize what you're currently doing for work, you no longer want. We all want to know what's happening and what we're doing in life. We want to have the "answers," to be able to project a future in our mind and feel the illusion of safety and certainty.
"I don't want what I've been doing. I want something more fulfilling," we think. And because we’ve been fed this so much in pop culture, we think it must be in "finding my purpose."
So then the mind frantically flips through a list of possible new career paths that have been deemed by us/society to be virtuous and of service to others (while also fitting into our self-narrative because we still need to do something that looks good on paper and makes us feel “enough” - all that still unexamined).
"Ah, I 'figured' it out!" your mind will claim when it finally arrives at an answer. But then, even with "the answer" in hand existential confusion will persist. Because on some level you are aware of how actually shallow, same-same and unfulfilling it is. And soon after you start doing it, you realize your “purpose” is utterly exhausting as well. And have just boxed yourself into doing it forever because it’s your “purpose,” right?
As my teacher Kiran Trace points out, there’s no fulfillment in mental concepts and ideas.
So, is there another way? Something else we can look for to follow instead?
Yes. Follow what's real. What's actually true in your bones to do.
And that's what's meant by enjoyment. The next steps I was directed to take, and what I guide my coaching clients to do, is to find what's alive and true and gets your juices flowing. What kind of work feels good to your body? What brings you intrinsic enjoyment to do each day? Again, where's the juice for you?
And the heck what other people think of it. What do you think about it? No don’t even think, how do you feel about it? Does doing that feel good, enjoyable, natural, easeful?
Sometimes someone will come to me with an idea of what brings them alive to do and they say, "That can't be my purpose though. It doesn't really help people. I'm not really changing people's lives or solving the world's problems. It's selfish to do this."
But, how can we evaluate one thing as being more "helpful" and of service than another. Who's to decide? And should that analysis tell you what to do with your life irrespective of how you feel and what you really want? Isn't that just more "shoulds," and more mind games running the show?
Good questions, right?
Personally, I'm very grateful to the craftspeople who built the new couch in my living room, to the baker that made the scone I ate on Saturday morning and to the creators of the hilarious YouTube videos I can hear my husband squealing with glee watching in another room. Just as I'm grateful to those that do things we think of as more in the line of service. And I sure hope my doctor and everyone else we like to place in that category are doing it because they genuinely enjoy it and want to, not because they think they have to/should/are obligated, or because it’s “better” and it gives them a superiority complex.
And really my bigger point is however you want to think about service, it’s irrelevant to your fulfillment and enjoyment of your life, which I think is what you’re really after here. As Kiran Trace teaches, if you’re looking to the ideas of purpose and service to help you find fulfillment, you won’t find any fulfillment there if they take you away from what actually feels good to you - if you’re not coming from a genuine desire to do whatever it is because the very act of doing it is pleasurable. To find fulfillment, look directly at it and go to the source: what brings you enjoyment.
With everything you do, ask yourself, what’s in this for me? I’m not talking about narcissism, I’m talking about consciousness around whether the choices you’re making are providing you with the experience of life you want to have. Everything you do in life is for you. It’s all for you. It's great to serve others, but whatever you do has to serve you first, or else I ask again, "What is the point?"
Do what you enjoy and if it helps others, fine, but that’s not why you’re here; the enjoyment is. Follow that.
For me (for now at least) I love helping my clients, but it's not why I exist. I don't have a story around how it's my purpose or how much or little of service I am. I do it because it fills my cup. I’m in it for the pleasure, the excitement and delight I feel when a client has an insight, works through a fear, lands in some peace around something that has been distressing and clarity around what they want. It brings me joy to connect deeply with you and help you find your next steps, your joy.
And if it's not immediately apparent to you what you enjoy, that's ok. So ok. But that might mean for a while you're going to have to sink into that disorientation, into the unknowing. As Kiran Trace teaches, instead of reaching for concepts and ideas like purpose and service we’re going for a real embodied experience of enjoyment, what she calls your “delicious Yes.” This doesn’t involve the mind or metal stories. It’s from the body. If you feel like what I’ve been describing seems abstract, it’s not. As Kiran says, enjoyment, pleasure, in your body feeling good is bankable, verifiable, and way more real than anything coming from the mind.
