Lacking motivation in your Career?

Ok, so you're lacking purpose? Feeling bored by your career? Having a hard time feeling motivated? Finding it hard to feel excited?

This is the spot where most leadership coaches start talking to you about finding your purpose. We ask about your values, what you want your professional legacy to be, and what kind of difference you want to make.

These can help, but there's a deeper truth that we fail to share that is Equally as important. 

Most clients in this situation believe they need to change the outside world, or they think something is wrong with them. I hear things like, "I have a good job. I get paid well. Nothing is horrible, but I simply feel blah. What's wrong with me?" 

OR

Something is a struggle, so we focus on improving things in that area, and things get better and then they find themselves again feeling blah, not motivated, and looking for something else to change.

So, what's going on? And how do we improve things?

Well, firstly let me share something that made a whole lot of sense to me.

Mark Manson (author of The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck) wrote: "I am living my dream job..., and I still hate about 30% of it. Some days more."

This rings true for me.

Throughout my corporate career there were moments when I absolutely LOVED what I was creating, I felt aligned and alive, and other moments I simply HATED it. (sometimes within the same day)

As a leadership coach, a dream job that I adore, feel deep meaning in and aligns with my core values, I also HATE sometimes. There's some days, I simply don't want to do it.

This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me, it simply means that I'm not on friggin cloud 9, all. of. the. time. and that's ok.

Based on what I can see, that is simply the human experience, not anything to do with my job, me or anything else that's happening!

You don't have to Find Your Purpose, there's nothing to find. I mean where would you start the search anyway, in the local park, somewhere abroad in a beautiful island beach or in the pages of one of the books you want to read about Finding your Purpose?

Let me save you some time. It's not in any of those places, but hey if you're up for a trip to your local park or luxury destination, go on with your bad self. 

As best as I can see it, you really can't find purpose. the best you can do is create it and it's likely not in the way you're thinking about it.

What do I mean?

Point #1:  Let's start with what is purpose. It's a made up concept, invented in your mind, that says, this is important to me, I see value in this.

You can have this thought doing a bunch of different things. People create purpose playing golf, washing the dishes, putting out the trash, or a slew of other mundane activities. They simply figure out a way to make it meaningful to them. 

I play golf to stay connected with friends and get outdoors which are important to me.

I wash the dishes because I value a clean and organized home. 

I put out the trash because I don't like the smell of rotting food.

In other words, no matter what you're doing right now, you can create some purpose in what you're doing without changing a dang thing about it, including your job. 

In my corporate career, there were several times when I experienced long periods of non-purpose.

I remember working with a coach at the time and she asked me, "well what does feel meaningful right now? I know there's a bunch of things that don't feel important, but what does?"

With this prompt, (and with some hesitation on my end... because I was trying to make a friggin point that I had no purpose and needed to go out there and find it), I started to list a few things that still felt important to me.

For the next few weeks, somehow I felt like I had purpose again. Why? Because I had changed my thought around it, the external variables remained the same.

Ultimately, I left my corporate career, but not because I went in search of purpose, rather I knew there were other experiences I wanted to have. There was a different way I wanted to contribute, and so I went to play with what that might be, knowing I would create purpose along the way.

Point #2:  This idea that we each have a singular life purpose feels restrictive to me and untrue (also known as BS). In retrospect, we attempt to sum up someone's life in terms of their life purpose, but that one sentence is never truly a representation of their purpose.  Instead, it's an easy to digest tagline that speaks to one area of their life that we've weaved a thread through and made up it's what they were all about.

Living life in the present never really feels like that for me. Does it feel like that for you?

Don't get me wrong, there are times when I feel entirely in flow. I love to write and words simply pour out of me. I love the process of writing and I create meaning and purpose in putting my ideas down on this computer screen and then sharing them with you. Is this my life purpose? Is it only my life purpose if I write a New York Times bestseller, have millions of followers on social, or fill up stadiums of adoring fans? I have none of these things, so am I doomed to a career of no or little purpose?

If I were to write, publish and sell millions of New York Times bestseller books that made a difference in the lives of millions of people, would that then be my life purpose? 

Would my devotion and service to my children, parents, family and friends then be diminished to my secondary or tertiary purpose. 

Nah, this sounds like rubbish. We can and do create purpose in a slew of difference activities, people, experiences, etc. and we do it through thought, not because we were predestined to come find our singular purpose and devote our life to that one thing. It simply doesn't work that way. 

Point #3: You already have purpose. It's there lurking behind the thought that is suggesting you don't have purpose or that you need to find something bigger, better, or different. 

Simply look at what's important to you, what you love to do, where you invest your time out of pure pleasure - there's your purpose. It's there simply waiting for you to see it, create it, share it. 

Now, if there is an experience you want to have, people you want to serve, an impact you want to make, go ahead and go do that thing. You will create purpose in it, because it's important to you, by definition it's purposeful. But don't expect to feel purposeful every minute of every day while you're doing it. 

Some days will feel difficult. 

Some days will be joyous.

Some days you'll want to quit.

Some days you'll feel you can do it forever.

It's kind of part of living life, my friend, and has nothing to do with your purpose.