Passion vs Purpose

I really enjoy helping businesses discover their true purpose. Why do they exist? It’s often much deeper than our initial perception, but it can be a pretty simple process to dig deep enough to understand it. Every business has a purpose—a reason that it exists; if it didn’t, then it would cease to exist. For me, it is relatively easy to dig into a business and find its purpose, often closely linked to the purpose of the owner, founder, or leader. Defining your personal purpose presents additional challenges. Ensuring that your personal purpose aligns with your business’s purpose is critical to feeling fulfilled in your work, regardless of financial returns. Your personal purpose is likely tied to your business, though it can be much harder to define.

I have been personally working toward discovering my purpose for a number of years after asking myself the question, “Why do I exist?” I’m not sure that we, as humans, can fully answer that question; there will always be an element of the unknown. However, we can dig deep and gain a better understanding of our existence through exploring our purpose.

The great thing about purpose is that we don’t have to invent it; it already exists; we just have to discover it. It is important that you exist, even if you may be unsure of exactly why that is right now. Your purpose exists; it may just be a matter of finding it or refining your understanding of it. The tricky thing about purpose is that it can change to some degree over the course of your life, generally along the lines of growth and aging.

• Initially, our purpose is to survive.
• That evolves into a purpose of growth and figuring out how to survive on our own.
• Then, our purpose may shift to developing more advanced skills. It may change to procreation for a period of time.
•  Eventually, it continues to evolve from an ego-based purpose to one that focuses on how we can make things around us better. 

This shifting of purpose makes it difficult to intimately grasp what our ultimate purpose is, but it is somewhere inside of you, waiting to be discovered. It has been there a long time, and only growth and time can reveal its true nature.

This brings me to the concept of passion. I think we often look at a successful business and see someone who has followed their passion and turned it into a value-creating enterprise. Passion is an element of your purpose and critical to understanding your personal purpose, but it does not define it; in fact, passion and purpose are in some ways very much opposite.

To me, purpose has an element of servitude to it—an element of creating value that will serve something outside of you—while passion is simply the emotion you feel when you engage in your passionate activities; it’s ego-driven and self-serving. I will now look up the definition and report back to see if I am at all on course (yes, I am doing this in real-time)………OK, I am back! It turns out I am sort of right, according to Merriam-Webster. Passion is an emotion; something of and for the ego. Purpose is intent—it is the why behind anything we do; it comes from a place of deeper connection to the whole.

Let’s look at a short case study. We have two people who love to create art, particularly paintings. They are equally passionate about it and, when they finish a piece, both are filled with a sense of incredible happiness and accomplishment (I assume this is true….…I am not an artist, so I cannot speak with certainty about it!). One of our artists sits in his basement all day, creating incredible art—world-class masterpieces. When he is finished, he continuously feels amazing and puts his work into storage so it doesn’t get ruined. The other artist paints equally well, and when she is finished, she donates her work to a charity that auctions it off, allowing the paintings to hang in homes and galleries around the world for many people to see and appreciate. They are both following their passion, but one is pursuing her purpose. The difference lies in the flow of energy and the decision to share it with the world.

 We have all been given gifts that bring us personal joy; finding how we can utilize those gifts to put value back into the world is what will take us from passion to purpose and give us fulfillment at a deeper level.

I am passionate about answering the question “why”—why do I exist? What value do I create personally and through my business? How does it work, and how can I do it better? 

My purpose is to help others like me to answer their whys and hows and create systems to optimize the pursuit of their purpose.

People are often told to pursue their passions……..I think this is grossly misdirected.  Find your purpose and pursue it with vigor, and you will feel fulfillment and satisfaction far beyond simply engaging in your passions. The book of Matthew teaches us not to bury our talents but to share them with the world and make it a better place.

Thanks for reading! I hope you get some value out of this and share it with someone else who might also benefit. You can help me pursue my purpose! God Bless!