By: Camden Baucke MS LLP
What do you do it all for?
What’s your motivation – what drives you to live the way you do?
The motivation you might be thinking of is purpose.
Purpose is a crucial component of mental health – although it might seem cliche due to the myriad of self-help podcasts and improvisational speakers who promise to fix your life just by finding purpose.
Finding purpose is beneficial to your mental health, but it sure isn’t a cure-all.
In this article, I’ll explain what purpose is, different types of purpose, and how you can start to find your own and improve your quality of life by committing to your direction.
What is Purpose?
I would define purpose as simply direction.
Purpose comes from the Latin word propositum which means to “to put forth” which essentially means planning your aims, goals, or intentions.
If your purpose is your direction towards your goals and aims, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself:
- What does that goal mean to you?
- What pulls you towards your aim?
- What behaviors will take you there?
- How will you know that you’ve completed your goal?
Answering these questions is vital to making choices that form the life tailored to you.
It leads to motivations for actions and aims that are small, big, and everything in between.
Types of Purpose
Purpose is motivation, and motivation often depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
I categorize purposes by all shapes and sizes, including the following:
1 – Everyday Tasks
- Cleaning your home
- Cleaning your body
- Paying the bills
- Going to work / going to school
- Making meals
- Organizing / Planning
- Miscellaneous errands
- Taking care of aging parents
- Taking care of growing children
This list of everyday tasks represents common responsibilities of most adults.
However your purpose can be different for each – informing their importance in your life.
For example, cleaning your home can feel like a mundane expectation you need to meet to avoid judgment and punishment – or the purpose could be to shape your home in a way that eases you and makes you feel cozy.
Taking showers and brushing your teeth might seem like consequence driven chores – but they could also keep you clean, healthy, and calm you as much as they protect your body.
Each of these mundane daily responsibilities can be fueled by anxiety and obsessions – or they can have purposes set by you that transform them into appealing and fulfilling tasks.
I’m not going to pretend that all daily tasks are secretly super fun – but even the challenging ones can be fulfilling if they are done intentionally.
Keeping a strong purpose for your daily actions can be a key factor in staying consistent when things get difficult.
If your daily tasks are fueled by fear of punishment, judgment, or retaliation – I’d encourage you to seek new purposes for each so you can reclaim even the most mundane of activities in your routine.
2 – Relationships
- Colleagues
- Friends
- Neighbors
- Parents
- Siblings
- Children
- Partners
- Strangers
Intention is important when considering your relationships – what’s your purpose for those connections?
You could be caught in the extremes of selfless or selfish perspectives – you could be appeasing at the cost of your wellbeing, or you might be frustrated that you’re not getting the praise, love, and assistance you’re somehow entitled to (except for children who are biologically entitled to their parents love and assistance while growing up).
Luckily enough, relationships can be more than absolutely focusing on everyone or absolutely focusing on yourself – it can be about the flow between you and others.
For example, you might treat strangers well, but at cost to yourself because you begrudgingly follow a self-set rule that you “have to” no matter what – or you can treat strangers with kindness because it aligns with your values, but leaves room for self-advocacy.
You can also feel stuck with your spouse because you don’t think you could leave – or you can realize your daily choice to be married and find the purpose for why you choose it every day.
Purpose is crucial in our motivations – not for outcomes we want from anyone, but for how we want to feel in their presence whenever we choose to include them in our lives.
3 – The Large Investments
- Career
- Spirituality
- Lifestyle
- Hobbies
Purpose plays a larger part the bigger your investments are.
With big ticket items, your chosen direction will lead to behaviors and activities that take up a considerable amount of your life.
Unfortunately, many people have difficult relationships with these big investments – living with unclear purposes for spending 40 hours a week working the job they do.
An unclear purpose for hobbies or passions might leave you feeling unfulfilled – gatekeeping yourself from what you might enjoy.
Why do you live life the way you do? Spirituality or lifestyle often inform that decision.
