How to find your career purpose in four simple steps 

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

If you are lost and don’t know if your career is taking the right path, you are not alone. Luckily there is an easy way to find your career purpose.

Finding purpose in your career is essential for living a happy and fulfilling life, but not all of us have it clear. 

Here I will explain how to find purpose in your career in four easy-to-follow steps:

1. Name what you love
2. Identify what you are good at
3. Find what the world needs
4. Think about what you can be paid for 

Career purpose, not Ikigai

These four steps have been mistakenly misrepresented in the West as being part of the Japanese concept of Ikigai. 

This is a widespread belief among life coaches and self-help gurus, but however tempting and lovely this idea is, it is not correct. Ikigai is about finding purpose and meaning in the little things of life, but it has nothing to do with being paid, doing something the world needs, or even finding something you love.

These four steps aim at finding your career purpose, which is a laudable goal in itself, but they are not Ikigai. Ikigai deserves another post on its own, so we will talk about it another time. 

Once we have taken this little misunderstanding out of the way, we can now focus on what is important: finding purpose in your career. 

The importance of career purpose

Having a purpose in life is almost as important as eating and breathing. 

It is not as important because without oxygen and food you will die, and without purpose you won’t, but it is almost there. Human beings need a direction of travel. We need to know where we are going, what for and why; otherwise, we will, in most cases, enter a state of depression, sadness and melancholy fuelled by nihilism, ennui and existential angst.

As Seneca himself said, “man’s ideal state is realised when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy -that he live in accordance with his own nature.”

Man’s ideal state is realised when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy -that he live in accordance with his own nature.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The problem is that we don’t always know what that purpose is or where to find it.

Religion used to provide purpose to the masses, and it still does to many, but other things, like family, friendship, or one’s job and career, have replaced it.

Ample research shows that many people define their personal sense of purpose based on their jobs and careers. However, most haven’t figured it out yet and are unhappy with their career choices. 

How can we figure it out?

It’s easy if you follow the four steps below. 

I did this same exercise recently, so I’ll illustrate each step with some personal examples.

Step 1 – Name what you love

First things first. You need to identify what you love doing, what your passions are, what comes effortlessly to you, and what helps you enter into a flow estate where hours fly by without you realising. 

You need to name what you love.

You need to do this because your purpose in life should be something you enjoy doing, something you love spending hours doing. 

If not, what kind of purpose would that be?

Case study: me

I love spending time with my family and friends, travelling, eating well, and doing sports, but who doesn’t? 

You need to be more specific and find what makes you unique and what you love above anything else. Also, we are talking about finding your career purpose, so these should be things you could link to a job or career.

In my case, I thought about it for a while, and I realised I love reading and writing, which isn’t very original either. 

I also like learning new things, thinking about new concepts and frameworks, and bringing these ideas to others. I enjoy thinking about the future and about what’s new. I like starting and creating new things, not so much finishing them (that’s sometimes a problem).

Finally, I am an introvert, but I enjoy spending time with people, especially listening to them. I love helping others. 

Some questions you might ask yourself:

– What do you love doing?

– What are you really passionate about?

– What is it that you spend hours doing and think, “where did the time go”?

Step 2 – Identify what you are good at

I love playing football, but I’m over forty, have a knee injury, and was never very good at it to start with, so it is not something I can dedicate my life to. 

You need to identify the things you are good at, the things that make you different to others, the things that make you unique.

There might be things you are good at but don’t love and others you love but are not good at. This is not important at this stage. You first need to list what you think you are good at, and you’ll look at the overlapping areas later on. 

Let’s go back to my personal case 

I am good at listening to others and making them feel listened to (or so I think!). 

I have ample experience as a mentor and coach, and I think this is something I am good at and people benefit from.

I am also good at structuring and summarising ideas and sharing them with others in written or oral form. I seem to also be good at thinking outside the box, and I have been praised for my critical thinking. 

I have almost 20 years of experience in HR and talent management, so I know a thing or two about people management, and I’d like to think I’m good at it.

Lastly, I believe I am a half-decent writer, with a lot to improve on still, but not too bad nevertheless. However, you, dear reader, will judge that better than me. 

I may be forgetting things, and people who have worked with me or know me well may disagree with the points above. That’s why it is a good practice to share your thoughts and ideas on these four steps with others around you and ask them for their feedback. 

I still need to get around to doing it, but I certainly will, as this will give me a richer and more complete view of my career purpose.

Some questions you might ask yourself:

– What do you think you are good at?

– What unique skills do you have or have you been praised for?

– What comes effortlessly to you, and you get excellent results doing?

Step 3 – Find what the world needs

Now we start to get to the interesting stuff. The previous two steps were all about you, now we will focus on the world around you.

Why is that? 

