What's my purpose in life? It's a question almost every one of us asks ourselves at some point in our lives.
If you're lucky, your mind comes back with a self-assuring answer.
But, if this question is eating up your peace of mind and filling up your days with self-doubt, you're suffering from purpose anxiety.
Purpose anxiety is the fear of not knowing your purpose in life. Over and beyond merely surviving, you want to do something more in life 🤔.
What is that something?
It's a struggle trying to discover where and how you can make a meaningful difference.
Discovering the answer brings contentment, confidence, and optimism. It gives you the power to deal with tough situations with a stride and make the best of opportunities that come your way.
The reverse is also true. The inability to find a purpose can lead to feelings of emotional distress and depression.
Before we get into how to fix this problem, here’s some good news👇
Dealing with purpose anxiety automatically places you on the top tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
You don’t see ‘purpose’ listed anywhere in this pyramid but it is closely related to self-actualization.
That fire 🔥 inside you that keeps pushing you to become the best version of yourself? That’s self-actualization.
It is the desire to reach one’s full potential. It is the desire to keep making progress.
Purpose is an important ingredient of self-actualization (Level 4).
If you’re looking for a purpose in life, it means that you got the following covered:
Good food on the table and fancy clothes in your closet (Level 1)
A sufficient source of income (Level 2)
Intimate love of family and friends (Level 3)
You know your worth and so do others (Level 4)
And that’s something to be grateful about 😇
Now that we established that suffering from purpose anxiety isn’t that big of a deal, let’s go through some strategies to deal with it:
Don't look for one answer
The question itself, What's my purpose in life?” is misleading.
It leads you into believing that there should be a single answer, like ending world hunger or saving the earth from plastic.
Instead of looking for a singular purpose, use the following mind strategy.
Command your mind to rephrase the question: What all really matters to me?
e.g., Being there for my family, taking care of my kids, loving my partner, helping my readers through my writing, or saving a baby bird from drowning in a public fountain!
You don’t need to save the dolphins to have a meaningful life. Making a difference in the lives of people around you is a beautiful purpose to have ❤️.
Don’t compare yourself to others
Comparing ourselves with others is the fastest way to lose faith in ourselves. It’s easy to feel like others have it all figured out and we’re lagging behind, especially when all we see is perfection in social media feeds.
It’s important to recognize our own priorities and define our actions based on those instead of getting swayed away by what others are up to. We have no idea what struggles are they going through.
Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.
— Brad Meltzer
When you feel like someone else’s life is easier than yours, ask yourself, “Would I swap my struggles for theirs?”
Be open to reinventing yourself
During the India-Pakistan partition, my grandparents were thrown out of their homes. They had to reinvent their lives, their home, their social connections, and their entire world when they moved to a new country with nothing from their past lives but themselves.
The nature of the challenges differed but the generations before us did their share of reinventing. If they could do it 100 years back, so can we. We can learn to reinvent ourselves in a chatGPT-assisted world.
We can learn to embrace the chaos. A good start is to break the frame. Who knows you might start loving the idea of reinventing yourself time and again.
There's no deadline
Purpose anxiety hits people the most during big transitions (like finding a job, getting married, etc.) or during midlife:
What have I been doing so far?
Was that the best I could have done?
How come I still don’t know what’s my calling?
It’s a common belief that by the time you’re in your 30s, you should have it all figured out.
The reality is that it doesn’t matter how many years you already lived. Every phase of life comes with its own purpose. Think of it, every year, every month, each day can have its own purpose. Every day lived with a purpose is well lived.
I hope it’s comforting for you to know that there is no deadline when it comes to discovering your purpose in life. The only deadline is until you live.