Do what is in front of you.  Then just keep going.

Let’s all stop dreaming about abandoning our professional paths to go find our “passion”.  In fact, let’s just get rid of that word entirely except for when it is followed by “fruit” and therefore delicious.

It is a word that feeds the harmful expectation that there is something (or someone) magically preordained for every person and if we aren’t busy doing something lame like paying our bills or taking care of our families, falls out of the sky in a moment and says “Taaa daaa!!!  I am the thing you care deeply about and want to dedicate your life to!!”

Armed with this false expectation, we do one of the only two things we can figure to do in order to ensure we are ready for said epiphany:  1) quit our stupid corporate jobs and look for meaning in nonprofit/service/business ownership, etc, or 2) continue in our stupid corporate jobs and feel pissed about it and like we are failing and being cowards because we aren’t living our “passion” even though we have no idea what it is or how to do it.

Here’s how you find your purpose.  Do the tiny thing that right now feels like the truest, most delightful and genuine thing you can think of.  When you are done, do the next thing.

Warning:  What delights you may likely not be what is comfortable.  So you have to take responsibility for listening to yourself.

But recognizing that is easier said than done, let’s apply one rule that you can break later on when you feel ready:  For now, don’t choose anything that helps you escape or check out of life.  So that means no drugs or alcohol in this choice, no tv or movies, no video games, and no sex with goats or whatever your own flavor of avoiding yourself is.  Again, you can break this rule later on once you have your groove going.

But not the goats part.  That’s messed up.

So what are you going to do first?

If you are way out of alignment with yourself, the thing you most want to do may be to take a nap.  It may be to tell a bunch of people to fuck off.  If may be to wander into the woods.  It may be to make a snack.

It doesn’t have to be something you feel strongly about, though it may be.  Maybe there’s some weird cross-stitching kit sitting on the shelf doing nothing. What the hell – light that thing up.  Maybe you’ll dig it – great!  Maybe it will be dumb – great!  Because now you can finally put it in the Goodwill box and stop thinking about it.  See?  Life is already changing.

Delighting and engaging with yourself with honest action moment by moment, over and over creates a new world and weaves meaning into the fabric of the everyday.  Little by little, you are showing up in the world as yourself, which inherently has purpose.  You will feel that purpose and other people will feel it from you (it makes you sparkle a little more than most people), bringing even more goodness your way.

You will also break things and that is just as important as making things.  Think you can’t take a nap because it is 10:07 on a Tuesday?  I hear you.  What if you did it anyway?  What might that look like?

Haven’t had 10 minutes to yourself in 14 years, so that cross-stitch idea made you roll your eyes and say “Must be nice!”.  Well go fuck yourself.  Face the reality that these are your choices, you got yourself here, and the only way out is to stop, so you might as well do it now.  The world will change around you while you cross-stitch.  You aren’t that important.  And that’s a good thing.

“But I have to keep going on this hamster wheel to pay for X and Y and keep my health insurance and blah blah grownup stuff blah blah.”  Do you?  Really though – DO YOU?  Or is it possible that 1) You think you need a lot of shit you really don’t need because you have gotten too comfortable and it is making you afraid? 2) You haven’t taken time to think resourcefully and creatively about different ways to meet the requirements of the (surprisingly short) list of things that remain as your actual needs?  3) You are just being lazy and boring?

Just do the genuine thing in front on you.  Then keep going.  The things you invest in bring you depth through your investment, and breadth through the unexpected ways they lead you to places, people, things, and concepts you’d never have otherwise found.  It’s one little, sincere step at a time that builds a life of purpose.

For a beautiful perspective shift on finding purpose, read or listen to Viktor Frankl’s memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning.