How to choose your career based on the right kind of purpose

11/08/2024, 4:53 AM
fastcompany.com

It’s not surprising that I suffered from burnout and eventually left the practice of medicine. Only in retrospect can I see clearly that I had built a life around the wrong-sized purpose. The signs were there along the way, but I chose to ignore them. The reasons are many, but the outcome was always the same. I spent much time thinking about the destination and very little about the path I was taking to get there. That path was much less gratifying than I hoped it would be. I simply didn’t enjoy being a doctor.

I had failed to recognize that the destination is in fact the way, and the path is more important than its end point. I was doomed to fail from the beginning.

These shortcomings started from a very young age. Somehow, as young children often do, I decided that my father’s unexpected death was my fault. As silly as it sounds, this belief drove me to co-opt his purpose in life. His dream was to delve deeply into medicine and help people, and I felt that I could undo the existential tragedy of his death by taking his place. It was only decades later, while skimming through some of his medical notes left over in my mom’s attic, that I realized how different we truly were.

My dad had an innate love of the delicacy and intricacy of the human form and how it goes wrong. I didn’t. He thought in extremely three-dimensional terms and was an excellent photographer. I had a learning disability and would often draw words upside-down and backwards. Conversely, I loved deep conversations, and baseball cards, and writing poetry. My father had no interest in those things.

Becoming a doctor totally fulfilled my father’s sense of purpose and he loved the moment-to-moment work required to accomplish the goal of helping his fellow man. Unsurprisingly, even when things got tough, his deep interest and love carried him through. Trying to fix the cosmic tragedy of his death, I saw the end goal of helping my fellow man as laudable; but I was actually ill-suited to the day-to-day activities required to meet that goal.

Don’t get me wrong: I was able to overcome my discomfort and eventually do exactly as I had planned—walk in my father’s shoes. But the blisters that formed on my heels in doing so never callused over. They festered and bled until the pain eventually became unbearable.

I was not made for such work. So why did I keep on pursuing it?

It took many years and quite a bit of emotional heartache to reach the conclusion that I hope to convince you of now: When it comes to purpose, bigger is not better.

THE FALLACY OF “BIG P” PURPOSE

Purpose has two separate and distinct entities. Most of our anxiety actually stems from what I call “big P” Purpose. This is the same kind of purpose that led to my yearning to become a doctor. Big P Purpose is overly focused on outcomes.

“Little P” purpose, on the other hand, is the true creator of the wonderful health and longevity benefits that all those researchers have proven with their studies. It focuses not on the destination or the outcome, but rather on the path or process. Because of this, it lacks glamour. It is even considered downright unsexy. And most people do whatever it takes to avoid this petite purpose in favor of doing something they believe will be more substantial.

Why do we do this?

Before getting into a much more granular discussion about what defines the different types of purpose, I want to theorize on why we are programmed to pursue big P Purpose and eschew little P purpose. Why do we fall for this fallacy?

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” This quote—incorrectly attributed to Walt Disney—sums up the ethos of much of modern-day America. All you have to do is have big dreams to eventually do big things. Right?

Yet there are many people who dream of being Michael Jordan and have none of the skill, ability, or genetic attributes (e.g., height) to get there. No matter how much you want to be an inventor or businessperson, you might not have the intellectual capacities. And if your dream is to be the first human to time travel, at present, it seems your wishes will go unfulfilled.

The problem with such messaging is that it places too much importance on big audacious dreams of challenging tasks instead of being thoughtful about what actually fits a person’s personality. Not everyone has to hit a home run every time at bat—and, more importantly, most people will fail if that is their intention. Not everyone’s purpose needs to be outsized.

Ironically, the true source of the quote is a woman named Sheralyn Silverstein, who created the copy as part of a recruiting tool for General Electric (GE) to convince more young students to “follow their passion” in math and science and eventually work for GE. She wasn’t telling kids to become astronauts or neurosurgeons. Her message was much more mundane: become an engineer and help our company make more money.

We define ourselves more by our accomplishments than we do our passions. Furthermore, we are more likely to cling to those things we are good at than those we love.

We want to convince the world that we are pursuing purpose with a big “P,” and we have the accomplishments to prove it.

This pressure ends up creating more anxiety than joy. In fact, I often hear my dying patients complain that they spent too much time on their big audacious goals, to the detriment of their own happiness and the enjoyment of what they already had.

Little P purpose embraces an abundance mentality. There is room for everyone—I mean everyone—to pursue that which brings them inner joy and happiness. This pursuit will never rely on whether someone else is succeeding or failing. It will never be limited by some resource that another human being has already gobbled up. Little P purpose centers on you as an individual. It is truly unique in the sense that, while many other people may have your same sense of purpose, how you fulfill that purpose and which activities you choose in pursuing it are all your own.