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How to Do an Annual Life Review: 7 Questions

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Article Summary: 

Most people don’t do an annual life review. Many don’t know where to begin. Here we guide you through 7 straightforward but powerful questions that will help you take stock and plan for the year ahead—a powerful self-leadership practice.

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Most people do annual performance reviews at work, but very few people do an annual life review. That’s odd. Why not check in on how things are going in your life?

With an annual life review, you can gain clarity about how things are really going in your life, seeing the big picture more clearly. You can spot patterns—even subtle, hidden ones—that reveal what’s helping you thrive and what’s holding you back.

Most importantly, doing a life review sets you up for action and momentum so you can start the new year with focus and intention.

 

7 Questions to Ask in Your Annual Life Review

One reason many people don’t do an annual life review is that they don’t know how. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

In fact, it can be as simple as asking yourself the following seven questions and writing down the answers.*

 

1. Highlights: What were the highlights of this past year?

Look back across your year and document the moments, relationships, and accomplishments that mattered most—the high points. By revisiting your calendar and/or photos, you’ll rediscover forgotten highlights.

 

2. Challenges: What were the top challenges from this past year?

Next, document the challenges you faced and where you fell short of what you had hoped for. Naming them can be cathartic. And reminding yourself of what you endured can be powerful evidence of your tenacity and resilience.

 

3. Habits: Which habits are helping me thrive, and which are holding me back?

Reflect on your habits and daily routines—both the ones that lift you up and the ones that hold you back. Doing so helps you decide what to keep, adjust, or let go of as you move forward.

 

4. Aspirations: What are my top aspirations for next year?

Next, note your hopes and dreams for the year ahead across all areas of life—from health and relationships to work, learning, and personal growth. Focus on what matters most to you and consider what would make the next year fulfilling and fun.

Take the Traps Test

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5. Gratitude: What am I most grateful for from this year?

Now, focus on the people, moments, and experiences you’re most grateful for—including those that brought you the most joy. Take time to celebrate and savor the positives in your life.

 

6. Take-Aways: What are my top take-aways from this review process?

Finally, step back and look for patterns. Notice what drove your highs and lows, the lessons  learned, and the insights that can make next year even better.

 

7. Top Focus: What will be my top focus for the coming year?

Determine your top focus for the year ahead—the one area that, if prioritized, could make the biggest difference in your life. Focusing here gives you clarity, direction, and a guiding star for your actions. (It can also help you decide what you should stop doing or politely decline.)

 

That’s it. Seven powerful questions to take stock and set you up for success in the new year. See below for my Annual Life Review Template.

 

Annual Life Review Template

 

Annual Life Review

Reflect on the past year and clarify what matters most for the year ahead.

1. Highlights

What stood out as the best moments or wins from this past year?

2. Challenges

What were the most significant obstacles or difficulties I faced?

3. Habits

Which habits supported my growth, and which ones limited it?

4. Aspirations

What do I most want to create, pursue, or become in the year ahead?

5. Gratitude

What am I deeply grateful for from this past year and what brought me joy?

6. Key Takeaways

What insights or lessons emerged from this reflection?

7. Primary Focus

What single focus will matter most in the coming year?

 

Conclusion: How to Do an Annual Life Review

As you go through this process, give yourself grace. Don’t expect a perfect year. That’s a fool’s errand.

Instead, focus on honoring your real year—messiness and frustrations included. Approach the process with curiosity and self-compassion. And with thanks and wonder. Let insight replace self-criticism. Guard your heart and have faith.

Pro Tip: This process is helpful when done alone but much richer when you do it with others. Share your annual life review with someone you trust. Even better, exchange reviews and discuss them together. Doing so can deepen your connection. Together you can brainstorm creative new ideas, provide encouragement, and hold each other accountable for your chosen commitments.

In the end, doing an annual life can bring more clarity and insight to your life. A renewed sense of agency. And determination to keep learning and growing. It lays the groundwork for action and momentum, helping you enter the new year ready to thrive.

Wishing you well with it—and let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

 

Tools for You

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Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

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Appendix: Additional Life Review Questions (Extra Credit)

For most people, answering the seven questions above will be enough. But if you want to go deeper, here are eight more targeted questions you can ask to turbocharge your annual life review:

1. Quality of Life: In what areas is my quality of life high, and which ones need work? (Resource: Quality of Life Assessment.)

2. Traps of Living: What are the top things that are inhibiting my happiness and fulfillment? (Resource: Traps Test.)

3. Purpose: To what extent am I living purposefully, and what more will I do? (Resource: “How to Discover Your Purpose.”)

4. Values: To what extent am I building my life around what’s important to me and upholding my deeply held beliefs, and what more will I do? (Resource: Personal Values Exercise.)

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

5. Vision: To what extent am I working toward my vision of the good life (a bold and vivid picture of my desired future), and what more will I do? (Resource: “How to Craft a Vision of the Good Life.”)

6. Strengths: To what extent am I using my core strengths (the things at which I most excel) in my life, and what more will I do? (Resource: Strengths Search.)

