Finding purpose

“I don’t know what I am doing with my life”, read the WhatsApp chat from a dear friend. She shared her feeling in our closed knit group and almost everyone else in the group shared her sentiment. And these are wonderful women, well settled in life and doing well in their careers. Then why do they feel this way. It is not just this bunch of friends, but I’ve been noticing similar feelings from many friends, acquaintances, peers - younger and older.

One might call it mid life crisis. The crisis is not just in mid-life, but beyond that as well. The confusion one feels post-retirement or the empty nest syndrome once the children leave the house are all similar feeling of emptiness. It is not that they were particularly in love with their jobs, but at least it filled their time and when it is taken away you are left on your own to fill that time. Few lucky ones might have clarity to use the time to pursue their interests which they couldn’t earlier or to give back to society. But majority finds themselves in a state of despair eventually making them bitter and turn into complaint boxes. That definitely is a sad state to be irrespective of your life stage.

Most people in countries like India live an incidental life than an intentional one – doing what is told, studying what is viable and choosing a profession that helps to survive. Unlike in the west, most of us do not have the privilege to take a break year or so to find oneself. “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” the famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher rightly emphasizes the importance of purpose in life.

Finding the purpose of your life, what they call as “Ikigai” in Japanese seems to be the solution for this existential crisis. Did you know that having a purpose in life is so important in Japanese culture that there is no word in Japanese that means “retire” in the sense of leaving the workforce for good. According to Japanese everyone has an ikigai hidden deep inside us and finding it requires patient search. Well easier said than done, right!!

A google search on how to find the purpose of your life lists articles after articles. The problem seems to be real which many businesses are harping upon. There are elaborate “strength finding” methods, the most popular being the Clifton strengths analysis from Gallup which focuses on 34 themes that make up the user’s personality. Then there are therapies like Logotherapy and Morita therapy that helps people discover their purpose. Recently I heard from a friend about a methodology to find your strengths based on your fingerprint analysis though I am unsure about the science behind that.

While the above tools can be enablers, we ourselves will have to do the hard work of soul searching to arrive at the answer. The first and obvious step seems to be finding what we are good at. Recall the last time you felt really good about yourself, a compliment that surprised you or where you felt really proud doing something. To identify our strengths, one reliable input that has worked for me is to consider the feedback received over the years from people you trust.

Before we delve further, we need to understand the difference between strength and passion. While strengths are abilities or talents that come naturally to a person, passions are interests or activities that a person enjoys and is motivated to pursue. The Britannica definition of the word passion is “a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something”. And that’s why its easier to identify strengths than passion. Passion is associated more with emotion and hence will be closely related to your feelings forged from personal experiences. For instance, someone who lost a loved one to cancer might care about cancer research or someone who grew up with a pet will care more about animal related causes. Sources of your influences might vary - a successful relative’s charisma inspired you to a goal, a passionate teacher drew you into a particular subject, a bullying experience or an unfair treatment that is still unresolved in your mind. One need to tap into your own personal experiences to identify the things you care about strongly that you are motivated to pursue the same. And when that cause overlap with your strength, you have found your passion. Passion and purpose are sometimes used interchangeably. But it is not the same. Passion is for you and purpose is how you use the passion for others. Passion is your “what” and purpose is your “why”. Once you have found your passion you can decide how you are going to use it for a larger good and that becomes your purpose.

All of this might be sounding very clinical and procedural, right. I am no Jay Shetty or Simon Sinek, but maybe because I’ve thought of the subject long and hard enough that I have my own common sensical method that will trick one’s mind to get clarity. You have to answer three questions with all the honesty and conviction. I’m not claiming it is foolproof, but it is just three questions, so why not give it a try. So here you go.

1.  If you suddenly became super rich (won an insane lottery or inheritance that will take care of you and your next 7 generations) what will you do?

2.  If you come to know that you have a terminal illness and are going to die in another 1 year, what will you do?

3.  You are on your deathbed; how will you look back on your life?

I have tried these on few of my friends and was happy to see everyone had a different answer affirming my belief that these questions do help in identifying your purpose in life. The immediate answer to the first question for most was that they will quit their jobs. I was thinking almost everyone will say they will go on world tour after quitting. But that was not the case. While someone said they would want to help economically backward women stuck in life someone else said they want to do something to save the planet.

If you notice the first two questions frees you from the constraints of money and time in your equation of life. Money is the biggest factor for most in making life decisions. The first question helps you think of a version of you who doesn’t have that constraint. The second constraint is time which is mostly a self-imposed constraint where we always feel we have time to do things only to realize later that we have run out of it or does not have enough time remaining. Hence the second question hits you with that reality. The third question, perhaps the darkest of the three jolts you into evaluating your priorities in life and your values. How would you like to be remembered as? What are the most important things for you in life? Health, relations, satisfaction that your loved ones are taken care of?

While all of the above methods might help you get some clarity, the trouble still might be in converting it into action. The reality can be best articulated through a quote from actor Shah Rukh Khan whom I love for his wit and intelligence “Don’t become a philosopher before you become rich”.  Yes, many people find it difficult to decide how much is ENOUGH money. That is a very personal question and one’s answer dangles on many factors depending on who they actually are, their upbringing, their insecurities, their life situation. Applying SRK philosophy, once you feel rich enough, you can take the plunge. And till then you can do something on the side towards your passion. At least now you have clarity on what you should be doing with your life. 😊

Ps: One of the points I often hear from parents is about how should we help children identify their strengths and passion early on so that they can make the right choices. Many parents think their kids do not have an exceptional strength and is an average joe. What are they supposed to do? Or even if they have an exceptional strength, not every cricketer becomes Sachin or every singer Shreya Ghoshal.  So how do you decide what to study? Which profession to choose? I think having to take life decisions at the age of 15 or 16 is tough because it takes time to discover one’s strengths and your passion can change with life experiences. While it helps to have a system which gives children a lot more freedom in picking and choosing subjects to study, the least we can do is to not force them to study something that is totally not aligned with their strengths. Another thing we can do that is applicable for children and adults alike is to increase our exposure and keep an open mind in experiencing new things.