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Dealing with Barriers on the Path to Living Your Purpose
Often people begin on the path to their purpose, and they come across a barrier that holds them back from accomplishing what they want to. Sometimes this barrier presents a huge weight on their shoulders, constantly reminding them that they cannot make much of a difference after all.
This tends to crush our spirits. Sometimes we have studied many, many years and obtained multiple degrees, or worked our way up the chain of command to finally get to the position we had dreamed of.
Often people begin on the path to their purpose, and they come across a barrier that holds them back from accomplishing what they want to. Sometimes this barrier presents a huge weight on their shoulders, constantly reminding them that they cannot make much of a difference after all.
This tends to crush our spirits. Sometimes we have studied many, many years and obtained multiple degrees or worked our way up the chain of command to get to the position we had dreamed of finally.
Then, nothing goes the way it is supposed to. Plans do not work as intended. The resources aren’t there. Budget cuts. Downsizing. The right talent is lacking.
We tend to have this ideal vision of our lives, and reality rarely lives up to what we had imagined.
Are there any barriers in your life holding you back from meeting your objectives and living out your purpose?
Barriers can come in many forms. They may be:
Colleagues that are too competitive and which do not help each other, rather than working as a team
The lack of funds, without a clear path to acquiring them
Personal problems such as health issues (in yourself or a loved one)
Too much bureaucracy or paperwork and procedures that must be followed (or not enough of them when they should be in place)
Too many demands on your time and energy, leaving you drained
A lack of clarity in what path to pursue to meet your objectives
A realization that no matter how hard you work, you cannot truly meet your objectives, which becomes discouraging
A boss with a different vision, temperament, or perspective than you and that wants to impose his way on you
A complete lack of motivation, probably due to some other barriers you are facing
A simple way to know if you have found your purpose is to ask yourself:
Is this worth doing even if I fail? Is this worth doing, even if it presents me with immense challenges? Is it worth doing even if I don’t earn quite as much as I would like?
Many of us are worried about failure. I say, “So what?” Failure is not the worst thing. Failure will present you with the opportunity to learn and grow and decide whether what you are doing was truly worth it to you, to begin with.
Ask yourself this about your chosen path:
Ultimately, is it worth doing even if I realize that no matter how hard I work, I will never accomplish my goals in the way I want to?
Some people may come to realize that they cannot meet their goals. If your goal is to save lives, you may come to understand that there is no way for you to help everyone. Some patients will die, and there will not be anything you can do about it. Then you have to ask yourself if it is worth doing even though you can never meet your goals perfectly. More importantly, is it worth doing your best and trying to help everyone that you can, even when you know that sometimes it will not work out in the end?
Also, ask yourself:
Is this a field where I can look forward to the great challenges I will face, rather than expecting it always to be easy?
Hopefully, you will get to a point where you look forward to the challenges you will face. You will want to be challenged because, with those challenges, you will only improve your skills and get better at successfully fulfilling your purpose.
Understand that even if you have found your purpose, this does not make life easy, counter to what many may think. Even after finding purpose, people still struggle to be motivated in the face of obstacles. They still struggle with the need to earn a certain amount of income. They still struggle with being uncertain as to whether they are even on the right path.
The reality is that barriers will always be there. It doesn’t matter whether you work for yourself or someone else, whether you have the support of your colleagues or not, whether you are motivated or not. It doesn’t matter whether you are working on your true purpose or just a job where you can get paid.
There will always be obstacles on your path. The question is: Are they worth dealing with? Do you believe strongly enough in what you are doing for all of this to be worth it?
I will urge you to find a field to work in and find a purpose for yourself where you are excited to work on it despite the barriers that will inevitably come up. Find something so worthwhile to you that any barrier is just a temporary setback.
No barrier should truly hold you back from working on your purpose-driven goals.
When you are working on your purpose, don’t allow the barriers to take your sight off your true objectives. If you have clients – return your focus to helping them meet their goals. If you are doing research, return your focus to doing good science. If you are a student, return your focus to learning what truly matters to you.
You may need to return to the fundamentals to remind yourself what you are after.
Perhaps one day, you get yelled at by your boss in front of your colleagues, and it’s not even for a good reason. This is obviously a difficult situation to deal with, but are you making progress on goals that are deeply important to you? Ultimately, this is what matters. Is your boss yelling just a minor obstacle on the path to living your purpose?
Consider this:
Are you working on your purpose now? Have you already found it?
Are you happy to work on it, no matter the obstacle?
