Why you shouldn't have a purpose in life

I desperately wanted to find my 'purpose'.

I was inspired by book after book telling me that the only way to succeed, as well as to be happy, is to first identify the one thing I was born to do, and then pursue it with passion.

And I tried. I dreamed up purpose after purpose, one after the other. Each time I found a purpose I was excited to get going. But each time I got near to taking action, I baulked. I just didn't feel like pursuing it.

My purposes had been ideas in the sky, dreamed up by me in my conceptual mind, with no relation to my reality.

We cannot decide on our purpose beforehand, in some kind of planning session. Furthermore, we are a multitude. We can pursue any number of goals and careers and find equal satisfaction in each one.

The secret is to be present. To be focused on the reality that is right in front of us and experience the energy of that instant. It’s this energy that lifts us up, not our daydreams.

If we keep reading the gurus and looking for our purpose in life, we may condemn ourselves to a life of frustration and disappointment, believing that we are lost. This feeling of being lost makes us feel as if something is wrong with us as we look at our peers enjoying their careers as if they were pursuing their destiny.

I had a career that some would say was to die for. I was an international banker living and working for two-year postings in Dubai, Hong Kong and Brunei.

But I felt lost. I believed that banking was not for me. I believed that somewhere 'out there', there was a career made just for me - if only I could identify it.

And so I worked with the attitude that since I was going to quit at some point, I didn't need to try hard. I became the kind of executive who worked just in order to get through the day. I had no thought of succeeding. And to get over the frustration of doing something I was not 'suited to', I drowned my sorrows in beer in the evenings.

And so, at the age of 32 I quit my international banking career.

I never recovered.

I spent the next 30 years trying out entrepreneurship, executive training and retail management.

I never found my purpose.

And today, in my later years, I know why.

I never found my purpose because I should have never been looking for it.

It was having this concept of 'purpose' lodged in my mind that made me believe that what I was doing in the present was not enough, and that I couldn't be happy until I had found some special career made just for me. This is an insidious concept that burrows into our thinking and destroys any chance of us focusing on the present. We spend our days at our desk daydreaming about other places and occupations, but never honing in on any single one. We start to believe that we have no special place in this world, and this leads to a downward spiral of demotivation, helplessness and even depression.

The search for purpose has now led to a workplace culture that says working a 9-5 is for losers, and that the only way to be happy is to go solo and do what you've always dreamed of doing.

I read article after article about how the writer worked in a corporate setting and was miserable from day one. These writers then read an article from a solopreneur about how happy and successful he/she is. And so they dream of quitting and going it alone, making their misery in the present even more painful. When they finally make the jump to being a 'creative content person' they once again come up against reality, and find that it’s not what their daydreams had in mind.

When we stop looking for our purpose and accept that we are a multitude, we can finally release the pressure and start to enjoy what is right in front of us. There is no one occupation that we were born to do. Yes, some people stay in the same occupation their whole working lives and enjoy it. I think of doctors. But these people are not just doctors. They need not be defined in these narrow terms. If needed they can apply themselves to other occupations that have nothing to do with medicine. Many doctors become writers and become the source of fantastic insights about the human condition. I think of Gabor Mate, a physician who wrote The Myth of Normal, a mind-changing book about the state of the human race today.

We are all a multitude. We can fit into many different careers. While I never found my purpose, I learned that I can analyse company accounts, run an office of 16 staff, teach communication skills, and sell merchandise to customers. Moreover, I can do this in a variety of cultures.

What this all comes down to is mindset.

When we have the mindset that we are not suited to most kinds of work and that to be happy we have to follow what we were 'born to do', we set up a system of expectations that are bound to make us dissatisfied.

Today, I know that I could have been happy and made a success of a career in international banking - the one I quit early on to find my purpose. I know that the reason for my misery at that time was the thought that there was something better for me out there. And that thought spread to other thoughts during my day: the work was meaningless; my personality didn't fit that of my colleagues; and the organisation was going nowhere. All of it untrue.

Banking is to a large extent a desk-bound, intellectual kind of job. It is suitable for introverts just as much as for extroverts. And it offers security and stability that few other careers offer. To some of you this may sound boring and numbing. But for me, it is perfect.

Except that when I was actually working in banking, I didn't think like that. It's only now that I have shed the idea of purpose that I can see clearly. Yes, banking is not the only career I could be happy and successful in. But it is one of them.

The way we think about ourselves and our work determines how happy we will be.

We do not have to wait until some magical time in the future when our purpose becomes clear in order to be happy. We do not have to wait until we have achieved some goal that says 'This is the perfect expression of who you are' in order to be happy.

So forget about this pernicious advice that tells you to follow your purpose. Instead, turn inward and look at how you think in the present, all day long.

Do your thoughts lift you up or bring you down? Do they make you hate your job or do they allow you to find joy in the detail? Do they take you away to a fantasy land or do they help you focus on what is in front of you?

You have the power to decide what you think. When you realise that your experience of your life comes from the meanings you give events and not from the events themselves, then you give yourself a power that nobody can take away from you.

When you read articles and books that give you advice about how to think, what to pursue, and how to succeed in life, stop. Instead, make an effort to think your own thoughts.

With these thoughts of yours, you can judge what is right for you, choose how you experience your day, and determine how happy you will be.

You might even find that you can succeed wildly without having a purpose.

Best wishes

James