Discover Your Purpose With A Single Question
We walk through life straddling the smallest, most inconsequential moments and the gravity and grace of the life-altering ones. We know that at any point in time, one can become the other, and that anything can change in a moment. We search for meaning in those times that we create vague questions to extrapolate narratives of what it is our future selves are meant to do here. These insurmountable inquiries about our purpose and how we show up in the world relate to one simple question.
And I’m not going to ask why you think you’re here, or what you think your purpose might be. I‘m asking something altogether different.
I asked several dozen people this question, vaguely anticipating the responses and what I learned grew to into an important discovery that is worth sharing.
I want to share why I asked this question and a few of the responses. I’ll share my own moment of contentment and then I’ll also share how and why I think that this all ties back to your purpose. For clarity, I mean existential purpose, that ‘Big Why’ a la Simon Sinek that exists beyond your career or income and other general day-to-day details and errands.
It’s something bigger than that, much bigger.
When was the last time you were truly content, in nothing less than absolute adoration of a moment?
I want to elaborate a little on what I mean by that, in case it’s hard to access or to remember the fleeting wonder of the best moments, which is totally normal, especially if you’re struggling in this moment. When these moments happen, we feel them deeply, even if fleeting. That calm excitement, a rushed sense of presence, a cultivated quietude. Those moments are ones without a perfectly adequate description, but when we know, we know and feel a distinct significance without a lengthy explanation.
It’s safe to think of them as the biggest small deal, or the smallest big deal moments.
You know them.
We’ve all had one or two, or maybe we’ve cultivated a way that we can live in that space more than not. They are those fleeting moments where, if even for a fraction of a second, there is a rush of slight elation, a recognition that this is what our life is all about.
And it’s different for everyone. Its worth pointing out that we all have access to them, have all lived them and the sense of reverence that comes with them are independent of our relative station in life or our perception of the life that we lead in relation to how others might seem to live.
I asked this question because something about the weather reminded me of one of the most mundane and beautiful days I’ve experienced. Recalling that day is a fantastic juxtaposition to the current state of things, and a bittersweet reminder of when things were just slightly different enough to feel good without reservation. An incomprehensible nostalgia came to the present for me when I remembered this single day that carried a small lesson with it that seemed inconsequential at the time.
I asked because wanted to hear other people’s experience of bliss in their lives.
In the most selfish way, I thought if I could hear about what makes other people feel the joy, I’d feel it a bit more also, to help stave off a bit of my own lingering darkness after a few weeks fraught with some hefty realizations and the dense confusion of mostly unexpected heartbreak. And after months of pandemic and election and all the things that don’t feel quite right in the world.
What I learned from asking this question was even bigger.
I’ll spare a few details for the sake of brevity, but let’s just say my moment of contentment was a day with the most gorgeous November weather, and I put together the most ambitious meal I’ve ever made.
Right before service, an uninvited but certainly not unwanted guest appeared and there just happened to be enough physical pace at the table for them. So we made room and set a place. That meal turned out to be one of the simplest, most inconsequential but alarmingly beautiful experiences. As they say, all was right in the world.
The small lesson that I learned that day was that I’ll always leave room at the table, because we never know who is showing up for us.
And I mean that both figuratively and literally.
Keep this in mind as we unpack a bit more here.
When I asked others about their moments of contentment with the question above, I received a variety of answers.
One woman replied with her story of how, after the birth of her child, sitting in the bed with baby in arms she felt that much anticipated moment where she could finally let her guard down. After the confusion and chaos and delay of pregnancy and birth, she held her long awaited babe. In another, a force of nature of a woman recounted bits of her journey in entrepreneurship and how the moments that she feels most content are the ones where she realizes that she is doing it for herself and by herself, independent of any other force or person or relationship. Another person’s contentment comes from the mornings waking with their loved one and feeling the unreasonable draw and joy to love this person, and unabridged gratitude for that love. Another response was from a woman who finds complete contentedness on solo explorations in nature. Another was a musician who derives that feeling from when they share their music and feel truly appreciated by the connectedness they feel with an appreciative audience.