Or are you ready to call it quits? Your heart isn’t in this, and perhaps it never was?
I will not urge you to keep going or to quit. Only you can make these choices for yourself.
But if you have found your purpose – then likely this will be worth hanging onto and pursuing in the face of all the obstacles. If you truly do not like your circumstances, there may be other options - you may be able to fulfill your purpose working for someone else or even working for yourself.
Or, if you are facing too many barriers without truly having your heart in what you are doing, then perhaps this is no longer worth it. If you feel drained and deadened, day by day without any true sense of fulfillment, it may be time to move on and seek your purpose elsewhere.
This is Part 3 of 3 posts on finding purpose. Here are the other two posts:
STOP Resisting Your Purpose, and START Living It
A problem many of us have is that we are our own greatest obstacle. We have denied our own purpose rather than pursued it.
Most of us have a good sense of what we are supposed to be doing with our lives, we just don’t know that we know. Years of denying our true self, our true feelings, and our own hearts have gotten us to the point where we don’t know what we were meant to do.
A problem many of us have is that we are our own greatest obstacle. We have denied our own purpose rather than pursued it.
Most of us have a good sense of what we are supposed to be doing with our lives, but we don’t know that we know. Years of denying our true self, our true feelings, and our own hearts have gotten us to the point where we don’t know what we were meant to do.
Here are some tips to stop resisting yourself so that you can actually make progress on living out your purpose.
STOP listening to what everyone says you should do, and START doing what you know you are meant to do
Most of us miss out on our purpose because we listen too much to what other people think we should be doing. Your family may want you to earn more money or to have a career with a good reputation, but ultimately you are the one living your life. If you do not like your job or life, no one else will have to deal with it every day except for you.
Something to keep in mind is that many industries are unpredictable. An industry that earns very well today may go bankrupt tomorrow. This can happen whether we are fulfilling our purpose or not, of course. However, if I’m going to go bankrupt, personally, I would rather have it happen while I am pursuing my purpose rather than pursuing a career that I had no interest in.
It’s not a pretty sight to study and work hard only to hate your life and job, just to earn a decent paycheck, and then have your whole industry go bankrupt overnight.
While working on my purpose, I know that I will be fiercely determined to keep doing my work. That’s because it isn’t just work, and it isn’t just a way to earn a paycheck. When you work on your purpose, you will be more likely to be among the best at what you do, and even if parts of your industry go bankrupt, you will find the motivation and the reason to keep going, and perhaps you will even thrive under adversity.
STOP working for a paycheck, and START working for a greater purpose
When your paycheck is the best thing about your life’s path or your job, then perhaps you should reconsider your direction. Of course, it’s nice to make money, but I believe we should be working for a deeper reason. Generally, you should want to improve yourself, people around you, or the world in some way through your work.
In my opinion, it’s more rewarding to earn money as a byproduct of living out your life’s purpose, rather than having the money be the central thing that you are focused on.
When you know your purpose, you can focus fully on doing your best at this, and the money will follow. I believe people have a good sense for when someone is doing something that they truly care about and want to help with versus when someone is motivated primarily to earn income.
I am happy to pay people for their work when they are highly motivated and working on their purpose. Rather, when they view me as dollar signs, I am not always happy to pay them, and I may not return for their service again. For me, it is easy to notice when someone is unhappy at their work versus when someone is deeply motivated by a higher purpose. You will notice this too if you pay attention.
But the tricky part is - Can you notice this in yourself? Are you truthful with yourself when you are unhappy with your life’s direction?
Ask yourself: Is your purpose shining through in your life, or are you dragging your feet every day?
By the way, whether you like your job or not, I think you should aim to do your best. Many people don’t want to be where they are in life – this doesn’t give us the right to treat others poorly or do our work half-heartedly.
STOP giving up on yourself, and START believing in yourself
Many of us can end up in jobs we don’t like, don’t believe in, and possibly where we don’t even get paid well. When you give up or don’t believe in yourself, it’s easy to take lower-level jobs that offer no path to a better future.
Unfortunately, it’s also easy to get stuck there for life.
If you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t see the point of meeting your purpose because you will assume that you would fail. Or perhaps you don’t want to fail in front of other people – you are worried about what they will say or think.
When you are feeling stuck and ready to give up on yourself, consider what you have to lose by trying to fulfill your true purpose? Nothing at all. Why not give it a shot?
Ultimately, we must believe in ourselves so that we can fulfill our true purpose. The next best thing is to find someone who believes in you. In time, their belief in you will help you to believe in your own abilities.