Because if you want your purpose to be inspiring, engaging and meaningful, it has to be reaching for something bigger than yourself. 

It’s as simple as that.

The best purposes, ambitions and visions go beyond our personal interest and are at the service of others.

So in this step, you will have to think about what the world needs, but from your perspective. Make it something you might have a little impact on, not far from your passions and abilities, so that it can mean something to you. 

Here it is essential to find the right balance between things that are ambitious and inspiring enough but for which you may make a contribution, however small that might be. 

What does the world need from me?

Let’s face it, this world is not ideal and needs many things, but we need to start from somewhere, so I’ll start with better leaders.

The world could do with better leaders in all spheres of life. Leaders who are more human and humane, compassionate, live by positive values we can all adhere to, and engage the people around them and help them reach the best version of themselves. If we had more leaders like this the world would be a much better place to live in.

Another thing the world needs more of is happy people who know what their purpose in life is and are happy to fulfil it. 

We also need companies and organisations with the proper purpose and orientation towards positively impacting the environment and their local communities. Once again, we need people who want to make an impact leading them.

I talked above about values. We need to focus on the right values we want our society to have and try to encourage them. There are no good or bad values, but some are more conducive to having happy and thriving societies than others.

All these might seem like very lofty ambitions, but I can contribute to all of them, at least at some level. 

You need to start from somewhere, and anybody can change the world, if they do it one person at a time, and for that you need to start with the man in the mirror.

Some questions you might ask yourself:

– What does the world need more of (that I can have an impact on)?

– What would make the world a better place?

Step 4 – Think about what you can be paid for

This post is about finding purpose in your career, not your hobbies, so you need to find something that can sustain you (and your family) financially. 

You need to find a purpose you can be paid for. 

The traditional ways to go about it are two. Either you find a salaried job in your area of expertise that is also your passion and has a positive impact on the worl, or you create a company along similar lines. 

Now, however, there are many other ways you can be paid, most of them enabled by technology. After all, we are now in the age of the solopreneur, the gig economy and the creator economy, so you might as well benefit from it.

Try to broaden your thinking and not limit it to which companies can pay you a nice salary for doing what you love. 

What can I be paid for?

Having said all that, I am lucky enough to be paid a salary for doing something I love in a company I love and is well aligned well with my values. I am a Talent Director at Sodexo, which allows me to do something I am passionate about and get paid for it.

Still, I do some coaching outside work, for which I get paid too, which is great.

Considering I love writing too, I could write a book and try to sell it, or use other formulas like paid newsletters, but that’s a very competitive market. I don’t think I’m ready for that.

Another thing I could do is create training materials about the Future of Work and the Future Leader on my web and sell them online. As Kevin Kelly famously wrote, you don’t need millions of followers to make a living on the Internet; you only need 1,000 true fans. Getting to 1,000 true fans is still daunting but not impossible in a world where 5 billion people have access to the Internet.

I am not doing most of these things because I’m busy enough with my current work, and the salary I get is more than enough for my needs, but I could do any of them and get different income streams. 

You can possibly do many other things too, apart from your salaried work, if you have one. If you are an entrepreneur, consider these and other avenues to get additional income.

Some questions you might ask yourself:

– What can I be paid for related to my passions, expertise and impact on the world?

– Apart from a salary, what other income streams can I activate?

– How can I leverage the Internet and other technologies to maximise my earnings for doing what I am meant to do?

And your purpose is…

Now you have followed these four steps, you get to the end, which is the most exciting part. 

This is when you sit down, look at everything you have written, and your purpose shows itself to you.

There is an intensifying drumroll, TAtatatatataTAtatatata…

And your career purpose is…

(Fill in the blank accordingly, and you are done!).

My career purpose

Yours will depend on what you wrote in the previous four steps above, but I can share mine with you.

My career purpose is this:

“I help leaders who want to have a positive impact grow and be the best version of themselves so that we can build a better future. I do that through my work with Talent at Sodexo, and my coaching, mentoring, and writing.”

Ideally, you would summarise it in a phrase or two and keep it sharp and concise. 

There will be important information that came out during this exercise that is necessarily left out (otherwise, you are not being concise enough), but you are now aware of it. 

For example, I haven’t included anything in my purpose statement about creativity or organising ideas for others. Still, I know these are some ways I will use to help others grow and have an impact. They are part of my broader purpose now, even if I didn’t have space for them in my purpose statement.

To sum up

So remember, follow these four simple steps to find your career purpose:

1. Name what you love
2. Identify what you are good at
3. Find what the world needs
4. Think about what you can be paid for 

And then summarise it on a purpose statement. 

Give it a try and see how that goes. It should guide your decisions and help you be happier and more fulfilled.

I would love to hear from you: what you think, how it went when you tried following these steps, if you had any difficulties, etc., so please leave a comment below or contact me directly.

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