<Note: I have a longer, wordier version of this article over at SheSapiens>

It’s a message we hear all the time these days, but the mantra “Find Your Purpose” may actually do more harm than good.

Since the pandemic began, more and more friends and clients are telling me they feel a gnawing anxiety in their bones, which usually leads to questions such as: who am I, and what am I doing with my life? What should I do? What is my purpose?

Have you felt as if none of the jobs you do really ‘stick’? Does it bother you that there is no specific career path that really excites you or calls to you, or that your ideal life is made up of things that don’t seem to bring in any money?

While some people seem to have been born to do one specific task, others find it very hard to know their direction or purpose. Are you one of those people? Then you may have fallen for some of the common myths surrounding purpose.

As we grow up, being constantly steered into choosing our subjects and locking ourselves into a career path from a young age, the idea is drilled into our heads over and over again — who you become when you grow up = your job or profession.

It is hardly surprising that those of us who don’t feel a strong, unshakeable certainty around what we want to “do” (read: what job we want to have) end up feeling as if we are somehow broken.

In a recent Six Seconds article called Why Telling Your Coaching Clients to “Find Their Purpose” is Bad Advice, the author identifies three “Hollywood myths” surrounding purpose:

#1 Your purpose is something out there, waiting to be discovered

#2 Your purpose is fully formed and neatly packaged

#3 Discovering purpose makes everything easy

What if these myths were NOT true?

When your Passion Doesn’t Bring in the Big Bucks

But what if you already know your calling? Maybe it’s to create, to raise children, or to fight injustice in the world; the only problem is, those things are hard to monetise.

When the existing labour market does not reward us financially for the things that bring us to life, we may start to think that we must have chosen the wrong path. Such is the result of the capitalist system that we live in- we start to believe that our internal worth as human beings is equal to the financial ‘worth’ we possess.

The problem is, because it’s hard to see the results of the hundreds of tiny actions we take throughout the day, we can never truly know how we have impacted the world. But money? Money you can count and see; it feels like achieving points in a game, and it activates our brain’s reward system in much the same way as food or sex.

Because we can count it, we can use it as an easy shortcut for measuring our progress in the world.

So I would add #4 to the list of myths about purpose — Your purpose is your job, and it must align with the current demands of the labour market. In other words, if you don’t feel a deep soul yearning to be a programmer, sales manager or pharmacist (or anything else that happens to bring in the big bucks), then you’re out of luck.

Your Passion and FOMO

Plenty of studies have also shown that, counterintuitively, having too many choices can result in anxiety . Psychologists refer to this as the tyranny or paradox of choice, and the idea is that we are so worried about not making the best possible choice that we might become paralysed by indecision.

There is literally no way for us to know whether choosing a different career path would have led us to a happier outcome, and yet this form of FOMO can keep us from choosing anything at all, terrified that we might find ourselves on an unstoppable roller-coaster that we can’t get off.

We might feel several paths calling to us, but we convince ourselves that we need to pick just one - otherwise we are flaky, indecisive, or commitment-phobic. Never mind the fact that the current economy demands that we are flexible and quick to adapt!

If fear of choosing the wrong path is holding you back, you may have fallen for lie #5 — Your Purpose is just one thing, and there will be one perfect job that neatly encapsulates all your strengths, interests and desires. This is very restrictive and constraining if you happen to be a multipotentialite: someone with many interests, creative pursuits, and potential paths.

Purpose and Happiness

There’s a growing movement of companies trying to increase their staff’s engagement, and even happiness, at work. But how reasonable is it to expect, even demand, constant happiness from your job?

In fact, how reasonable is to to expect constant happiness or satisfaction from your life in general?

Maybe we have bought into lie #6 — When you find your purpose, every day will be a joy.

Even if you land your dream job or launch your business, you’re probably going to have to deal with the same things as everyone else: annoying colleagues, out-of-touch bosses, monotony, long meetings, trying to please customers/clients/investors, sorting out your taxes and accounting. And even if your ideas around purpose are not work-related, there are going to be crappy and boring days in whatever life you choose.

In Positive Psychology, there is a huge distinction between hedonic happiness — the kind that feels good and fun and happy — and eudaemonic happiness, which is connected to feeling meaning or purpose.

What is fun and pleasurable may be meaningless, while work that brings you great meaning might be boring or heart-wrenching on a day-to-day basis. But modern myths try to tell us that we can, and should, have both joy and meaning — all the time.

Does “purpose” exist, anyway?

And what does it even mean to have a dream at all? Perhaps you feel a force pulling you forward towards a specific type of life, but you’ve been ignoring it because it doesn’t line up with the previously mentioned lies and myths surrounding purpose.

Or you might just have a clear idea of what you don’t want — which is to feel bored, restricted, or overworked.

Just because a specific “purpose” doesn’t leap out at you doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you.

Perhaps that can lead us to myth #7 — Purpose exists.

It’s worth unpacking the assumptions that lie behind belief in a purpose at all. Where does purpose come from? Who set it? Does it require a belief in a God, destiny or fate, or a lack of belief in free will? If your purpose really is written in the stars, won’t destiny find a way of delivering it to you no matter what decisions you make?

Perhaps you can ask yourself this: who benefits from convincing me that all these myths around purpose are true?

I don’t mean to suggest that you do not have a deep, spiritual calling, or that there isn’t a purpose lying ahead for you to somehow discover, craft and refine. My personal belief is that we need to look beyond the idea of individual destiny and focus on the idea of collective purpose - to come together to solve our planetary crises. We all have our own individual roles in that, and not everyone is born to be a superhero - but that doesn’t mean you are not an important part of the story.

So, what would it look like if you were to let go of these myths around individual purpose, even just for a while? What might your life begin to look like?