On speaking with a good friend about my factoid on finding a purpose in life ( factoidz.com/how-to-find-your-purpose-in-life/ ), he suggested to me that it was dangerous to give someone the idea of a "life purpose" because they might fail at it.
As you might expect, I disagree.
The way I see it, having a single purpose you organize your life around serves several important mental roles.
Probably the most important role purpose has is simplifying life. Normally life consists of millions of different "games" you could play at any moment, each consisting of different rules and winning conditions. When you have a definite life purpose you have a context for making decisions.
This means that even mundane questions like, "Do I buy apples or Oreos?" can be answered using the question "Which serves my purpose more?"
By focusing all your energy on a small number of games, you maximize your chances of success. By spending most of your energy on one task you get that task done easier, faster, and better than you would if you were all over the place.
Since you know what is important, you can know what parts of your life aren’t contributing to your purpose and can reduce the time spent doing them or eliminate them entirely. This releases emotional and physical energy to be used in other, more purposeful, activities.
Back to failure, now. Despite my youth, I’ve failed at a ton of things. I’ve not gotten jobs, scholarships, grants, girlfriends, friends, and god knows what else I’ve screwed up.
That used to get me down. More recently I’ve come to realize failure is a valuable experience. Not to say when I don’t get something I want that I am excited, but I definitely learn from it.
A few months ago I wanted to get this job at Seattle’s favorite software giant. I interviewed and thought it went great, and was eagerly awaiting news as to if I got it or not. I planned on it solving all my financial problems. And so I was disappointed when I found someone else got the job. At first I was distraught. After a few minutes I decided I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day whining and sulking so I made a list of things I’d been meaning to do. I started making calls. I took the disappointment I got from not getting the job and turned it into me working to do all the things I had wanted to to earlier.
By treating both success and failure as temporary feedback, you can make failure an ally. By providing you with knowledge and dissatisfaction failure actually increases your chances for future success.
It is important to review your actions to see if you come across a similar situation in the future you’ll have the benefit of experience to do it better. If you’re constantly learning from your actions, you will constantly improve your ability to get the results you want. Almost no matter the situation you can find something you could have done better. Learn from it and move on.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about failure is that it doesn’t actually mean anything about you. If you don’t get a job, it doesn’t mean you’re a worthless person. All it means is that in that circumstance there was at least one person better suited to the job than you. That happens no matter how qualified or competent you are. Heck, there are many situations where being overqualified hurts your chances to get a job (Try getting a job at Wal-Mart with a PhD).
Unlearning old habits of thinking regarding failure isn’t always easy, it will take work. Do it.
Ultimately here, what I’m saying is that while having a life purpose isn’t a guarantee of success, not having a life purpose doesn’t do anything to help the chances any. If anything not having a purpose probably hurts one’s chances of actually doing what you want to.