Note that a belief in yourself doesn’t mean that you think you are the best. It doesn’t even mean that you are necessarily prepared to meet your purpose. It just means that you know you can learn what you need to, and build the experience you need, to go on the path toward meeting your purpose.
STOP talking about what you will do, and START doing it
Many people get stuck in talking about what they want to do, what their purpose or their dream is, and they never actually do it. I think it’s best that when you know your purpose or your dream, you shouldn’t even talk about it at all. The more you talk, the more you will feel like you are making some progress because you discuss your ideas. However, nothing is actually getting done.
Personally, I spend very little time discussing my ideas. I prefer to use that energy on outlining, organizing, planning, and implementing those ideas.
Someone can argue that in discussing ideas, it helps you figure out which ones are good. That may be true, but it’s hard to judge an idea if it hasn’t been implemented on some level. Consider going for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), where you create something small to see what people think of it. Instead, if you want to write a novel, write a short story and get some feedback on it. There is no need to discuss your novel idea with everyone – in the worst case, you may get negative feedback and become discouraged.
Some people may be able to talk a lot about their ideas and execute them, but in my experience, those who talk more execute less and sometimes do not execute at all.
STOP getting stuck in the same old patterns, and START creating the life you want and need to happen
If you struggle to find your purpose, it may be because you have allowed yourself to get stuck in a job you do not care for or in a life situation that you do not care for. When we find ourselves in such a place, of course, we can feel drained, bored, or overwhelmed.
Someone who works at a full-time job that they do not care about will probably not feel energized to meet their purpose.
However, when you are stuck in a place you do not want to be, your options are limited. It doesn’t seem realistic to quit your stable job and then hope to land your dream job, not without any planning, anyway.
The main option I have seen work is to stay at your stable job and then pursue your purpose or your dream on the side. For example, how much progress could you make on your purpose by working evenings and weekends? Of course, this can seem overwhelming, but you have to ask yourself – is your purpose worth it?
Even if all you can do is work on your purpose (or develop your skills so that you can work on your purpose) for half an hour per day, it is worth doing. Small, steady progress is still something.
Ask yourself: Do you want to wake up in twenty years at the same job you can’t stand, and not having made any progress on your purpose just because you made up excuses?
STOP worrying about your resume, and START learning what you need to make progress
When I started on the path toward my purpose, I used to worry a lot about my resume. I used to think – if working for myself doesn’t work out, then I will have a gap of unemployment and a lack of skill development in my timeline. I was completely wrong. Through working on my purpose, I had become self-employed. I had become my own boss, and I was doing the tasks that I had decided were best for my business.
The reality is it took time before I felt like I was making real progress. But as the years passed, I realized that I was gaining skills and improving my abilities day by day. Eventually, I realized that I was learning more self-employed than I would have working for a company. This is because my standards were high, and I was working on a variety of projects that required a variety of skill sets. When I didn’t know how to do something, I took the time to learn it and improve at it.
I laugh now at any concerns about the resume. I don’t even have a resume, but I have developed many skills along the way to living my purpose, as I regularly learn new skills and advance my abilities on my purpose journey.
When you live your purpose, you will learn any skills you need to get the job done because you will be doing what truly matters to you. Whether you work for yourself or someone else, you will be driven by a higher need to make your purpose a reality, and you will be more motivated to learn and develop your abilities this way.
STOP listening too much to reason, and START listening to your heart
Ultimately, I think we all have a feeling for what we are truly supposed to be doing. When you dread every day because you can’t stand your life’s path, it should be quite evident that you have denied your life’s purpose and that this is not the best path for you.
As much as reason is a powerful tool for finding solutions, we can also get stuck in reason. I have often seen people reason their way into bad life choices and causing problems in their lives. When considering your life’s purpose, don’t crowd out your heart’s desires with too much reason.
When you listen to your heart, you will be guided along a much better path.
When you deny your heart, you will always wish you were doing something else in the back of your mind. With this, how successful can you truly be? You may feel like a fraud, living a life that you knew was not truly meant for you. You may always be left wondering – Why didn’t I take a chance on what I truly wanted to do?
It’s easy for everyone around you to tell you that you won’t make it, that you aren’t talented or skilled enough, but how can you know unless you do it?
Many people will tell you, “But what if it doesn’t work out?” This is well-meaning, but if you have failure on your mind when you’re beginning on a new path, this is already a bad way to start.