There were many more, too many to share.
When I asked this question, my goal was to simply remind myself, after a somewhat eviscerating couple of weeks, that there exists a universal good in our lived experience.
No matter the difficulty, no matter the context or the outside circumstance. Independent of any given moment, we have the opportunity to recall the simplest, most mundane joys, to recall that feeling and to create it in the present.
All true.
We have the capacity to choose that contentedness even in delay, chaos, confusion, separation and pain. Those are the moments that we ought to live for in this one wild and precious life that we get. These moments are the treasure that is this life.
Take a minute to think about the most recent moment in your life where you felt truly content. I realize that for some of us, it’s a struggle, especially now. The moment might bring conflicting feelings with it. I want to ask that, for now, choose to put your focus on the feeling of relentless calm that comes with it. Embrace it, think about it, remember the details of that moment of pure contentment, letting go (even if briefly) of any regret or shame or guilt, or anything that comes up that is outside of the bounds of that calm excitement you felt at the time.
We can do this again and again, even in the moments that are rife with confusion, with delay, with conflict or any other negative quality that we assign to it. By training ourselves to make past moments of contentment our reference point in any given moment, we get the opportunity to create another moment in the present that is derived from that same sense of reverence we feel from the memory of that moment.
Do it as much as you can and maybe it’ll be something you can access more and more by simply choosing it in the present.
Disclaimer: I am not say it was easy, I’m just saying its possible and that you deserve to feel that contentment, as we all do.
When we build our frame of reference for how we want to live and what we want, it hinges on these moments that feel like the small things, but truly are the big things.
That’s the first part of the exercise.
And I think it’s immensely valuable on the surface level to remember that we get to choose, in any given moment, how we respond with our emotions or our intellect and have even the smallest bit of say in how we experience our moments, independent of the pain of the past projecting into our present.
Especially lately, all of this is a really challenging thing to realize and then even harder to align with, especially in troubled times. Especially when chaos and heartbreak seem like the default, we can reach into our already lived experiences and extrapolate a future that is bigger, brighter and more connected than we expect by simply tapping into our moments of pure contentment.
No matter how small or how long ago they were, we’ve lived these joys so we have to know that we can do it again. Even if it feels selfish and misaligned given the current state of the world around us, we can cultivate small joys in the moment as a means to replenish and refresh for what lies ahead, however imperfectly. We can create, again, however imperfectly, an experience of life rooted in contentment as we so choose.
We sabotage the delicious richness of our experience when we limit our contentment to include moments when everything is allegedly perfect.
When I asked the question, I wasn’t considering much about it other than that. Then, I thought about the answers I’d received, the people who shared them, what I know about them and their lives, and my own answer and how they seem to relate to the questions about our purpose, our existential Big Why.
I want to come back to the idea of the Big Why, for just a minute, because it can be a really challenging thing to realize and then even harder to align with, especially in troubled times. Especially when chaos and heartbreak seem like the default, we can reach into our already lived experiences and extrapolate a future that is bigger than we imagined by simply tapping into a moment of pure contentment. I realize that this may sound overly simplistic, pollyanna-ish and not realistic, but I encourage you to take one minute to really consider this, even if you’re reluctant.
If you’re not familiar with the concept of ‘The Big Why,’ check out this TED talk by Simon Sinek. Basically, its the notion that by qualifying our life purpose with a statement of WHY we do what it is that we do, we make our story and our efforts more impactful, more relatable and more powerful. More understood, which I think is one thing we might all be after: being understood in the world, but I digress.
I’d first heard about the concept about a decade when I was working as a health coach for a large corporation, and studying the work of Dr. Stoll, who utilized this concept as an exercise for everyone at the beginning of his health immersions. At the time, the question, for me, was limited to the lens of health. I want to eat and live healthier so I can live by example within my community and be available and fully present for my children and family.