And if a full body “Yes!” on what you want your next job/career to be is evasive, again, that’s ok. Normal even. Many of us have spent our whole lives in our head. Let it unfold. Befriend not knowing your next steps for awhile. For as long as it takes for you to bit-by-bit get to know yourself, to reflect on the smallest sparks of desire and nurture them into a fire. Start small and simple about what’s true and honest and real for you.
For me, I didn’t actually want to do any of the things I was doing with my life. Although my mind worked hard at convincing me I did, the whole time I was deep down asking, “Is this all there is?” And hoping one day in the hazy future I would somehow get to enjoy my life. Turns out I would, but only when I dropped all the mental stories, shoulds, fears, pain from running my life and deliberately chose enjoyment, what actually feels good to me right now.
I understand this is a different approach than what's often offered up to us. In our few minutes of reprieve from the demands of life we may lift our head and pick up a self-help book, read an article etc. to help us find our way out of suffering. And in those we're often offered up this surface level and unexamined "find your purpose" and "be of service" stuff.
This is a note, a pointer to you to examine it.
Look at it up close and don't just take it at surface value. We're talking about your life and how you want to spend it. Don't take anything anyone else says as the thing to do without checking it out for yourself first. That's where we end up way off course.
I didn't take others word for it. I've spent the last several years walking back and forth over this terrain and landed in what feels true for me.
Which - I’ll say it again because we all likely need to hear this many many times - is that your life is for you to enjoy. Your purpose is a being, not a doing. Simply to be here experiencing life, embodying the essence of you is the point. You're already doing it and in working to locate more of your joy, you're just coming more into alignment with you. You don't need to find or do anything outside of yourself.
Buddhist munk Thich Nhat Hanh has written, “The purpose of a rose is to be a rose. Your purpose is to be yourself.” We don’t ask a flower what its purpose is, how it’s serving the world, or evaluate one expression of a flower as “better” than another. It just is.
It’s nature. And so are you.
Why do some find it delightful to bake things, and others to play with numbers, and others to build companies? I don’t know. It’s just in our nature. We don’t ask why there are so many different kinds of flowers, or think perhaps that daisy over there should really try harder at being a rose. You are who you are, you like what you like, your expression is unique. And no mental analysis of it is necessary.
And your expression will change. Over time, your desires may shift as you evolve. Free from the idea of your job being your “purpose” you’re free to shift and change as we all know humans do. Your desires 10 years ago are not those of today and so it will be 10 years on, or tomorrow.
You can drop the whole concept of purpose if it feels stressful and heavy. Find what feels light. You embodying that is the only purpose you're here to fulfill.
It feels radical to say this in a culture that seemingly tries to get you to look every other way than enjoyment. Even when trying to give pointers on how to escape a life of shoulds and striving to something more fulfilling, there's a kind of bait and switch. Purpose and service have the potential to be just as imprisoning and unfulfilling as all the "shoulds" and unhelpful ideas that came before.
Lastly, what about the idea that we're here to learn and grow? Yes, perhaps, but not from a forceful "I need to learn and grow to get somewhere" kind of way. We don't need to replace professional striving with spiritual/personal development striving swapping one illusionary “arrival” with another. The learning and growth is all for you, so you can enjoy your life. Again, it’s all about enjoyment. And yes, learning and growth take a kind of work, but at the same time it's all to be approached with non-efforting. Again, your purpose is a being, not a doing. Growth comes from a simple unfolding of the lessons that are brought your way. Including the many lessons that may be appearing for you as you reach your own wall with your current work situation.
If what I shared today resonates or peaks curiosity because some part of you feels the truth of these words, I'd love to help you. Because it brings me so much joy to help you find yours.
