Finding your purpose is the key to happiness and fulfilment

Finding your purpose for being on this earth is key to happiness and fulfilment.

There is a lot of talk of businesses finding their “why” and articulating their reason for being leading to success, but perhaps there has not been as much emphasis on helping individuals finding their own why?

I’ve met thousands of people in my sixty years on the planet and those making a credible difference are clear what they are on this planet to do.  These individuals have a sense of being in the right place at the right time, and they would say they feel that they are often ‘in flow’ during their work and leisure days and serendipity is part of their everyday life.

From a psychological perspective, Johann Hari in Lost Connections (2018) shows that humans need a connection to purpose and meaning-making for psychological wellbeing and when people end up in jobs where this isn’t the case, their mental health can suffer.

Some of us have never quite discovered our true purpose in life and sometimes we end up on a hamster wheel of activity having deviated from our main reason for being.  In fact, Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, in her book ‘Top Five Regrets of the Dying’ lists five regrets that people who were dying in her care expressed.  The number 1 is

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me.”

Too many of us feel pressure from family, teachers, tutors, partners and especially finances to get on the hamster wheel, which is then very difficult to get off.  It is fear that keeps us on the wheel and courage that helps us jump off, sometimes into the unknown.

How to make the break and live with purpose

So, how do we make that break and live a life of purpose?  My experience of interviewing successful purpose-driven people for my podcast, 4th Bottom Line, is that there is often some kind of life intervention involving trauma or crisis that forces them to look at life differently thereafter.  Some call this a mid-life crisis, but I prefer to use the phrase ‘mid-life chrysalis’ as it is a process of transformation: a letting go or dying and re-birth into something new.  Let’s face it, we would probably all rather be a butterfly than a caterpillar, but the transformation process can be difficult, dark and sticky!

So, how can we facilitate the transformation into a purpose-filled life?  The first tip I would give you is to slow down and stop living purely from our brains, particularly the cerebral cortex.  Some news for you is that Descartes was wrong when he said, ‘Cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’.  Neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio in his book, Descartes’ Error (1994) showed that the essence of our being isn’t based in the thinking part of the brain at all, but in the limbic or emotional part of us.

Socrates distilled his thinking into a simple phrase, ‘Know Thyself’.  Most of us haven’t taken time to do this.  We simply don’t make space in silence and solitude to listen to our heart’s desire and to understand our true essence.  Breaking free of the ‘to do’ list is essential if we are going to discover our true North Star.  It is no coincidence that most of the leaders on my podcast make regular time to sit in nature, turn their devices off and many have some kind of daily meditative practice.  You see once we start to know ourselves, we can more be ourselves, act as ourselves and live out our dreams.

Purpose means doing good for others

A second tip to help you find purpose would be to know that it will involve doing good to others and/or nature.  Humans are built to connect; our biochemistry is set up to bring good wellbeing through connection.  We are community mammals and when we serve other creatures, the feelgood hormones such as oxytocin start to flow.

This is backed up by ancient wisdom from the islands of Okinawa in Japan, one of the five blue zones in the world, where more people live to over 100 years old than in other places.  I wrote about Ikigai in my book Forces for Good (2019).  Ikigai is the Japanese word for fulfilment and happiness and comes from simultaneously doing something we love, something we are good at, being paid for it and doing something the world needs.  Without that connection and benefit to others or nature, there is no Ikigai and no sense of fulfilment.

Find what makes you happiest

If you are struggling to connect with your purpose, why not ask yourself what you are happiest doing and the chances are you will be good at it.  Being paid is always a bonus but may not come immediately and how do others benefit from what you are doing?  Often those who know you well will be able to tell you when you are operating in your sweet spot.

The fabulous thing is that all the nearly 9 billion people in the world are all different and we all have a unique purpose formed from our different upbringings, and good experiences and the bad.  Yes, it is often the negative stuff that has happened to us that forms us into those wounded healers that can help transform others.  Just like the ancient Japanese of kintsugi where the cracks in a broken vessel are filled with gold and the broken object ends up more beautiful than it was when whole.

If you are reading this, then the chances are that you are someone that wants to make a difference in the world.  Are you connected to your purpose?  Are you following your dreams?  Perhaps think about that over the next few days.

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