\u201cFind your purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has become such common advice that few question it. But rather than inspirational, it can feel like a burden. How do I go about finding this, and what if I never do?<\/p>\n
This is \u201cpurpose anxiety\u201d \u2014 the gnawing sense that one\u2019s life should have an overarching purpose, but it\u2019s unclear how to discover it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of commands to find purpose, but not a lot of support to find purpose,\u201d said Michael Steger, a professor at Colorado State University and director of its Centre for Meaning and Purpose.<\/p>\n
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS ADHow do you define \u2018purpose\u2019?<\/p>\n
The definition of purpose can be elastic. Can you have only one purpose, or can you have many? Does it have to involve service to others, or can it be something that consistently gives only you great pleasure and meaning?<\/p>\n
Think of purpose not as something that governs behaviour but as a compass you can choose to follow, helping direct your energies toward a central life aim, says Todd Kashdan, a professor at George Mason University and founder of its Well-Being Laboratory. A sense of purpose can help \u201cclose that gap between who you are and what you ideally want to become,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
People have always searched for life\u2019s meaning and purpose. Pixabay<\/p>\n
People can lead content, meaningful lives without ever articulating a sense of purpose, he emphasised.<\/p>\n
There are many legitimate reasons for the advice given by parents, teachers, mentors, and an array of online gurus that finding purpose is key to a good life. Research has shown that people who more strongly feel a sense of purpose tend to be physically and mentally healthier.<\/p>\n
But the word has become so weighty that finding a purpose has, for many, become a source of angst.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cpurpose anxiety\u201d appears to have been coined in 2014 by a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, Larissa Rainey, and caught on. Author Elizabeth Gilbert, for example, best known for her memoir \u201cEat, Pray, Love,\u201d has spoken frequently about an unhealthy obsession with a \u201cpurposeful life.\u201d It is, she said in one interview, \u201cthe formula we\u2019ve all been fed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the old guideposts are gone<\/p>\n
People have always searched for life\u2019s meaning and purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of what it is to have a human consciousness is to think about our place in the universe,\u201d said Jody Day, a psychotherapist and author of \u201cLiving the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future without Children.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut a lot of the places that we\u2019ve naturally found meaning in our culture in, say, the last hundred years are falling away.\u201d<\/p>\n
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD<\/p>\n
Religion, for instance, often offered purpose and meaning to believers. But those who identify as religious have dropped significantly over the years (although that appears to be levelling off recently, according to a 2025 survey by the Pew Research Centre).<\/p>\n
Other people traditionally found purpose in ensuring that their children had a better life than they did. Many don\u2019t have confidence that will be the case anymore, Day said.<\/p>\n
As Steger said, \u201cNow we\u2019re stuck trying to do the harder thing, which is, one by one, figure out everything in the universe and how we fit.”<\/p>\n
Take your time, and other advice for alleviating \u2018purpose anxiety\u2019<\/p>\n
You might begin, Steger said, by realising that you don\u2019t have to pin down a purpose immediately; searching for purpose in itself helps generate meaning in life.<\/p>\n
It entails \u201cunderstanding who you are and what you have to work with, understanding what you care about, what you\u2019d like to see be better, either in yourself or in the world\u201d, and then figuring out if you can make an impact, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our culture, we are so outcome-focused and process-adverse,\u201d he said. \u201cProbably my best advice is to take your time and be all right, not always knowing.\u201d<\/p>\n
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS ADLook to hobbies, jobs and community involvement<\/p>\n
For Jordan Grumet, author of \u201cThe Purpose Code,\u201d there is big \u201cP\u201d Purpose and little \u201cp\u201d purpose, and too many people stress about finding the first and ignore the second.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig \u2018P\u2019 Purpose is goal-oriented \u2014 it\u2019s usually big and audacious, and often unattainable,\u201d he said. Social media, he said, \u201cis full of people trying to voice that version of purpose on you so that they can make money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not all agree that hobbies and passions are the same as purpose. Pixabay<\/p>\n
Better, he said, to focus on little \u201cp\u201d purpose and pursuits that some might simply call hobbies \u2014 gardening, singing, collecting baseball cards. Or it can be found in a job or volunteering.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat could I do that would light me up and fill me up and be a good use of my time?\u201d Grumet said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just for self-improvement, he said. When people do something they love, they attract people to them, which can help create communities.<\/p>\n
Not all agree that hobbies and passions are the same as purpose. Reading books, Kashdan said, isn\u2019t a purpose in itself but can be a tool for discovering it. \u201cThey\u2019re just like fledgling seeds of, hey, something might be there that you might want to pursue with more depth and more gravity in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS ADWhen life throws you a curveball<\/p>\n
Sometimes a traumatic event can change or create one\u2019s purpose in life. For example, Day, the psychotherapist and author, assumed that her purpose would be to raise a family, but by her early 40s, she knew she would not be able to have children.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt so pointless as a human being because I wasn\u2019t a mother,\u201d she said, recalling the grief she felt.<\/p>\n
But she ended up creating an online community for childless women called Gateway Women.com. In rural Ireland, where she lives, she is also helping build an in-person group that brings people without children together as they age.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel that to be alive in this time, and to have a platform and to be awake is an incredible privilege, and that is my purpose,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFind your purpose.\u201d It has become such common advice that few question it. But rather than inspirational, it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,62738,62741,62742,84,393,394,62737,62736,62740,62739,62735],"class_list":{"0":"post-111019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-colorado-state-university","11":"tag-finding-purpose","12":"tag-george-mason-university","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-mentalhealth","16":"tag-michael-steger","17":"tag-purpose-anxiety","18":"tag-sense-of-purpose","19":"tag-todd-kashdan","20":"tag-what-is-purpose-anxiety"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}