People come to me searching for their purpose the way they'd search for a missing set of keys — certain it's a single, findable thing, hiding somewhere just out of view. 'What am I meant to do with my life?' is one of the most common questions I hear in readings, and it usually comes from a good, sincere place — and it usually starts from the wrong premise.
For years, I believed purpose meant career. I climbed a very real ladder in banking management for fifteen years, and by every external measure, I was living 'my purpose.' It wasn't until everything I'd built stopped feeling like enough that I understood how narrow that definition had been.
Purpose as a 'what' versus purpose as a 'how'
“Purpose is rarely a job title. More often, it's a quality of presence you bring wherever you go.”
Here's the shift that changed everything for me, and for many of the people I work with: purpose is far more often a *how* than a *what*. It's not necessarily 'become a healer' or 'start a nonprofit' — though for some it genuinely is. More often, it's the quality you're meant to bring to whatever you do: deep listening, fierce honesty, gentle humor, steady calm in a crisis, the ability to make people feel truly seen.
When you look for purpose only in your job title, you can spend a lifetime feeling like you haven't found it yet, even while you're already living it — in how you show up for a struggling friend, how you lead a difficult meeting, how you make a stranger feel less alone in a waiting room.
A different question to ask
Instead of 'what is my purpose,' try asking: 'What do people consistently come to me for, without me trying?' Not what you're good at in a resume sense — what people actually seek you out for. That answer, more often than not, is closer to your soul's purpose than any job title could be.
And yes, sometimes it is a calling
This isn't to diminish the real, dramatic callings some people receive — mine, ultimately, became one. But even then, the calling wasn't really 'become a spiritual coach.' It was 'help people heal at the soul level, realign with their purpose, and rise above their patterns.' The healing modality changed. That underlying *how* never did.