#21

Why your career is central to finding your purpose

Finding your purpose in life often doesn’t happen by accident. For a lot of us it’s, Ikigai - that sense of meaning that makes life feel worth waking up for, gets discovered through work. Not because work is everything, but because as men it’s where effort, skill, service, and time collide. Your career therefore becomes your training ground.

First, let’s clear something up

Ikigai isn’t about you finding the magical land of “find your passion and you’ll never work a day in your life.” That idea has done more harm than good and to be honest it’s for kids.

For most men, passion comes after competence, not before it. You don’t find meaning by waiting, you find it by engaging and taking charge of your life.

Why careers are such a common path to purpose

A career naturally forces you into four things that meaning requires:

1. Responsibility

Your job - whether it be a 9-5, or you running your business, requires you to carry weight on your shoulders. The deadlines, expectations and people depending on you means that you have responsibility. This forces you to escape your comfort zone and grow. This notion of trying to avoid responsibility or pressure needs to go. It’s our duty.

2. Skill development

To rise to the top in your career, and to keep competitive in the job market you have to continuously up-skill. Especially today, where technologies like AI are changing the composition of work across most industries. As you improve at something, your confidence rises. This confidence creates momentum and that momentum creates pride.

3. Contribution

Pouring into something that is bigger than yourself is key. In most jobs you will be solving real problems, and when you see your work helping someone else, meaning starts to show up in you life.

4. Identity under pressure

Your work tests you, exposes weaknesses and sharpens your strengths. In the midst of this, over time, you learn who you actually are - not who you thought you were. This is why so many men don’t “find themselves” on retreats or holidays, but during long seasons of showing up when it’s hard

The mistake most men make

If you are treating work as something to escape instead of something to extract meaning from, then you are doing it wrong. Asking questions like:

“Is this my passion?”
“Is this aligned with my purpose?”
“Shouldn’t this feel more exciting?”

Means that you are still in a fantasy land. Snap out of it!

Better questions for you to ask are:

“What can I get good at here?”
“Who does this help?”
“What skills will this give future me?”

Your purpose often reveals itself by connecting the dots looking backwards, not when you’re in the moment.

How purpose actually forms in a career

The formation of your purpose, usually follows this sequence:

Interest → Competence → Respect → Meaning

You start by being mildly curious. Then you put in the reps, and over time people start to trust you. You then realize that your work matters, and in this moment this is when you will get the “aha moment”, everything will finally click. This won’t be a fireworks moment, just quiet alignment, step by step, over time.

When work isn’t your forever thing

An important point to note. Finding purpose through your career doesn’t mean staying in one job for 30 years. Your role in a company is a chapter, not the whole book. But without the chapter, the rest of the story will fall apart.

If you lock in, each of the roles in your career can:

Fund your family
Build your discipline
Teach leverage, leadership, or mastery

When weaved together in a meaningful way, these roles provide the inertia you need to put you on the path towards your purpose. You don’t have to live for work, that is not the message here, but you have to treat it as a major component in finding your meaning in this world.