Is finding your purpose so very difficult? It seems so when you look at it from the self-centred perspective. “What do I really want to do?” we constantly muse. “What does the REAL ME want to do?” We go to therapy and read books and still get no closer.
But this question reminds me of the wise words that counsel - “If you seek good friends, such people may be hard to find, but if you seek to BE a good friend, you’ll find plenty of people out there.”
For years I used to ask myself, “What do I really want to do…what would I be doing right now if I had no money worries…what’s my true task on planet earth?”
The pattern emerged of trying out various (sometimes extreme) activities and then (after discovering they weren’t ‘my thing’ exactly) writing about them. I participated in catching the world’s longest snake, crossing the Rockies in a birchbark canoe, walking the Saharan Great Sand Sea before writing books and articles about my experiences. Maybe writing, then, was my ‘purpose’. But it didn’t feel like it.
Viktor Frankel famously outlined in his influential book about surviving the concentration camps, Man’s Search for Freedom, three ways we could generate meaning in our lives: to care for others, to be creative (in the widest sense) or to suffer on our own terms - by exercising choice on how we respond to indignity and oppression. I have always found this a useful analysis - but how do you know which of these paths to meaning you should choose for your own life? You may want to be very selfless and care for others but deep down you would be denying your own creative abilities that may have benefited the world in a far more meaningful sense…not to mention making you happier.
Happiness has to be in the mix somewhere. Not pleasure, not the brandy and cigars, champagne and fast cars kind of pleasure but happiness in the sense of a satisfying and energising mix of pride in achievement and a desire to do more of the same because it’s good for more than just you. It could even be unpleasant at the time and only later deliver the happiness - when asked if he liked writing Somerset Maugham famously replied, “I like having written.”
Meaning and purpose are naturally linked but it isn’t always easy to see how one navigates from theory to practice. I see purpose as something you have to refine over the years. At first you only have the rough ore of your early experiences - vague lumps of inspiration - but over time you get used to seeing the odd flash of pure gold. You find yourself reflecting after certain experiences - ‘This is what I was put on this planet to do’.
How do you know you’re not imagining things? Well, you don’t, but over time that memory will remain and for me it was always after solving some fairly defined problem for others as much as myself, that I reflected that this was my true purpose.
But I had become a writer and so problem solving was really just about helping me. I could twist it of course and say the book would be better and the book would be for everyone, but it didn’t really feel like that.
I firmly thought I was in the creative section of Frankl’s scheme, and so for most of the last 30 years, as I mentioned earlier, I have been writing books - both fiction and non-fiction - 15 in all, award winning and translated into 16 languages so I could pat myself on the back for being ‘successful’. But success only brings the need for more success and increasingly I longed for a better and deeper connection to people outside my narrow world - and the world of the writer is narrow - fans, editors and critics mainly. The first two shower you with love (more or less), the last hit you alternately with praise and scorn - an altogether unhealthy diet of attention. No wonder so many writers are such sensitive souls, they simply don’t have enough normal interactions.
Normal for me, on reflection, meant helping people. Solving their problems seemed, now, far more interesting and pressing than solving my own. And the problems I could solve would be their writing problems.
I didn’t mean as an editor, because editors don’t have the experience base that a writer does. Editors never have to handle rejection - they are the ones doing the rejecting after all! They never have to be inspired, or write when there seems nothing in the tank. These are the things I had become an expert on, and I knew I could help others who suffered these things too.
For me most editors are really there to trim and sort existing material. Whether you have too much material, or too little, the editor’s default setting is still to cut and paste. If the material is too slight or too unfinished the editor says no, take it away. It is both easier and a large part of the necessary mindset for working in an industry with a massive over supply of potential writers and potential books. Saying no is what editors and publishers do day in day out. That may be great for their imprint or publishing house but where does it leave you - the writer struggling to get their work out?
I like saying yes. Not the weak yes of passive agreement but the strong yes of being willing to help someone achieve something. Which put me firmly in the camp of being a coach, someone who found talent and nurtured it when others couldn’t recognise the genius or simply the worthwhile potential, within.
When you’re written books you know the dirty secret of writing - books tend to emerge from a hot mess of ideas, obsession, impulse, coincidence, hard work and laziness. Being calm and cool may help get you a ‘deal’ - but don’t later go laying your problems on the editor’s plate – it will just get you a polite return email.
As first time novelist Saira Shah put it, “I wasn’t sure whether to write my book this way or that way but the editor simply said - which way do you want to write it? and I thought - which way do YOU want me to write it.”
The confusion and anxiety of being in the throws of trying to make a book is something I know a great deal about. I’d say it is practically my specialist subject. I became my own therapist to deal with it - now I can do it for other people.
I learned the hard way that being a writer is about learning to trust yourself. It’s a hard thing to teach but a coach is the best person to impart it. An editor can’t because they are so focused on the work at hand, how it suits them and their company. They will inadvertently undermine the writer’s confidence again and again with endless delays and changes designed to help marketing rather than writing the book.
So can I generalise from my path to finding purpose? I think the temptation is always to look for a dramatic solution to finding your true path, (maybe one that also involves foreign travel). I knew I wanted to do more with my life than write books but my early ideas were all rather exotic and clever. The truth lay nearer to home. I think finding your purpose is something you may already be very close to - (in my case I was already coaching people I knew for free) but simply something you have overlooked or take for granted.
You just have to reverse the polarity of the question. Not seek purpose in a self-centred way - what’s in it for me? But rather ask, how can I be of help knowing what I know and being where I have been?
The signs that you are on course are that you seem to have more energy and more time - for everything. You need less alcohol and chocolate and other treats. You get a warm feeling that you are doing what you ought to be doing. And when you begin to lose focus it’s easy to get back on track. Simply ask:how can I be of real assistance? This is the easiest way to find your purpose.
Robert Twigger is a writing coach and author: more information can be found about this at roberttwigger.com
