Practical Considerations in Creating Your Life Purpose as a Career

At the beginning of the Life Purpose Coaching process, I encourage my clients not to get practical too quickly. It is important to allow yourself to really dream, so you can get in touch with your ideal career. However, once you have done that, you must deal with the following practical issues.

Your Talent and Level of Development

In order to be successful in your chosen career, you must have the capacity to deliver results. It isn’t enough to pick something you love to do. You also must be able to do it well. Of course, we tend to be good at things we love to do, but this is not always the case.

If you are not looking for your life purpose to be a career, then this may not be so critical. However, for a successful career you must have the capacity to do an excellent job.

First, you must have enough innate talent. For example, if you want to be author, you must be a natural writer. If you want to be a counselor, you must be really good with people. Second, you must have developed your capacity enough to provide an excellent service or product. One client I coached decided that her ideal career was helping people to develop personally and spiritually, but at 26, she knew she wasn’t ready. She hadn’t yet grown enough spiritually, and she needed to further develop her skills in working with people. It was very important that she understood this limitation, not so she wouldn’t pursue this life purpose but so she would pursue it successfully. We decided that she needed to first work on her own self-development and then get the right training. We knew that this would take years, but since it was her life purpose, she was eager to embark on this long-term plan. I helped her explore how she could support herself in a reasonably satisfying way in the meantime.

In my own thinking about life purpose, I have had fantasies about creating a spiritual path integrated with being a social change agent. This is a tall order that requires a very high level of spiritual realization plus a fully developed understanding of how this can be integrated with social transformation. I know that I am not ready for this. I am not yet spiritually realized enough to create such a path. I also haven’t yet developed my own spiritual/social integration fully enough. So even though my spiritual development is progressing and I would love to do this, I know this is not the right direction for me now. I am pursuing another project that uses the talents I have fully developed. At some point in the future, I may decide that I am ready to create a spiritual/social path, or perhaps not. We will see.

There is a danger here. Be careful that you don’t undermine yourself in asking these questions. Many people block themselves from following their true life purpose because they doubt their abilities. You need to have confidence in yourself while at the same time looking realistically at your capacities. A coach can help with this, as can your friends.

The World’s Need

Even if you have the capacity, you also need to explore how much of a need there is for what you would love to do. Since your life purpose is a contribution to the world, it is important to understand what the world needs. If there isn’t a clear perceived need for whatever you would be providing as your life purpose, you probably won’t be successful—in finding a job, building a practice, or starting a business. Even if there is a need, you should explore if it is already being met in your city. Before pursuing a specific career, check to see that your area isn’t already saturated with practitioners or job seekers. If you want to start a certain business, do market research to see how much demand there will be for your product or service.

However, you may be offering something unique that is unlike what anyone else offers. This is not uncommon among my life purpose clients. In this case, you may be successful despite any competition. It may be important to pursue your life purpose knowing that you have something special to offer which will be recognized. Even so, it is valuable to understand how much need there is.

If you pick something that is really needed in the world, people will recognize this and flock to you. For example, lately I have been considering how to manifest my life purpose as a theorist with interests in the areas of psychology, spirituality, and social transformation. I have considered developing some new theoretical ideas I have about psychological and spiritual development. However, I feel that the world is in such a precarious position that I must contribute to fundamental changes in our society. Even though psycho-spiritual development is part of what is needed to change our society, I believe that there is a greater need that I must serve. I think that not enough is known about the process of social transformation—how we could get from where we are to a healthy society. Therefore I have started studying how this could be accomplished.

As I have presented this idea to people, I have gotten an overwhelmingly positive response. It seems that many people recognize how much this question needs to be addressed, and they have volunteered to work with me or to aid me in my thinking. I have allowed my sense of what the world needs to guide my choice of a project for my life purpose, thereby aligning it with something larger. Thus my research project is getting the support it needs to be successful.