Purpose Isn’t a Destination. It’s a Direction.
On finding meaning, letting your why evolve
This is the second in a series of five posts, each focused on a single word. Words that shape how women show up in their careers, their relationships, and their lives. Last post I wrote about power. This week: purpose. The word that grounds everything else.
There we were. In our standard spot on the high school bleachers. The whistle blew. They lost. The game was over. And since it was the playoffs, it meant the season was over too. And more than that: it was our last one. Our third kid to play at this high school, a senior, had just finished her final game. My husband and I looked at each other, tears in our eyes, neither of us ready to leave. After a decade of showing up at this school for our kids, cheering, driving, managing logistics, volunteering, worrying, hoping, it was over.
Other parents offered their consolations. Now you’ll have your evenings back! Free weekends! They meant well. They were in the thick of it, juggling multiple kids, multiple schedules, counting down to the day the calendar would finally breathe again. I remembered that feeling. I’d been there. But somewhere along the way, without quite noticing, the packed schedule had stopped feeling like something to escape and started feeling like something else entirely: a source of meaning.
For many years, so much of my “why” had been woven into showing up for my kids. Not just logistically, but intentionally. Cheering them on. Role-modeling what a meaningful career looks like. Earning an income that made their opportunities possible. My purpose wasn’t abstract or lofty. It was concrete. It showed up every Tuesday and Saturday and in every college application essay read at the kitchen table.
And now, quietly, it was shifting.
Not disappearing. Shifting. And I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the word purpose lately. Not in the abstract, motivational-poster sense. In the real, lived, sometimes-elusive sense. The kind that’s easy to take for granted when life gives it to you clearly, and surprisingly disorienting when it starts to change shape.
Do you know those people who seem to emanate purpose? Who have one clear, driving cause that radiates through everything they do: the environmentalist, the advocate, the founder who knew from age twelve exactly what they were here to do? They talk about their purpose openly, effortlessly. It organizes their life.
That’s not me. It never has been.
What I’ve had instead are seasons of purpose. Times when my “why” was unmistakable: raising these three kids, certain chapters of my career, work that felt urgent and clear. And other times when purpose felt elusive, too big, or like it had been named by someone else and handed to me to carry. Times when I felt, if I’m honest, a little unmoored.
What I’ve come to understand, slowly, and still imperfectly, is that this isn’t a personal failing. It’s actually the more honest version of how purpose works. For most of us, and for women in particular, purpose isn’t a fixed destination we arrive at once and then simply live. It shifts. It evolves. It gets disrupted and rebuilt.
Sitting on those bleachers, not ready to leave, I wasn’t lost. I was at a threshold. And I’m learning that’s exactly where purpose asks you to pay attention.
Our Given Purpose
There’s a reason so many women have a complicated relationship with purpose. And it starts early.
From the time we’re young, we’re handed purpose in pre-packaged forms. Daughter. Student. Helper. Later: partner, mother, caregiver, team player, leader, the one who holds things together. These roles aren’t without meaning. Many of them bring genuine joy and satisfaction. Showing up for my kids, being present for my team, supporting people I care about: these things have mattered deeply to me. They still do.
High-achieving women often layer another version of this on top: purpose becomes tied to productivity, impact, title, output. If I’m not producing something measurable, am I even contributing? If I’m not advancing, am I falling behind? The metrics of professional success quietly take over the way we think about meaning. Clayton Christensen wrote about this in How Will You Measure Your Life? — that the same frameworks we use to drive results at work have a way of taking over the rest of our lives too, often without our noticing. His invitation was to consciously choose different metrics for the things that matter most. Easier said than done when you’ve been measuring yourself a certain way for twenty years.
And then there’s the double bind. Women who name an ambitious, self-directed purpose, who say “this is what I’m here to do, for myself, on my own terms”, can be perceived as selfish, single-minded, unfeminine. Women who don’t name it remain invisible, quietly in service to everyone else’s purpose. Neither option is particularly appealing.
So many of us end up shape-shifting. Adopting the purposes of the people and institutions around us. Doing meaningful work, genuinely, but work whose meaning was defined by someone else. And when those structures change, when the kids leave, when the role ends, when the organization shifts, we find ourselves at a threshold we didn’t see coming, without a clear sense of what our own north star actually is.
I’ve been at that threshold more than once. And each time, I’ve had to resist the urge to quickly fill the space with the next thing, the next role, the next version of being useful.
Purpose, I’m learning, doesn’t live out there waiting to be claimed. It lives in the asking. And the first question worth asking is: what do I actually want to be in service to?
There’s No Single Answer. There Are Seasons.
If purpose isn’t something we find once and hold forever, what is it exactly?
Here’s the framing that has helped me most: purpose operates on two levels simultaneously, and we need both.
