What Self-Help Gets Wrong About Purpose
Trade the exhausting search for purpose for the slower, truer ripening God works in us
So much of the self-help and self-improvement genre focuses on discovering your purpose and then carving out the steps to achieve it. I know, because I’ve spent years trying to do exactly that.
I can’t tell you how many dreams I’ve had about becoming this or that. One thing I appreciate about having a goal or a direction is that it puts something out in front of you—something to keep you moving forward.
But what we believe to be our “purpose” isn’t always so. Sometimes the ego disguises its voice as synchronicity, driving us to satisfy a hunger for approval or belonging. We end up stuck on a treadmill of approval, continually measuring ourselves and our achievements against everyone else.
And sometimes the bias comes from outside us. Parents, peers, even social media nudge us toward their calling, or toward their expectations of who we should be. We follow that road, sometimes all the way to “success,” only to arrive and find ourselves strangely unfulfilled.
No Man’s Land
Once we’re exhausted from chasing dreams designed by our ego or by other people, we find ourselves in no man’s land. This can happen at midlife. Or it can happen several times, as one chapter after another closes.
This no man’s land is a point of ripening. From here, we can reach for another “purpose,” or we can open ourselves to who God intends us to be. Choosing our own purpose tends to happen fast—we jump on the next bandwagon out of impatience.
Or we can practice a little patience and let God do the ripening, which moves much more slowly than the haste of the world. I’m not the most patient person, so I’ve often grown frustrated with God’s timing and picked up and moved on to whatever my ego was clinging to next.
But there’s another option: we can simply sit in that liminal space for a while. Maybe a long while, depending on how much baggage we’ve carried out of the lives we’ve already lived.
The Secret of My Identity
Thomas Merton describes it well in New Seeds of Contemplation:
We do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be. The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done.1
That’s pretty countercultural, isn’t it? Even for me. I’ve always wanted a plan laid out in front of me. Living was a matter of designing and achieving goals. A Ph.D. Two Ironmans. Finding a husband (a goal I never achieved).
The world identifies us with our accomplishments, and we often identify ourselves the same way. But the world also expects us to keep achieving, and so we get caught in the train of striving—always moving, frequently on a path that never quite arrives at fulfillment.
The Oak and the Wolf
Jesus teaches that these identities must be surrendered. A Christian identity is one of service to God rather than to ourselves, an identity shaped by virtues like truth and compassion.
This doesn’t mean we have no choice. We do. Merton points out that God creates things in nature that are completely at peace with what they are. An oak tree doesn’t complain that it isn’t a pine. A wolf doesn’t envy the domesticated dog.
Sure, part of me would love to have been born into a billionaire family, to buy an island off the coast of Albania and build some exclusive resort. But how would that serve God and His creation? How would it show compassion for the sacred wildlife already there? The honest answer always pulls me back to the question underneath all of this.
Living and Loving, Not Achieving
Self-help books, courses, and workshops make our “purpose” sound like some grand thing. And if we don’t achieve it, we go looking for the next book, course, workshop, or podcast to help us.
But God’s purpose for us isn’t about achieving. It’s about living and loving. It’s about looking around and noticing where we’re needed in this moment. God is continually creating, and we’re invited to participate in that creation—to participate in truth, to participate in compassion.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux prayed this way. She had no grand design to change the Church or change the world. She was content with her “little way,” praying over the small things, tending the small gifts of hope hidden in the everyday.
See What Shows Up
Maybe we’re lost. Maybe we’re searching for our purpose—or for a new one, now that a chapter is closing. Maybe we’re trying to discover who we are, or to remember who we are.
Rather than studying what everyone else is doing, or listening to the voice of the ego, we can look around. We can see where we actually are—not where we think we should be by the world’s standards.
Then we can consider who God is. Not who God is theologically, but who God is intimately. God is both loving parent and loving spouse. God is all-embracing love. Let that love become your identity, until pleasing God in each moment is what you most want.
Then see what shows up.
Merton, p. 33.