How to find your purpose? [newsletter draft]

The word “purpose” carries a lot of weight.

The japanese call it ikigai

The french calls it raison d’etre

I always just call it the Big P.

The first time I really danced with the Big P was in 2012 after I had just came back from a career fair that was hosted on undergraduate college campus.

I was still wearing my suit but have taken off my suit pants and was sitting on one of those student-budget-friend foldable kinds of IKEA sofa bed and feeling extremely frustrated.

(TIL that IKEA has a feature on their website where you can time travel as far back as 1950 to look at their old catalog, neat!)

I remember thinking to myself: “None of these jobs even sound remotely interesting to me. I don’t know what the Big P for me is, but it most certainly isn’t this. What the F* am I going to do?”

And ever since that moment, I would occasionally be back in that similar state of mind. And it was always after I was at some crossroad or transition.

And even though I knew there was value in examining what the Big P was, it was always such an excruciating painful, lonely, and dread-inducing experience.

The question itself feels so colossal and important, that I always felt like I owe it to myself to have an eloquent and resonant answer to it.

I fantasize myself asking my brain about the Big P, like prompting a ChatGPT, and having it spit out as answer as eloquently as when the supercomputer did in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when asked “the Ultimate Question of Life, Universe, and Everything” and it answering with a simple “42.”

Today as I’m typing this newsletter, is the first time ever I finally stopped pondering about the Big P, and I want to share with you 5 things I have learned to help you get there.

1. Reframe what it means to find your “purpose”

to be continued…