Purpose, Passion, and Meaningful Work

All right, and welcome back. So on this episode, I want to talk about purpose and passion, two huge topics for us men.

Spend any time in the men's work world, and you're going to hear a lot about purpose and how important it is for us men to know our purpose, to have a sense of direction in our lives. And I agree with. I think when we don't have a sense of purpose as men, we often get depressed and we feel stuck and we don't feel very engaged with our lives. The trick with purpose is it's often not quite as simple as we might want to make it out to be.

Right. I think for a lot of us, there's this kind of fantasy ideal of, well, I'm just going to find my deepest purpose, my deepest passion, and do that, and my whole life's going to be awesome. I'm going to make money, I'm going to be serving. It's going to be fantastic. And that is definitely possible in experience. I think it's actually a lot more complex than that, and that's part of what I really want to cover here today. So, for one, in my journey and in working with men, I've often found purpose is less something we find, and.

And it's something more that's revealed to us through having experiences in life. We start to kind of be guided towards some place where we can serve, where we can give, where we can interact with the world in a meaningful way. I've also found that our deepest purpose often is connected to our deepest pain. Right. What is the thing with. We've been challenged by. In our life or growing up, in figuring that out for ourselves, we often have a huge incentive to support other people in figuring that out for themselves.

And we know firsthand the pain of whatever that challenge might be. So we're really good at understanding it and being with it and other people and hopefully helping them move through that same challenge or pain or. Or gift or artistry in some easier fashion. Now, the other major thing I really wanted to tie in here is this trap. A lot of men in myself, I include in this, have gotten stuck in of. Well, to be living my purpose, it has to also be how I'm making my money in the world.

And the truth Is it is amazing when those two things are aligned, but it's also not necessary and it's not really required to have that level of fulfillment. And oftentimes what I found is the most painful place to be in for men. It certainly was for me was when I was doing work I knew wasn't my deepest purpose, I wasn't fully expressed, I wasn't being fully used in the ways I.

I thought I could be to serve the planet, to serve the world, to serve my relationships. And at the same time, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know what my purpose or my passion was. So I felt very stuck in something that felt like a dead end, and I didn't know where to go. Now, one of the big shifts that happened for me was as I realized more and more the work I wanted to do was right. Working with men, transforming men, starting men's groups, et cetera, A path started to become visible to me.

And the trick is, I made a mistake that sometimes a lot of guys I work with make a mistake around. I burned all the bridges to my previous work and I went all the way in. I dove headfirst into the water. I didn't have the infrastructure in this new work I wanted to be doing for that to be successful, to be sustainable at the time, right. And it caused a lot of pain and hardship for me financially, relationally, it was one of the most stressful times of my life and I actually had to scale back and take back on some side work.

And the truth is that actually stapled stabilized me quite a bit and made me even more available to do the work I really cared about, which was this men's work. When I didn't have that infrastructure, I was doing the men's work, but I was so stressed out just trying to make ends meet, I wasn't really available in my full capacity. As I brought online this other work, it actually made me more available to be with men because I wasn't stressed about my basic survival needs.

The other big shift that happened for me was once I knew where I was going, I could feel how this temporary work, let's say, slotted into that purpose and became part of the fuel for it. Ah, by doing this, I have the resources, energy and money to be able to contribute and work this deeper goal of mine. And that's a big shift in something that is sometimes edgy for guys.

We want to just burn the bridges and do the thing we love, but it's not always that simple. Sometimes we have to build bridges to get there, right? And for some guys, what they actually find is that having a very stable, well paying job gives them lots of flexibility to do trainings, to take time off to really invest in themselves or their side project or their creativity or, or their entrepreneurial endeavor in some important way without it immediately having the pressure of having to sustain them financially.

And that is a bit of a leap of faith in its own right that, wow, I don't have to do this all at once. This is going to be a process I move towards. And it certainly played out in my life that having that extra resource has allowed me to organically quote, grow my purpose and passion in a way that's ultimately a lot more sustainable. Now the other major thing I want to cover here today is the confusion we often have between passion and purpose, right?

That passion is that thing I just love and I do. And we like to think that's going to be enough for us to live our purpose and to make money and all the things we want to do as men. Oftentimes when we have those aligned, the trick is that's not always the case, right? Sometimes our deepest passion might just be creativity. It might be expression of some kind that doesn't necessarily bring back financial reward in a way that can sustain us. And so we have to balance some different things in order to do that, including sometimes just having work, right?

Work that isn't necessarily our deepest passion. But what's super fascinating about this idea of just having work and I'm going to draw on some of the work of Cal Newport here and Daniel Pink in their books, so good you can't ignore me and drive is they did the research as to what actually has people feel most fulfilled in their work long term. And the surprising thing really was that it's not always about it being driven by passion, right?

We have this idea that passion comes first and then dedication comes afterwards. And it isn't necessarily that way. What they found is oftentimes it can be the reverse, right? When we do something with dedication, the passion forms over time. And a big part of this has to do with motivations, right? This idea of intrinsic motivations and external motivations. What they have found in terms of when you dedicate to your yourself to some kind of work and that passion comes online is it's a process, right?

