A Practical Guide to Finding Your Own Purpose
What is my purpose?
How can I find greater fulfilment in my life?
How do I know that I’m on the right track?
Uniquely personal and profound questions such as these have no easy answer.
What I’ve come to realise is this: purpose isn’t a fixed endpoint. It’s a continuous evolving journey, and the process is often where the fulfilment comes from. I wrote about my own journey to figure this out in my previous newsletter.
So, what does it actually mean to feel fulfilled? What does it look like to be in alignment with your true purpose?
To provide some clarity through the confusions, here are the insights that have helped me the most drawn from research, ancient wisdom, and personal exploration.
Why We Feel Unfulfilled: The Mind’s Toxic Tendencies
The modern mind is constantly chasing more - more information, more status, more money, more recognition.
This chase often leaves us feeling like what we have, who we are, and where we’re at right now is never enough. That we need some grander mission or purpose.
This state of perpetual dissatisfaction can often be traced back to three main causes:
1. Comparison
2. Lack of alignment with our unique purpose.
3. Disconnection from the present moment
Comparison is perhaps the most distracting of these. Social media, in particular, fuels an environment where we’re constantly measuring ourselves against others, against people with lives, backgrounds, and resources that are entirely different from our own.
Even at the neural level, we’re wired to compare. MRI studies show that the ventral striatum, a region involved in reward processing, reacts to social comparison, even when the outcome of someone else’s success has nothing to do with our own.(1)
This isn’t unique to humans. Even primates show signs of frustration and resentment when they perceive that others have received a better reward for the same effort (2). There’s an evolutionary reason for this. In small tribal groups, we had good reason to be annoyed if someone else got an unfair share of limited resources.
But in the modern world, where we have access to the lives of thousands of people at once, this comparison mechanism becomes not only unhelpful, but harmful. As we compare ourselves to people outside our tribe, who we are not even competing with for resources.
Studies have shown that our sense of life satisfaction isn’t based solely on our absolute income or success, but how it compares to those around us (3). This means you might be using someone else success as your benchmark of an unfulfilling life.
In many ways, our sense of purposelessness might not stem from a lack of purpose at all, but from drowning in external noise.
The key is to turn down the volume on the comparisons and start asking: What does purpose mean to me, and how does it feel in my own body and life?
What Is Your Purpose? Two Kinds to Know
There are two kinds of purpose that we all need to understand and ideally, integrate. One is unique to you. The other is universal.
1. Unique Purpose: Life Mission
Your unique purpose is personal and action oriented. It’s what you want to build, give, or leave behind. Psychologists define this kind of purpose as a having five essential components:
1) A major life goal of perceived importance
2) Reflects an active commitment
3) Has a long-term, enduring quality
4) Meaningful to the self
5) Has a beyond-the-self component.
The key thing here is that this doesn’t just serve you, but it’s part of a bigger picture. It’s something that feels meaningful to you and has an enduring quality to it which requires your active and ongoing commitment.
This enduring quality tell us that purpose isn’t about reaching the end goal, but about the process itself.
Ask anyone who’s reached a major milestone or life goal. Whether it’s publishing a book, winning the Nobel prize, gaining a PhD, getting the promotion. Did they feel complete after the moment it happened? Usually not. There’s often a strange flatness that follows. As Jim Carrey famously said:
“I wish everyone could become rich and famous and get everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”
Once the reward is reached, after that initial high our brains return to the usual equilibrium state of balance. The loss of this high can make many people feel flat and deflated, seeking the next major milestone and raising the bar even higher.
2. Universal Purpose: Simply to Be
This leads to the second type of purpose, it’s quieter and understated, but possibly more important for true day-to-day fulfilment.
It’s the purpose that underlies all others: to exist, to feel, to be present. This kind of purpose doesn’t require a mission statement or a five-year plan. It asks only that you show up fully to the experience of being alive.
This is why mindfulness, meditation, and breathwork are scientifically linked to greater happiness, lower anxiety and depression, as they reconnect us to the here and now(4).
You might find this purpose expressed in the simplest moments: making your morning coffee, laughing with a friend or colleague, watching a child learn, feeling the sun on your skin, or appreciating the natural world around you.
And it's not just about the joyful moments. It’s also about being present with pain, grief, uncertainty and loss. These experiences shape us too. They expand our emotional range and teach us how to grow and move through discomfort. They remind us that fulfilment is not in the absence of discomfort, but in the presence of simply being alive.
