Finding Your Purpose is Simpler Than You Think

Here’s one undeniable way to discover yours.

Photo by Jaunt and Joy on Unsplash

You’re looking to find purpose—a reason to get up in the morning or a career to fulfill your heart and soul. I know the feeling.

You try this and try that for a little while, only to be disappointed you don’t fall in love right away. “When will my calling hit me in the face and change my life for the better?” you wonder.

Come on; you can’t be serious. No Fairy Godmother of Purpose will ever appear and grant you a life of passion and meaning. Even if someone offers you a fantastic opportunity, you have to recognize it first.

A purpose can sometimes come from natural abilities or a need you feel you must fulfill from early in your life, but it’s rare. You won’t like reading this—but a purpose takes hard work and patience.

It’s not a magical gift from the gods.

Coming from writing and creating comics regularly for many years, I now know my purpose is to educate and entertain through stories and art. I didn’t hike up a mountain to the top and receive a divine message.

I discovered my purpose by doing the work.

But don’t worry, it’s not as hard as you might think. You have to make concrete decisions and stick to them. Here’s how…

Commit to something

Discovering your purpose first takes you to committing to learning and growing in a particular area or career. It’s astonishing how connected we can become to an area we choose to give ourselves to heart and soul.

What are you interested in learning and becoming the best at over many years? If you pick something that excites you and scares you a little, you’re on the right track.

Make a point to practice the skill regularly to improve, and you’ll see how it fills you with purpose, with a drive to do better and share it with the world. When you commit—essentially, take responsibility for something—it gives your life meaning.

Pretty simple, right?

I’ve loved writing for most of my life, but committing to posting articles here on Medium regularly and becoming a better writer helped cultivate my feeling of purpose. Helping inspire others to succeed now feels like my purpose through the written word.

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”

Vince Lombardi

Embrace responsibility

People run away from responsibility like it’s an evil villain chasing them in a horror movie, preferring to escape into simple, non-threatening pleasure-seeking getaways as much as possible.

If you want a purpose-driven life, you have to embrace the responsibility that goes along with that life. You can’t have one thing without the other. Accepting that there’s a price to pay for everything is a part of doing something worthwhile.

If you want to be a better writer, you’ll need to watch less TV and spend more hours on the keyboard. The more you work at it, the better you’re writing will become, then you begin to desire watching TV less as your desire to write grows. You feel like it’s your purpose.

When you, let’s say, become a parent, volunteer somewhere, commit to a relationship, take on a mortgage to buy a home or any one of a thousand other “responsibilities,” they permeate your life with purpose and meaning.

That’s the upside of responsibility no one tells you.

“Without commitment you cannot have depth in anything.”

Neil Strauss

Attract your purpose through action

It’s all on you now. Commit to growing and improving in several parts of your life that interest you.

Even if you don’t think it could be your purpose right now, you’d be amazed by how things look different once you dedicate yourself to them and become the best over time.

When I started teaching art in an elementary school, I thought I would hate it because I wasn’t making all of my money being an illustrator. There were a lot of new responsibilities to take on, like taking care of children and classroom management, and I had to learn to plan lessons and make a curriculum.

Over that first year of teaching, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed being an educator. I made time to draw comics in my off-hours, and I felt like my teaching job was making a difference to young people.

The position grew on me as I took on the commitment and handled the responsibility. You won’t always know what will be the right fit.

When you commit and work hard, your purpose finds you.

Want more? If you’re struggling with making authentic work, click here to join my (free) email list, and through comics, articles about culture, and living your truth, you can discover how to upgrade your mindset and share your creative writing and art with the world.