Purpose, Interrupted: How “Find Your Purpose” Became the Self-Help Version of a Contact Sport...

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If you’ve ever scrolled past a sunrise Instagram post captioned “Find your purpose” and felt an ungenerous lump form where your serenity used to live, welcome to Purpose Anxiety.

Purpose Anxiety is the modern affliction that turns civic-minded introspection into a full-time, unpaid side-hustle.

The phrase “find your purpose” was meant to inspire. 

Somewhere along the way it acquired the tone of a commandment, complete with implied shame for anyone who hasn’t yet spotted the cosmic arrow pointing straight to their life’s mission. 

“There’s a lot of commands to find purpose, but not a lot of support to find purpose,” says Michael Steger, professor at Colorado State University and director of its Center for Meaning and Purpose. 

Translation: encouragement without a road-map is just a motivational billboard on a highway with no exits.

What Do We Even Mean by “Purpose”?

Purpose is mercurial. 

Is it one mighty destiny you discover at age 27 in a Scandinavian hostel? 

Or is it a small, recurring hum — you doodle, you teach knitting, you save one slightly threatened ficus at a time — that keeps you upright? 

Todd Kashdan, a professor at George Mason University and founder of its Well-Being Laboratory, offers a pragmatic lens: think of purpose not as an iron law but as a compass. 

It helps “close that gap between who you are and what you ideally want to become,” he says. 

Useful image: less destiny thunderbolt, more navigation app with occasional re-routes.

The history of the idea is revealing. 

Larissa Rainey, a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, coined the term “purpose anxiety” in 2014; author Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) has cautioned about the way the notion calcifies into a performance metric, calling it “the formula we’ve all been fed.” 

Historically reliable anchors — church, clan, vocational inheritance — have loosened. 

As psychotherapist Jody Day puts it, “Part of what it is to have a human consciousness is to think about our place in the universe.” 

But many of the old anchor points are receding, leaving folks to cobble together meaning in an era that prizes novelty and tweets.

The Tyranny of Big “P” Purpose

Jordan Grumet, author of The Purpose Code, distinguishes between the evangelical "Big P Purpose" (grand, noble, frequently Instagrammable) and the humble "Little P Purposes" — hobbies, neighborhood rituals, pet projects that actually make life feel full. 

“Big ‘P’ Purpose is goal-oriented — it’s usually big and audacious, and often unattainable,” Grumet warns. 

His practical question is refreshingly low stakes: “What could I do that would light me up and fill me up and be a good use of my time?” 

That’s less sermon, more troubleshooting checklist for an overworked soul.

Kashdan nudges us to treat fledgling interests as experiments, not destinies. 

Reading a stack of essays is not a life mission, but it might be a breadcrumb toward one. 

And Steger’s counsel is a balm for the anxious: “In our culture, we are so outcome-focused and process-adverse,” he says. “Probably my best advice is to take your time and be all right not always knowing.”

When Life Makes You Rewrite the Script

Sometimes purpose arrives like a plot twist. 

Jody Day expected motherhood to be her central purpose; a different reality forced a rewrite. 

“I felt so pointless as a human being because I wasn’t a mother,” she recalls. 

Instead she founded Gateway Women, an online and IRL community for childless women — a pivot that turned grief into collective purpose. 

“I feel that to be alive in this time, and to have a platform and to be awake is an incredible privilege, and that is my purpose,” Day says. 

Purpose in practice often looks like responding to what’s broken, not pronouncing what’s true.

Tiny Practices That Don’t Require a TED Talk

If purpose anxiety is a national sport, the antidote is domestically obtainable. 

Try these non-mystical moves:

  • Shrink the timeline. Treat purpose as iterative, not epochal. (a process of continuous, incremental improvements rather than a single, sudden, and dramatic change)

  • Collect experiments. Volunteer, take a class, grow something you can’t kill. See what sticks.

  • Do the small, steady things. Community and competence often accumulate into meaning.

  • Ditch the scoreboard. If your metric for a “purposeful life” is virality, maybe re-calibrate.

  • Ask better questions. “Who do I want to be today?” beats “What is my life’s work?”

Final Irony: Searching for Purpose Can Be Meaningful

Here’s the twist: the search itself generates meaning. 

Steger suggests that “searching for purpose in itself helps generate meaning in life.” 

So while influencers flog instant destiny like impulse buy wisdom, the more humble truth is that uncertainty is not the enemy — it’s the workshop. 

If you’re scanning the horizon for a singular, shimmery purpose, consider this: life may not hand you a headline. 

It will give you many small, stubborn moments worth coming back for.

And if you’re still panicking?...Just Breathe. 

Make tea. Do one small, kind thing. The compass will still be there when you’re ready to look once again.

Keep Calm and Hemingway On: The Ultimate Adulting Survival Guide


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#PurposeAnxiety #FindYourPurpose #LifeCompass #SmallPNotBigP #MichaelSteger #ToddKashdan #JordanGrumet #JodyDay #ElizabethGilbert #MeaningMatters #PurposePractical #MentalWealth #SlowSearch #PurposeIsProcess #DoLessPanicMore

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