This universal purpose isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t get shouted about on LinkedIn or applauded on stage. But it’s real and it’s what many people realise only after chasing external success that fails to satisfy them.
An easy way to switch from goal-orientated to process-based purpose to reframe your own personal goals. For example:
“My goal is to achieve 1000 subscribers to my newsletter by the end of the year.”
Reframed to
“My goal to write a newsletter every week, shaped by the topics people really care about, to help them find greater purpose, wellbeing and productivity”
One focuses on an outcome, the other on the process. One focuses on metrics of status and success, the other on the problem you’re hoping to address.
How to Know You’re on the Wrong (or Right) Track: The Wisdom of the Body
When trying to find purpose, your body is a far more reliable compass than your to-do list or job title.
Interoception is the mechanism which gives us these subtle signals from the body. Through networks involving the vagus nerve and insular cortex, your body collects information and communicates it to your conscious mind. (Quadt et al., 2018).
If you feel a tight chest before a meeting or notice a pit in your stomach before a task, that’s not random. Your body is trying to tell you something. Learn to be more present and aware of these signals.
When we ignore these signals and act against our values or interests, we experience chronic stress, and that stress has measurable impacts on inflammation, immune function, and emotional regulation (6). If stress is ignored it starts to scream at us in the form of chronic issues – gut problems, skin problems, fatigue, anxiety and depression.
But the flip side is also true: when you’re aligned with your purpose, even the hard work feels nourishing. Some people call these moments “flow” or refer to activities as “energy givers.” The idea is the same: when you’re doing something aligned with your purpose, you lose yourself in the process. You feel energised, productive, focused, alive.
To get on the right track requires some deep introspection and soul-searching to figure out what makes you feel most alive. Meditating, yoga, long slow walks out in nature, journalling, all help you reconnect back with yourself.
Questions to Ask Yourself
If you’re feeling lost, start by asking yourself these questions. I encourage finding a quiet space and writing your answers on pen and paper.
What energises me?
What brings me flow?
What do others tell me I’m good at?
What do others need?
What feels right in my body?
What feels wrong in my body?
What makes the process worth it, even on hard days?
Purpose is not something you stumble upon one day and carry with you forever. It’s something you build - through curiosity, awareness, and attention to your lived experience. It changes. It evolves. But you’ll feel closest to it not when you reach a destination, but when you’re immersed in the doing, the becoming, the being. Fall in love with your own journey and keep exploring within.
Coming Soon: Workshops and Retreats on Purpose & Alignment
I’m creating spaces where people can explore these questions in a deeper way through neuroscience, mindfulness, movement, and reflection. My workshops and retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your mind, brain, and body to figure out where you feel stuck and how to find a path forward that actually feels like you. To be the first to hear about these, subscribe to my mailing list below.
References
1. Fliessbach K, Weber B, Trautner P, Dohmen T, Sunde U, Elger CE, et al. Social comparison affects reward-related brain activity in the human ventral striatum. Science (1979). 2007 Nov 23;318(5854):1305–8.
2. Van Wolkenten M, Brosnan SF, De Waal FBM. Inequity responses of monkeys modified by effort. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A [Internet]. 2007 Nov 20 [cited 2025 May 14];104(47):18854–9. Available from: /doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.0707182104?download=true
3. Hagerty MR. Social comparisons of income in one’s community: evidence from national surveys of income and happiness. J Pers Soc Psychol [Internet]. 2000 [cited 2025 May 14];78(4):764–71. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10794379/
4. Crego A, Yela JR, Gómez-Martínez MÁ, Riesco-Matías P, Petisco-Rodríguez C. Relationships between Mindfulness, Purpose in Life, Happiness, Anxiety, and Depression: Testing a Mediation Model in a Sample of Women. Int J Environ Res Public Health [Internet]. 2021 Feb 1 [cited 2025 May 14];18(3):925. Available from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7908241/
5. Quadt L, Critchley HD, Garfinkel SN. The neurobiology of interoception in health and disease. Ann N Y Acad Sci [Internet]. 2018 Sep 1 [cited 2025 May 14];1428(1):112–28. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29974959/
6. Ravi M, Miller AH, Michopoulos V. The immunology of stress and the impact of inflammation on the brain and behaviour. BJPsych Adv [Internet]. 2021 May [cited 2025 May 14];27(3):158–65. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34055387/