Purpose

How did you find yours?

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

None of us are born with a built-in purpose in life.

Since I often work with young leaders and young entrepreneurs, I see how teachers, youth leaders, and some parents expect high school students to be thinking about their purpose at that young age. Especially now at graduation season.

“What will you do for a living?”

“What is the degree you’ll get at college to set you up for that job you want?”

The questions always have an air of finality and certainty - like finding your purpose is like solving an algebra problem.

I think that approach is all wrong.

Finding purpose is an exploration, not a math problem.

Asking a student to read a college catalog and decide which course of study is going to set the singular purpose of their life is the wrong approach. At that point in life, a student has spent most of their life in a classroom being taught a variety of general knowledge. They may have read about various careers, observed people in those careers, maybe even shadowed someone in one or two careers, or even audited a college class in that field. None of that is direct experience in the career field.

Even the more direct exposures, like shadows or auditing, only give the student a small taste of only one or two fields. That’s not enough learning or experience to make an informed lifetime decision! A person needs to try more things to see which ones sing to them. Picking a lifetime goal with such little exploration or experience can lead to a premature (suboptimal) choice.

You may not understand your real interests until you experience them.

I didn’t. I had a lengthy exploration.

I entered college thinking that I wanted to be a journalist. I felt pulled toward business and studied accounting until I found the part of it that I disliked (tax accounting). I dropped out for years and worked. Later, I finished undergrad in marketing. Grad school led me to more marketing and also finance.

I first worked in transportation and did OK. But business for business’ sake was boring. I left to work in tech and loved it. I created software and loved it. That’s when I went back to college and on to grad school. When I started helping people create new products, I really loved it. When I added in helping young people create products and businesses, I loved it even more. Boom. Purpose.

My godson didn’t. He is having a lengthy exploration.

He got excited early on about neuroscience and the brain. Even during high school he explored that field on his own, reading papers at a college level. During college his interests often were outside of the college curriculum. Partway through college his interest switched to applied DNA and RNA research. The switch from studying the brain to cellular study was personally motivated. Now he is in a PhD program preparing to work as a DNA and RNA research scientist. I can’t wait to see where that eventually points. Boom. Purpose.

Think about how you found your purpose in life.

My bet is that you didn’t pick one thing while in high school, go study it, and do it for the rest of your life. My bet is that most of you tried different things and eventually found the one that rang true to you. My bet is that many of you found a field that you loved and later found that your interests and purpose shifted (the entrepreneurs among you will call this pivoting).

The common theme is that you had to put in the time and experience a field or job bfore you knew it was the one for you

Let the young people in your life explore.

Here at graduation season, please let the graduates in your life know that college is an opportunity to explore, not just a time to study one and only one thing that they will do for the rest of their lives.

Please continue to explore for yourself.

I bet that some of you are still working in a field that (like transportation was for me) is acceptable but somewhat boring. Please allow yourself the grace to explore other fields until you find your own “Boom! Purpose!”.

As for me, I’m pretty set in my purpose - enabling the next generation to build a better tomorrow - but as far as exactly how I do that I am still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.

Peace!