What your best experiences can reveal about your life purpose and career calling
“Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.”
— William Ellery Channing
The Search for Purpose
One of the most common questions people ask is: What is my purpose?
The assumption is usually that purpose lies somewhere in the future. If only we could think hard enough, read the right books, attend the right courses or make the right career move, the answer would finally reveal itself.
Entire industries have emerged around this search. Personality assessments, psychometric profiling, astrology, numerology, archetype systems and increasingly elaborate frameworks all promise to reveal who we are and why we are here. There is nothing inherently wrong with such approaches and many people find them useful. Yet they can sometimes create the impression that purpose is hidden behind a locked door requiring specialist knowledge to unlock.
What if it is simpler than that? What if purpose is not something hidden ahead of us, but something that has already been quietly expressing itself throughout our lives?
In the Flow
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying what he called flow: those moments when we become so absorbed in an activity that time seems to disappear. We are neither bored nor overwhelmed but fully engaged, we feel alive and often perform as well as we ever have.
Most people can recall such moments. They may have occurred through work, sport, volunteering, creativity, study, leadership, parenting or friendship. The circumstances differ enormously, yet the feeling is often remarkably similar.
Executive coach Jenny Rogers suggests a simple but powerful exercise. Think of three occasions in your life when:
• Time seemed to disappear.
• Effort felt natural.
• You felt fully engaged.
• You felt most alive.
Rogers sometimes encourages people to identify three or four such experiences, or even more if time permits. For most people, however, three is enough to begin revealing a pattern.
Such occasions can come from your personal as well as your professional life. Write them down and describe what happened.
At first glance, the exercise appears straightforward. The real value comes from what happens next. Most people focus on the activity itself, they remember teaching a class, leading a project, writing a report, organising an event or helping a friend through a difficult period. Yet the deeper clue often lies elsewhere.
A person may identify three seemingly unrelated experiences such as captaining a sports team, leading a project at work and organising a charity fundraiser. The activities are different, yet a common thread emerges: bringing people together, creating unity and helping a group achieve something meaningful.
Another person may recall writing stories as a child, designing a website in adulthood and building a business later in life. Again, the activities differ, yet the same quality is expressing itself: creating something that did not previously exist.
The form changes, but the essence remains. Purpose often reveals itself not through a recurring activity, but through a recurring quality.
The Being Self and the Doing Self
Jenny Rogers describes this as moving beyond the doing self and discovering the being self.
Most of us identify strongly with what we do: our job title, profession or role. Yet purpose often becomes clearer when we ask a different question. Not What was I doing? but Who was I being? Or perhaps, What really matters to me?
The answer often reveals qualities that have expressed themselves consistently across many different situations and stages of life.
This distinction is echoed by Eckhart Tolle, who warns that many people become so focused on future goals that they lose touch with the present moment. Careers, achievements and outer objectives have their place, but if our entire attention is fixed on the next destination, life can become a perpetual state of waiting.
As Tolle observes, the inner purpose of the journey has less to do with where we are going than with how we travel. Purpose is not only about what we achieve, it is also about the qualities we embody along the way.
Recognising the Pattern
Abraham Maslow described certain moments as peak experiences—occasions when we feel unusually alive, connected and fully ourselves. Such experiences are not simply enjoyable memories. They often reveal something important about our deeper nature.
In coaching conversations, I have often found that people already know far more about themselves than they realise. The challenge is not discovering the information, the challenge is recognising the pattern.
One client, an Army officer preparing to leave military service, identified three particularly meaningful experiences. The first involved redesigning and delivering a leadership programme, the second was volunteering as a listener for the Samaritans, the third involved solving difficult problems within a consultancy environment.
At first glance these experiences appeared unrelated. Yet when we examined the language she used, the same themes kept appearing: service, challenge, learning, development and helping others grow.
A deeper pattern emerged. The thread running through all three experiences could be summarised as servant leadership. Once recognised, it became difficult to ignore. That insight helped clarify her next chapter and she subsequently moved into education—a different environment, but one that expressed the same underlying values and motivations that had been present throughout her earlier experiences.
Following the Thread
Joseph Campbell famously encouraged people to “follow their bliss”. This phrase is often misunderstood. Campbell was not suggesting a life devoted to pleasure. He was pointing towards those experiences that awaken something authentic within us.
Life appears to leave clues, not once but repeatedly. The same themes emerge through different jobs, relationships and stages of life. The scenery changes, but the underlying motif often remains remarkably consistent.
Looking back over my own life, the path appears far less random than it felt at the time.
Law. Healing. Executive Search. Leadership Assessment. Coaching. Meditation.
At first glance these appear to be very different worlds. Yet a common thread runs through them all: listening, discernment, development and helping people move towards the next stage of their lives. The roles changed, but the underlying impulse remained.
An anonymous saying observes that “what we can’t express runs our life”. There is wisdom in that observation, the qualities that repeatedly seek expression through us rarely disappear when ignored. Whether teaching, healing, creating, leading, building or serving, they tend to return in different forms, asking once again to be recognised.
From Purpose to Contribution
During my coaching studies, an observation emerged that has stayed with me ever since.
When people ask, “What is my purpose?” they are often asking a different question.
They are really asking:
“How can I help?”
Or perhaps:
“How can I serve?”
That question changes everything.
Purpose ceases to be a self-centred search for fulfilment and becomes an exploration of contribution. We stop asking what life owes us and begin asking what life may be seeking to express through us. Jenny Rogers makes a simple but profound observation:
“It is the giving that bestows significance, not the taking.”
When people seek meaning in their careers, it is often because they want to know how they can give. This may explain why so many people discover purpose through teaching, healing, mentoring, creating, building, leading, protecting, encouraging or serving others. The outer form differs from person to person. The desire to contribute remains, this is the being self expressing itself through the doing self.
Life as Unfoldment
New Thought author Rev. Dr. Ruth Miller has written extensively about human development as a process of unfoldment. We grow, learn, adapt and gradually become more aware of who we are and what matters to us. Purpose often emerges through participation in that process rather than through a single dramatic revelation.
Seen in this light, the search for purpose becomes less mysterious. Life may already have been showing us, the clues may be hidden within our moments of flow, our peak experiences and the activities that repeatedly draw us back.
A Simple Exercise
Before consulting another personality profile, life-path number, astrological chart or elaborate framework, it may be worth consulting our own experience.
The evidence may already be there.
Write down three moments when you felt most alive.
Then ask:
• What was I giving?
• What was I contributing?
• What quality was expressing itself through me?
• What need was I helping to meet?
• Who was I being?
Look for the thread rather than the event. Look for the essence rather than the form.
The answer may not arrive immediately. Yet over time a pattern often begins to emerge. Reflection, contemplation and periods of quiet attention can help us notice what the noise of everyday life often obscures.
To Conclude
Henry David Thoreau wrote that what lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared with what lies within us. In an age obsessed with finding answers outside ourselves, that observation feels as relevant as ever.
Joel Goldsmith observed that a master is never self-appointed. Others gradually bestow that recognition through their experience of a person’s service and contribution. The true teacher rarely declares themselves a master teacher, the true healer rarely proclaims themselves a master healer, the true leader rarely announces themselves a master leader. Rather, they serve, they contribute, they develop their gifts and over time others begin to recognise what is being expressed through them.
Henry Ford once remarked:
“To do more for the world than the world does for you, that is success.”
Perhaps purpose works in much the same way. We do not become ourselves through declaration. We become ourselves through expression, by giving what is ours to give, by serving where we can serve and by allowing life to reveal the being self thread that has been running through our story all along.
