I have always envied people who knew their path from childhood, having an innate conviction about what they were going to do for the rest of their lives. The ones who saw teachers and nurses helping people and thought, “That’s me!”. The others who saw cool cars and knew that wrenching on them for the rest of their lives was going to be fun. The ones who have a lifetime of working in one career because they love it. As a preteen SciFi reader I had my sights set on Astrophysicist or Astronaut but those dreams didn’t really have any teeth. On my 13th (or 14th?) Christmas my father got us a computer (a TI-99/4A) and I started to code and never looked back.
In “A Process for Finding & Achieving Your Unique Purpose”, Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman’s podcast interview with the best-selling author of Mastery, Robert Greene captures this topic well (specifically timestamps 5:56 through 31:47). Greene relates how as children we have a “primal inclination towards where our power will lie”, but as we age those voices become more and more hidden from us. He says we are influenced by our parents, our teachers, what’s “cool”, etc. and eventually lose our internal radar and make choices based on things like where we’ll make the most money. As we get older it becomes more and more difficult find that path, but our way back is to pay attention to ourselves: to the times when we are activated and satisfied with a visceral connection to what we are doing. We are looking for the times when “neural energy” is high, everything is easy, we’re obsessed (in a good way), we are in our bodies, we are emotionally engaged, when we want to tell everyone about an experience.
Strengths and Purpose. Over 30 years in software certainly paid a lot of bills and it definitely played to my problem-solving, creative, and memory strengths. But as a multipotentialite I was always chasing more variety, and as someone who wants to help others it was difficult to connect my career to any real-world effect. During the second half of my software career I always maintained that my perfect job would be in the Research side of R&D: I knew what my strength was, there was just no easy way to get there. Outside of university doctoral work (or tenured teaching roles) there are very few places that want to pay someone to just research software ideas.
Missing Why. I’ve written before about my struggles with procrastination and stuckedness. During a recent morning journaling session I dug deeper and realized that part of me is asking “Why should I do this?”.
Brad: Time to write!
Brain: Why?
Brad: …
That back and forth is all over in milliseconds but it’s enough to stop me in my tracks. Objectively I know why I want to write (to help myself and others, for the creativity, and so on) - just the same as I know the why of working out, eating well, and doing home improvement. But that’s different than feeling those reasons enthusiastically, different from having them at the forefront of my consciousness.
Soul Language Assessment. Minette and I are in the process of going through an archetypal tool - the ‘Soul Language Assessment’ - separately and then as a couple. Some of it is a little more woo-woo than I would normally do but the archetypal part has been quite helpful. The assessment posits that our core archetypes and how we thrive or fear in different scenarios are fixed. As such we are better off accepting that fact and structuring our lives around those characteristics. If it’s true that these archetypes are fixed during our lives, perhaps all of us do know what we are as children and it’s just difficult to tease that signal out of all the noise as we become adults.
The assessment showed two main things about my character:
My central archetype is that of a Scholar (remember that dream of being on the Research side of R&D?).
My initial reaction to change or new things is mostly “No”. For the most part this is just another version of the “Why?” question above. After 54 years of living my brain is quick to avoid expending energy on things that might not be important: that manifests as “No.” and apparent laziness.
What’s Missing. I’ve lost an emotional connection to ‘Why’ … the kind that takes over waking thoughts, the kind of vision that just plays automatically when my brain asks why. It’s odd to think I could lose this connection so badly over the years: that certainly speaks to the power of being comfortable. There are some things in my life - the excitement of a new software idea for example - where the emotional connection comes easily. When I was training for marathon and Ironman races there was never a waking moment when I wasn’t thinking about those goals. When I was working for someone else I could hardly take 8 hours of pay without knowing exactly why my tasks were important.
When I started poking around the corners of the internet for articles about reconnecting to purpose, Minette pointed me at Simon Sinek. In his original TEDx talk he details that for businesses the most helpful thing is to start with Why and to lead from a place of core emotions. Echoing Robert Greene’s discussion above, the video below shows Sinek helping someone find their ‘Why’ on the fly by finding patterns in happy, emotional moments from their childhood and adult lifetime.
Nature vs. Nurture, some of both. Can we change our strengths, weaknesses, and life’s purpose? Or do we have to say “this is who I am” and it’s mostly something we can’t change? The Soul Language assessment says our innate tendencies are built in. Sinek and Greene both show us that as adults we already know our purpose although it may be hidden from us. Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether those tendencies and core beliefs were in us when we were born or were shaped by our environment growing up. Our job is to hurry up and get clear about what we are good at, what weaknesses hold us back, and do what is most meaningful to us. Then we can design a life of worth, working on things that drive us in a style that suits us.