Keep in mind that I am a highly practical person, and I am still telling you to listen to your heart. Listen to your head too. If you need the income to stay afloat, then keep your stable job, or find the best-paying job you can find. But don’t get stuck in that for your whole life. Work on what your heart wants you to do so that eventually, you can dedicate most of your time to your life’s true purpose.
This is Part 2 of 3 posts on finding purpose. Here are the other two posts:
My Purpose Journey – A Winding Road
It was always a struggle to try to figure out what to do with my life when I was younger. The decision seemed so big and overwhelming, and there was so much pressure to get it right.
One wrong turn, and I felt my life would be ruined – overly dramatic perhaps, but it’s how I often felt.
It was always a struggle to figure out what to do with my life when I was younger. The decision seemed so big and overwhelming, and there was so much pressure to get it right.
One wrong turn and I felt my life would be ruined – overly dramatic perhaps, but it’s how I often felt.
Starting in high school, I wasn’t sure what direction to go in. I thought my science classes were interesting, and I was doing well in them, so I figured I would end up majoring in science by the time I got to college.
When it came time to choose my major, I began second-guessing everything. I considered many different majors, but one of the ones I was considering more closely was anthropology. Others such as biology, psychology, philosophy, and sociology had also crossed my mind.
My brother was already in college, and I told him I wasn’t sure what to major in. He pointed out that since biology was one of my interests, I should major in that. He said that it’s easier to switch out of science than it is switching into it. If I changed my mind later, it would not be a problem for me this way.
The feedback made sense, and so reluctantly (as I knew this would be quite the challenge), I majored in biology at Purdue University. The workload ended up being the most extreme I had ever encountered. I felt like I never stopped studying. Many students struggled to pass biology, and a large portion were actually dropping out or failing out of the chemistry class. I was so worried about failing that I studied all the time, and I managed to get nearly all As by the end of the semester. Yet, I had realized that this was not the field for me. I was not very interested in my science classes – and lab work was agony for me. If I didn’t enjoy working in labs, then what was the point of majoring in biology?
By the end of my first semester, I decided that I should change my major, but to what? I recalled that in high school, my favorite class had been psychology. I had always found the mind fascinating, and so I ended up choosing to major in psychology.
From there, I enjoyed my classes much more. This felt right to me. I felt like I was in the right field.
I had imagined that I would become a clinical psychologist, and so in my second year, I took the opportunity to intern with a therapist. Ultimately, this was much tougher than I had imagined. The therapist I interned with worked with adolescents and their parents. Sometimes, the issues they faced were quite heavy, and I found it difficult to forget their problems. Working with them, I was forced to realize that not all problems are fixable. Sometimes deaths in the family were involved heavy drug use, physical and sexual abuse, and so on. I couldn’t imagine myself listening to these types of problems all day – this didn’t seem right for me.
By the time I was in my 3rd year of college, I wasn’t sure what I would actually do with my life. (To transition smoothly from college to graduate school, I needed to be applying at this time.) Since I did not decide, I ended up delaying graduate school – taking a year off after I graduated from college. I knew that I wanted to go to graduate school, but I wasn’t sure what the focus should be.
I had considered studying criminology. I truly enjoyed the criminal behavior and criminal justice courses I took in college, and I discussed my options with one professor. He told me if I wanted a solid career outside of law enforcement, I should get my Ph.D. I was put off by this, as I didn’t want to spend that much time in school.
Ultimately, I decided that I should continue in psychology and figure out the most practical path to a career. Could I get a master’s and have a good job in psychology without going into the clinical/therapeutic field? It turned out that industrial-organizational psychology seemed to offer that path. (Basically, the field is about using psychology to help companies and organizations meet their goals.) It appeared to be the only master’s degree in psychology that would lead to a good job. Otherwise, I would need the Ph.D.
I ended up taking the only course on industrial-organizational psychology offered at Purdue, and I became friends with the professor. He urged me: “With your grades and GRE scores (similar to the SATs but for graduate school), you should apply to Ph.D. programs because you could get full funding (meaning I would get paid to go to school). If you change your mind later, you can always leave with a master’s degree.”
I took his advice and applied to some Ph.D. programs and a couple of master’s programs. I was accepted to most of the schools I applied to, and ultimately I went to the Ph.D. program at the University of Oklahoma – they had offered me a stipend and fellowship.
While I was there, I figured that I might as well get the Ph.D. I was fully funded to get 5 years of graduate school education, so why wouldn’t I take advantage of it?
Yet, things didn’t go as planned.