However, looking for the “right way” to live is different than having a purpose for living the way you choose.
Your big investments in life, and their purpose, deserve plenty of time for contemplation and maybe deliberation.
That doesn’t mean you need to rationalize why your investments are “right” – it’s about coming to terms with why they are yours.
4 – Season & Life
- Time of difficulty
- Time of prosperity
- Season of Need
- Season of Giving
- Life purpose
This is where things get so big they become abstract – often narrowing down to a theme or meaning.
You can have purposes for the seasons of your life, where you are in a certain predicament for an extended amount of time.
When you’re in an extended time of difficulty, finding a purpose is crucial to weathering the storm and staying close to your support.
A season of giving is a wonderful time to explore its purpose – what is your purpose for helping others?
A purpose for each season of life can be crucial, but so can having a purpose for your life.
However, life-purpose is usually more of a plan that is set, and changes, but is never fulfilled until life itself is over.
You don’t need a life purpose to live – it just might help you plan for a fulfilling future.
The Benefits of Purpose
In a life of uncontrollable events and responsibilities, purpose puts the meaning in your hands.
You need food to survive, but your purpose for making food can be fun, pleasure, and connection with those you eat it with.
You might be struggling with a disease or illness, but your purpose can be to exercise self-compassion and appreciate yourself as you endure hardship.
Purpose is taking control of meaning in an uncontrollable world.
Also, its primarily about you because those choices are yours – you get to choose your purposes based on your values.
Your values are the foundations of what you find important in life – which you can funnel into your purposes for every day tasks, relationships, big investments, seasons of life, and life itself.
To be clear, purpose is not a waypoint out in the distant future waiting for you to fulfill your destiny.
Purpose is the compass that leads to the direction of your next step – guiding today’s behavior to build a better tomorrow.
Like values, living a purpose-aligned day leads to a week of purpose, then a year, then a life.
A life with more of you, what you find important, and what you did to prioritize your purpose.
What’s the Point of Purpose?
Purpose points you to what matters.
It’s not about achieving a personal mythology or becoming a “great person“.
If your purpose is to become someone you’re not – then you might be dealing with self-esteem and compensation, not genuine direction.
Purpose, going back to Latin, means to “set forth” inferring an action – to put your future into motion today.
Purposes don’t need to be perfect and they will likely change over time – don’t let obsessive commitment keep you from charting a new course once you discover it’s where you want to go.
But, most importantly, we can’t wait for the future to be told before we start putting our own in motion.
It’s all an educated guess – but one based on what you value, what would be fulfilling, and what behaviors you can use to start today.
7 Steps to Claim your Purpose
(1) – Create a document and list all the types of purposes (1) Daily tasks (2) Relationships (3) Big Investments (4) Seasons & Life.
(2) – Define your current purpose for each – be honest with yourself and write them down, even the ones you don’t want to be true.
(3) – Ask yourself how you learned your purpose for each, if you learned your purpose for them at all (this is where we can find the roots of unhealthy motivations in difficult life history and childhood relationships).
(4) – Give yourself a blank slate and another column to rewrite your motivations.
(5) – Define the purpose you want for each – it needs to be value driven and create a personally fulfilling outcome for you (something that benefits you or others).
(6) – Document what you believe will be the enhanced outcome of a better purpose for each.
(7) – Give yourself a mantra or quip to remind yourself of your new purpose – keep it short but pungent to keep yourself on course.
This list doesn’t need to be chiseled in stone – it’s a work in progress and it doesn’t need to be perfect.
Give yourself the time and attention to explore your genuine purposes – it might just change your day tomorrow.
Final Thoughts
Purpose is important, but so are you.
Purposes are mental choices, made from within your mind and with inspiration from who you are.
From your reason for living to your motivation to do the dishes, you can claim a new purpose.
It’s okay if you haven’t, be patient with yourself and take some time to reflect.
Invest time in your purposes, give effort to what you value, and offer yourself the chance to begin anew.
Reflections 
Leave a comment