It seemed straightforward a decade ago, for me. Things have changed.
This summer, after losing my day job to COVID, I found myself with no option but to fall back on my work as an artist. (Which is sort of a poetic justice having invested years in education to have a fall back after going to art school.) I have a successful jewelry line and an even more successful practice as a painter. So, after a morning on the treadmill listening to inspirational documentaries (yes, I know, so cliché) I found myself with the recommendation from a friend to look again at the work of Simon Sinek and his ‘Big why.’ So, that morning I wrote my own.
With the lived experience and some of the answers I received with the question I asked above, I’ve found that our purpose is directly related to that which brings us contentment.
Let’s look back on our answers for my original question. The mom who felt her last moment of contentment holding her baby? She’s a mom blogger and coach for parents and families, who makes a pittance at it but does it out of sheer purpose. The woman going it alone to prove to herself that she can? She’s proving to all of us that it’s not only possible to succeed as a single woman, an entrepreneur, an artist and so much more — independently without the benefit or hindrance of a partner. The man who loves so deeply that his contentment is in the lived experience of Love? Once a consummate bachelor, he refused any part of love until his late forties. He’s proving with his purpose that when the right person walks into a life, love will win the day. The hiker? Her work in the world is to remind people of the power of nature through not only her artwork, but also her work as an art therapist. The musician? He’s a chronically jovial person that finds purpose in creating unconventional and incredibly meaning connections that are out of the ordinary in their depth and breadth.
For me, my purpose is related to how I show up imperfectly and underprepared and give myself the freedom and grace to make the mistakes I need to make in order to grow, publicly, wholeheartedly and unabashedly without fear. Because if I can do that, it shows other people that they can too.
There are many, many examples of moments of contentment in this life that I could choose to draw from, and in my example above with the uninvited guest, I realize our purpose is fluid, has layers and is subject to change. In part, my purpose is layered with the idea that there’s always, without reservation, a seat at my table, no matter who you are or think you are, what you’ve done in the past or what you haven’t done, that we will make room. I will make room. And, when I realized this summer that the things I do in my life embody that, in real time, on a daily basis, I’ve added a richness to my efforts in coordinating places to hold space for anyone who wants to be there. Even if the work feels thankless at times, when aligned with purpose, it becomes a radical place to live out what we were born to do here.
The takeaway: Your purpose is correlated to the moments that bring us contentment.
I’m not going to ask you to write out a statement about your ‘Big Why,’ because not only is it terrifying it’s also confusing and a ton of pressure to find the right words and align them in perfect order.
We aren’t doing that.
What we will do is look for those tiniest of moments, even if it’s hard and feels impossible and maybe even slightly degrading, for lack of better words. Our purpose is somehow tangiential to these moments, we just have to look.
I am going to ask you to take five minutes and think about the last time you felt the calm thrill of full contentment, the brisk realization that this one is a moment that is worth living. These are the moments that make the terrible ones worth it. Sink into the beauty of that space. I want you to make your best effort to come back to that moment and the highest, most beneficial feelings associated with it every time you hit hardship. And I’m not saying to avoid the hard things, because we can do hard things well, and there are lessons there too. Train yourself to come back to that contentment again and again. I want you to consider all angles of that experience of contentment and see if you can derive a clue to what your purpose here for your one wild life might be. And, when you’re screamingly successful and shouting your purpose from the rooftops, while inspiring others to do the same, come back and find me so I can celebrate you too.
Your purpose is in one of those moments and you won’t have to look far to find it.
If nothing else, Trust in that.
We can spend whole lifetimes searching for our purpose.
When we remember that our purpose is somehow related to those wondrous moments of inner stillness, even if we have to search and unpack a bit, it brings us to a new state of inner richness. When we are rich with purpose, when we know what it is that brings us that sudden inexplicable rush of certainty and calm resolve, we can seek the moments and actions that align us with the joy that is our birthright through living our purpose publicly and without fear or reservation.
And we inspire others to do the same.