After a few weeks in the program, I wanted to drop out – as ridiculous as this may sound.
I started recording how much time I was working, and it was over 100 hours per week oftentimes. I was already slim, and I was losing weight. I lost my appetite, I didn’t know anyone in the state (as I’m from Indiana) except for the colleagues I had just met, and I had begun to fall into a depression.
(Falling into a depression is basically its own story, so I will skip that, for now, to keep things moving along.)
Eventually, I found my way out of the depression, but I felt like my spirit was dampened. I had been in the program for three years, and I was progressing just fine, but my heart was not in this. I had thoughts such as: Perhaps getting into this field because it would result in a job was not the best path. My interests were more in the cognitive area – so maybe I should have just gotten a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology. Actually, I never really wanted to pursue a Ph.D., so maybe I should have just gone to a terminal master’s program instead of a Ph.D. program.
After three years and with a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology, I decided it was time to quit. I wasn’t sure what I should have done instead of the path I took in life, but this path was no longer working out.
To this day, I don’t actually regret any of my choices – as I think they all made sense at the time. It made sense to major in biology for my first semester at Purdue, even though I wasn’t convinced about it. And it made sense to go into a Ph.D. program in industrial-organizational psychology, even though I had my doubts about being in school that long and whether I was pursuing this to have a stable job or because I truly wanted to do this. Then, it made sense to leave the program.
After leaving graduate school, I moved back to Indiana, and I was going to look for jobs in human resources. This seemed like the main path toward a career using my degree. However, the more I looked at job descriptions, the less interested I became, and eventually, I gave up on looking for positions.
My father made a point that was quite reasonable at that point. He said: “So you’re going to give up before you get started?” I thought it was a valid point, but I felt that this was truly not my path. I had spent some time pursuing paths that didn’t feel right for me, and I didn’t want to continue doing this anymore.
I needed to find my own path, and live out my purpose in my own way.
I considered a variety of life paths then. For example, I could become an X-Ray technician, a PC repair technician, a software tester, a video game designer (I actually spent time learning some programming), a crime scene investigator, or writing freelance articles online. Even if some of these required extra schooling or training, I preferred this to getting a job in human resources. Yet, in the back of my mind, I knew that I was seeking some form of comfortable job that I could do. None of this is what my heart was truly in. And the last thing I wanted to do was invest time and money into learning a new field that my heart was not truly in.
The problem was I didn’t know what path was right for me. I didn’t know what job I was meant to do. Basically, I was lost.
Instead of pursuing a comfortable job, I ended up writing fiction for a couple of years. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was a lot of fun, but I don’t think this was my true purpose.
After a couple of years, I realized that writing fiction was not truly what I wanted to do full time. It didn’t feel like a real living. It just seemed like a way to pass the time. Also, I lacked direction – often, I wasn’t sure what to write, or I wasn’t convinced as to whether I had chosen the right project to work on. After working on writing all day, I was burning out every day, and I wasn’t even close to earning a living. This wasn’t fun anymore, and it wasn’t leading me toward figuring out where I wanted to be.
I realized that I did enjoy writing very much, but perhaps I was writing the wrong things. Could I write about something else?
Then I began writing books in the mind improvement topic. In writing to help other people, I felt that I was finally meeting my purpose. Eventually, I wrote books that considered broader personal growth themes. And now, with this blog, I consider self-development as well as philosophical ideas and societal growth.
The long winding road had been worth it. My mind, thoughts, and impact were expanding.
At this point, my main purpose is to help people – and the main vehicle for me in doing this has been through writing. I also strive toward my own personal growth – that way, I can use my lessons learned to help more people. My desire to improve myself and improve others both synergize with each other.
The reason for this post is that I want my readers to understand that the journey toward finding your purpose isn’t always straight, nor obvious, nor easy. Meeting your purpose can be a winding road, and that’s okay.
I find it’s actually best not to hang on too hard to needing to define your purpose in one way. When you don’t hang on to one way so much, you can adapt, change, and grow. If your purpose is too narrow, you may miss greater opportunities.
Sometimes new opportunities arise in my life, and I ask myself if I will help more people by pursuing this or if ultimately it will slow me down. Thinking this way helps to guide me along the best path.
As time goes on, I plan to continue to grow and evolve, but I suspect I will always be focused on helping people, especially my readers. I have figured out my main purpose, but what may change is exactly how I live out that purpose.
This is Part 1 of 3 posts on finding purpose. Here are the other two posts: