Thoughts 🤔 on PURPOSE ⬆️

Thoughts 🤔 on Purpose ⬆️ 

I call myself a Visionary Purpose Coach.  That’s because I have a way of sensing people’s alignment with purpose and meaning in the lives they lead, and helping them to do that better on a deep level.

“Purpose” is funny.  It’s a hackneyed term, which is to say overused, often in a shallow way (I like to reference this song to demonstrate this)  I can’t think of a better word though.

I describe existence and reality in terms of 5 Metaphysical Realms, and PURPOSE is the highest one.  That doesn’t mean it’s the best.  They’re all crucial, and none is better than any other.  But…PURPOSE is special.  And it’s a way of talking about the human condition that is not relevant to any other condition.  Apes are not looking for their purpose, nor ladybugs or eels.  It’s just not a pertinent question.  Different personalities, sure - I can look at my 4 cats to prove that.  But they don’t have distinctive purposes.

We humans do.  And if you have a sense that you are misaligned there, fix it yesterday, because your life is actually very short.

Purpose is related to the imperfectability of human life.  Human life MUST be imperfectable because we need opportunities to grow and develop into better versions of ourselves, and so every generation must face new challenges and traumas.  That’s the human condition.  It’s absurd, and I think many of us sublimate that to ill effect.

PURPOSE will always be related to your particular assessment of the imperfectness of human life, and thus your path is revealed.  We can all see what is wrong or missing.  This is a millennia-long human pursuit that transcends our specific, individual lifespans.  We each have a place in this grand story, which is why I love both Kierkegaard AND Hegel (Hegel had a grand, totalizing theory of human history and Kierkegaard hated it because he couldn’t find room for the individual among the grandeur - I think they were BOTH right).

I was having coffee with a wonderful entrepreneurial leader the other day.  He works in a really interesting technology sector and remarked that he found it surprising his passion would be something that he discovered, as opposed to being inborn.  I responded that passion ultimately MUST be shown to you by the outside world somehow, because it ALWAYS involves improving the human condition and we humans have been doing that in various ways for as long as we’ve been capable of teamwork and innovation.  He reflected on that for a few moments and ultimately agreed.

Humans don’t, and can’t, exist in isolation, so purpose and meaning is always found in the process of interfacing with others.  We have developed many rich and fascinating disciplines to aid this effort of perpetually improving the sublimely imperfectible human condition, so PURPOSE is always about finding your unique place within that mix.

I call this your “Purpose DNA”, and I have a knack for uncovering your specific nucleotides in my coaching conversations.  Here are all the ways I’ve found so far:

Did I miss any? It’s a work in progress. Please let me know!