In this involves four key things that lead to fulfilling work. And here is the kicker why I'm bringing this up. It doesn't have to be your deepest purpose per se for you to get Fulfillment and deep engagement out of your work. The first attribute they found out of meaningful work that leads to fulfillment had to do with this idea of autonomy, right? So that's our ability to feel like we're self directed in our work.

Not necessarily with having someone behind our back telling us what to do in each and every moment. It's I get to choose kind of where to put my attention and what to focus on. And I think a lot of the move to work from home is actually related to this. And the results are so unsurprisingly, we're actually more efficient. People get more done when they are in control of their time. And this autonomy thing is something we can earn in our careers or corporations or nine to fives or whatever by having a certain skill set that is indispensable, right?

The better we get at our job, the more people trust us to handle that job and we get more autonomy. And when we have more autonomy, we feel more fulfilled. It's so key. Now the second thing that found that leads to really fulfilling work is competence and mastery, right? That's the feeling we're getting better at something, right? That I am good at this and I'm getting better at it, I am mastering it. And it's in this space.

We can often get into flow states being lost in our work. But the key here is that mastery is often what creates the passion. It's not always the other way around. So by really dedicating ourselves to something, we will become more passionate about it. And this is the realm of kind of the artist, the craftsman, and becoming very subtly aware of what it means to get better at whatever it is we're creating or doing, right?

And this becomes less about external feedback, people telling me I'm doing a great job. And it's more about our internal compass, right? We become such masters, we can subtly feel the difference between the best and not our best. And we get really interested in what creates the conditions for me to create and express in my best fashion. And this idea of we become better and better at something, we become more competent of it.

That feeling of competence creates a lot of fulfillment in our lives. So it may not be our deepest passion or purpose, but in becoming masters of it, we will feel a deep passion for it. It's a pretty big mind shift that I was really surprised by. But there is so much research that validates it. Now the other key thing here is what they call relatedness and what I'll also kind of tie into purpose here.

But what I really mean by that is impact. So the other key fulfilling attribute to having fulfilling work in the world is just relatedness, meaning we get to relate and feel connected to others in the process of doing it. We're not alone and isolated. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be working with people day in and day out, but it means you feel part of some kind of tribe and community. So this ties in often to mastery.

Because as we get into mastery and really becoming competent in something, we get more and more interested in the subtle aspects of it, right? And so we get more and more interested in other people who are experiencing those subtle aspects. So we can cross check, compare notes. How did you do this? Wow, that was amazing. I noticed you had that one little shift here and how you did that. I want to know about that. And that creates connection and purpose. This is one of the maybe few great things we still have in terms of the Internet is being able to connect people around their mastery and competence into these very deep, subtle levels that used to be a lot harder through certain magazines or clubs or whatever that might be.

So this feeling of connection with other people creates more fulfillment in our work, being part of a team or a tribe or a cohort of some kind. Now, there's a kind of a fourth principle here that I've extracted from this kind of body of work, and I think that has to do with impact. And so impact is another way to think about purpose. I think that's really useful. Impact is knowing that the work I'm creating or doing in the world is.

Is having an impact on other people, right? It's meaningful to them. It's giving them laughter or art or easement in their lives, right? So the work I do has an impact on the world. When we don't feel that, when there's no exchange or way we're receiving energy back to know we're having an impact, it can feel really unfulfilling, right? If you feel like you're just putting out in the world, working into a nonprofit or some really hard job, and you can't see any impact, it becomes very draining.

And we often feel stuck and hopeless. But when we have some kind of impact, we're seeing, getting letters, seeing impact in a community, whatever that might be, it raises fulfillment through the roof. So these four things, right? Autonomy, mastery and competence, relatedness and connection and impact, like the work is having meaningful change, making meaningful change and impact in the world. These are four key attributes.

And the thing is, you can cultivate all four of those things even in work. That isn't your deepest purpose per se, and your fulfillment will go up. And what's also interesting is you may be trying to live your deepest purpose but unable to cultivate those attributes in it. And it's not going to end up being very fulfilling. So purpose and passion are very complex for us men.

It's not just as simple as I have to link them together in order to. Only when I'm doing those two things will I feel fulfilled. There's often a lot more gray area and a lot more nuance to this idea of what it means to live with direction and purpose as men. It's more of a process, a windy road that may include many branches, but there's a feeling of I'm moving forward and towards something right? Competence, mastery, more impact, more connection with other people, and more autonomy and freedom in my ability to put my attention where it needs to be for me to do all of these things better.

So even if you're stuck in a dead end job, let's say you can start to look at how could I cultivate four more of these four attributes in my job? Maybe while you're simultaneously building out a path forward for your deepest purpose or some other kind of work you want to step into, it takes a lot of resilience to sometimes have to do both. Ideally, one day it can all come together, but in the process, you don't have to be suffering if you start to think in these terms.

And I'm going to highly recommend you maybe do a little audit of your work in the world right now. Yeah, what kind of autonomy do I get? What kind of mastery and competence am I cultivating? Do I have community, relatedness and connection within it? And is my work having some kind of impact? Doesn't have to be big and world changing. It can be, oh my gosh, right? I make a certain type of food or chocolate and that inspires people because it tastes really good. I have a friend doing that and he's so on purpose and gets so much fulfillment out of that.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing how you relate to these topics and how passion and purpose show up in your life as a man. Shoot me a note. Jasonvolutionary Men and I look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, if you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary men. Apply.