There’s the macro purpose: your bigger why. Your values, your direction, the through-line of what matters to you across seasons of your life. In Start With Why, Simon Sinek argues that the most fulfilled people and organizations are those who lead from purpose rather than outcome, who know why they do what they do before they figure out how or what. It’s a powerful framework. But here’s what I’d add: your personal why isn’t a brand statement you craft once and set in stone. It’s a living thing. It breathes. It changes as you do.
And then there’s the micro purpose: how you show up each day. What you choose to care about in this conversation, this project, this ordinary Thursday. The small acts of attention and intention that, accumulated over time, actually are your purpose in practice.
We tend to fixate on the macro and neglect the micro. We wait to feel called toward something grand before we let ourselves feel purposeful. But Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the Stanford professors behind Designing Your Life, offer something more useful: you can’t think your way to a meaningful life. You have to prototype your way there. Purpose isn’t revealed through enough introspection. It’s built through action, through small experiments, through paying attention to what energizes you and what doesn’t. You don’t find it. You make it.
This is the shift that changes everything: from purpose as a destination to purpose as a practice.
In my coaching work, there’s a question I come back to again and again, with clients and with myself: “What is this in service to?”
It sounds simple. It isn’t. When someone is stuck in a frustrating meeting, a draining project, a conflict that keeps circling, asking “what is this in service to?” does something quietly powerful. It lifts your focus from the immediate friction to the underlying meaning. It moves you from winning the argument to what outcome actually matters here. It reconnects you to the person on the other side, the customer whose problem you’re trying to solve, the team you’re trying to build.
But the deeper application is personal. Asking yourself “what is this season of my life in service to?” can be one of the most clarifying questions I know. It doesn’t require a perfect answer. It just asks you to look honestly at where your energy is going, and whether that’s where you’d consciously choose to put it.
For years, my answer was clear: my kids, my career, the intersection of the two. Now, as that season shifts, I’m sitting with the question again. Not with dread, instead with curiosity. Because the question itself is a compass. You don’t have to know the destination to start using it.
Joy Is a Signal, Not a Reward
What if joy isn’t the reward you get after you find your purpose? What if it’s actually the signal that points you toward it?
I’ve come to think that purpose and joy aren’t sequential: they’re reciprocal. The relationship runs in both directions, and it feeds itself:
You feel a flicker of joy
→ you follow it
→ it points toward purpose
You act from purpose
→ it generates joy
It’s an invitation to pay attention differently. To treat joy (real joy, not just pleasure or distraction) as data. As information about what matters to you, what you’re built for, where your energy is actually alive.
I started a practice a while back that I call Daily Delights. Each day, I try to capture one moment (often through a photo) that held some small, genuine beauty or meaning. A morning walk. A conversation that meant something to me. An experience shared with someone I love. It started as a simple habit. What it’s become is a kind of ongoing map of my own purpose, built in small increments. The things I keep returning to, keep noticing, keep wanting to hold onto, they tell me something. About what I value. About who I am when I’m not performing anything for anyone.
We often think we need to figure out our purpose in order to live more joyfully. I’d suggest the opposite: follow the joy carefully, and it will show you something true about your purpose. Let it be a signal, not just a side effect.
Purpose Isn’t Found. It’s Chosen. Again and Again.
You don’t need one perfect purpose.
You don’t need to have it all figured out before you’re allowed to feel purposeful. You don’t need to have arrived somewhere definitive, or to have answered the question in a way that would look good on a bio or a keynote slide.
You are not static. And neither is your purpose.
What I’m learning (slowly, in real time, on the other side of those bleachers) is that the most honest relationship with purpose isn’t one of discovery. It’s one of return. You return to the question. You return to what matters. You rebuild your answer as life changes the conditions.
Purpose isn’t a destination you arrive at once.
It’s a practice you keep choosing.
In big ways and small ones, across seasons, through transitions you didn’t see coming and thresholds you weren’t ready for.
When I sat in those bleachers not wanting to leave, I thought I was grieving the end of something. And maybe I was, honestly. But I’ve come to think I was also at the beginning of something. The next chapter of my own purpose, one I get to write intentionally.
That’s not a loss. That’s an invitation.
So here’s the question I’ll leave you with, the same one I ask my clients, and the same one I’m sitting with myself:
What is your life — your work, your energy, your next chapter — in service to right now?
You don’t have to have the answer. But it’s worth asking.
Next week’s word: Focus. Because once you know what you’re in service to, the question becomes — where do you actually put your attention? Looking forward to exploring it with you. Until then, keep carving your path.
I’m really feeling this. My youngest is graduating college in a few weeks. My oldest moved to Thailand. I’ve been unemployed for a year. These questions of changing purpose, trying to find meaning, have been swarming me. I am in such a better place mentally, emotionally and spiritually now that I’ve had this introspective time. I have fundamentally changed the speed at which my movie plays. I have slowed to see the birds and the trees every single day. I have done a gratitude journal more days than not. I am grateful I’ve had this time - though I viewed being laid off as a crisis and was despondent often the first few months, and here I am now ready to move forward in a new manner. Purpose restored.