Unfolding your professional purpose

Most days, in conversation with my clients, I'm reminded how important big, vague questions are in shaping action. Purpose - 'what am I here for?' - is one of the biggest. 

For some, the answer is simple. They identified early in life something that captured them and so resonated with their sense of self that the question felt fully answered. Some artists, athletes and scientists are 'born to it'. 

For the rest of us, it is more complex or confused. We find something in our youth, and pursue it perhaps into mid-life, but we feel a change. What started bright and clear becomes dull. What fed our mind and soul becomes meagre. Our original sense of purpose can even start to feel wrong. This can be because we grow and our early notion of purpose no longer matches who we have become. Or it can be because an experience breaks our assumptions about what is good and worthwhile to follow. 

The space between the purpose we pursue in early life and whatever we come to later can be painful. In a professional context the transition itself can destroy a career but if approached with a modicum of structure and creativity the transition can be the most fruitful phase of life. 

Changing purpose is a natural outcome of personal growth but in the context of working in an organisation with a singular focus it can feel unnatural and is very often inexplicable. Inexplicable, because the organisation may have no words or concepts that align with your new insight, knowledge or motivation. 

So what can you do? 

Reframing purpose in mid-career has one defining characteristic - it changes from feeling like an arrow pointing to a singular destination into something fuzzier, more faceted, more subtle and harder to express. You may even feel that you have fulfilled your earlier purpose and now float in some afterlife without an arrow to navigate by. 

You need to explain yourself - to yourself first. You need to feel that, whatever it is, it can be sustained, since the effort in pursuing your 'arrow' purpose exhausted you. You need to know what new actions align with some new purpose, but you already know that 'action' will not look like it once did in the comfortable frame of a defined role in an organisation. 

These are some of the thoughts that can distract professionals in their 40s & 50s, to the degree that their more driven colleagues label them as 'losing it'. Unfortunately most firms are set up for relentless action, constant growth and never-quite-satisfactory performance. There is no space for the doubt, confusion and uncertainty that are part of growth. 

What's right?

To think and talk about reframing purpose, and to get away from the assumption that it is an arrow, it is useful to sit with some penetrating questions. 

Who am I becoming? 

For that person: 

• What work feels right? 
• What people are right for me to work with? 
• What is the right relationship with energy I now need? 
• What rewards are right for me in this stage of life? 

Then: 

What do I need to change to make these things right for the foreseeable future? 

I don't ever ask these questions lightly. Depending on your life experience and the rules by which you have lived, simply exploring what these questions mean can take time. Years, not weekends.

Rules for your reframing process

So there are some rules about how to approach these tough questions:  

1. Be kind to yourself. A psychobabble mantra, perhaps, but for many driven professionals a counterintuitive notion that needs to be reinforced. The mess of a mid-career quandary around purpose is disconcerting but it is normal and not your fault. Indeed, I find people grow most successfully when able to tolerate the chaos.This takes raw emotional and intellectual courage. 

2. Talk about it. Losing and reframing purpose is an existential dilemma but you won't be the first to feel it. Mentors are made by suffering their own transition and self-redefinition. Don't assume that someone who looks calmly purposeful, particularly in later life, got there easily. They may just enjoy projecting their hard-won serenity. When asked, you'll likely find your mentors have some good stories to share. 

3. Try breaking everything. One of the catalysts for change is a broken rule of life. You discover that being 'a good judge of character' failed you and you've been betrayed. You find that you're not as brilliant as you used to be and someone has made that clear in a brutal way. Or you finally have to face the temporary nature of human existence. Each experience breaks a rule that perhaps will not serve us well in the next phase of life. Take the rules in hand and see what happens when you experiment with them. Some will endure, others will fall away in favour of something more relevant and useful. 

Deep logic

Reframing purpose taps into a logic that goes deeper than analysis. What you're seeking is a model that makes more sense of your future life and career. When you are able to talk coherently about the work that's now more appropriate to your mature talents, the people you care about through your work, the energy you get from the endeavour and the (non-financial) rewards you relish, they add up to an integrated, durable way of working. Although different from your past purpose, this feels rich, natural and sustainable. It not only becomes easy to let it unfold - which feels very different from a 'pursuit' - but can inspire others who admire you. 

How do feel about these ideas? If you detect a frisson, remember it may be terror (that you may destroy your career in seeking to grow) or excitement (that the next thing could be well within reach). Both are natural and a sign that something big could happen if you let it.