7. Passions: To what extent am I building my passions (the things that consume me with palpable emotion over time) into my life, and what more will I do? (Resource: Passion Probe.)

8. Goals: To what extent am I clear about the desired results I’d like to achieve and organizing my life and time accordingly? What more will I do on this front? (Resource: Goals Guide: Best Practices in Setting and Pursuing Goals.)

 

Postscript: Inspirations on How to Do an Annual Life Review

  • (Doing a personal annual review) “will be your highest leverage activity all year long.” -Matthias Frank, writer
  • “The unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates
  • “When you review your year as a whole, seemingly unrelated parts of your life come into focus at once, enabling you to connect the dots.” -Fadeka Adegbuyi, writer
  • “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” –Margaret J. Wheatley, writer and teacher
  • “There is one art of which people should be masters—the art of reflection.” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, philosopher, and theologian
  • “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” -Peter Drucker, consultant and author

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* It’s important to write down your answers for several reasons. For example, it gives you a record to review. You can compare years and assess progress. Also, it’s easier to track your progress and hold yourself accountable when you have a written starting point.

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). He has worked for market-leading ventures and given talks or workshops in 8 countries. Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

How to Be More Present with People

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Article Summary: 

These days, it’s getting harder and harder to be fully present with the people around us. Learn what presence is, why it matters, the barriers to it, and how to practice it.

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Do your days feel frenzied, frenetic, and frantic instead of peaceful and purposeful? With packed schedules, endless to-do lists, and all the demands of modern life, you may find it hard to be fully present with the people around you.

What people really want from you when they’re with you is your presence—your full and undivided attention. Signs of focus and care.

When they get it, it’s powerful, in part because the experience of receiving full attention from someone is so rare these days.

 

What Is Presence?

What does it mean to be present with someone? Presence means being deeply tuned in to the person you’re with. You’re aware of the moment you’re in and what’s going on with you emotionally. It entails:

  • being mentally, emotionally, and physically engaged (not distracted or preoccupied)
  • listening intently (and without thinking about how you’ll respond)

Being present requires mindful attention. For starters, that means putting down the phone. But it also means silencing your inner chatter about your task list or what’s bothering you. It’s all about focusing on the now.

“Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.”
-Tara Brach

 

The Benefits of Presence

What are the benefits of presence? When you’re actually present with people, it:

  • shows respect and care
  • creates a climate of safety
  • helps them feel seen, valued, and understood
  • offers emotional relief to people who feel overwhelmed or unseen
  • helps move interactions from surface-level interaction to genuine connection
  • builds trust
  • improves communication
  • strengthens relationships
  • deepens intimacy*
  • makes gatherings more meaningful and memorable
“When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence.
How can you love if you are not there?”
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Presence also has positive effects on its giver, not just the recipient. Being present can be an antidote to anxiety. It can enhance your joy and heighten your appreciation of people and things.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

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What Prevents You from Being Fully Present?

Why is being fully present with people so freakin’ hard? There are many barriers to presence, including:

  • our daily deluge of digital distractions
  • emotional overwhelm
  • unprocessed stress
  • unresolved worries
  • incessant cognitive chatter
  • reflexive multitasking

Part of the problem is our overly rushed culture. Are you afraid of slowing down and falling behind or missing out on things? And does that keep you bouncing from one thing to another? Is your use of technology and devices sapping your ability to get and remain present and focused?

“In the 21st century, being fully in the present moment is becoming something of a Herculean feat, and we live in a state of near-constant distraction.”
-Charlie Huntington, “Presence: Meaning, Benefits, & Theory,” Berkeley Well-Being Institute

 

How to Be More Present with People: Stop Phoning It In

Here are eight ways you can be more present with people:

  1. Recall how awful it feels when people are distracted and not paying attention to you.
  2. Put your phone away. (Seriously, if it’s nearby, it will pull you into its virtual vortex.)
  3. Pause and breathe before starting a conversation.
  4. Maintain eye contact.
  5. Pay attention to details like the person’s tone and body language.
  6. Notice when your attention starts wandering and bring it back to the person in front of you.
  7. Acknowledge their key points and feelings.
  8. Ask follow-up questions (e.g., “say more about that…”).

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

Conclusion: A Call to Presence

Presence is becoming harder and rarer in this age of attention hijacking. The algorithms are shrewd. Swiping, doom scrolling, and binge watching don’t lend themselves to deep presence with people.

Being fully present with the people you’re with helps you create more meaningful moments with them. And of course, it costs nothing but time and attention.

Why not show up fully for the people around you? Give them the gift of your time and undivided attention. You’ll both be glad you did.
–Gregg

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles & Resources

 

Postscript: Inspirations on How to Be More Present with People

  • “Life is available only in the present moment.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
  • “As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love—even the most simple action.” -Eckhart Tolle
  • “We convince by our presence.” -Walt Whitman

* Presence can also help facilitate intimacy and a higher quality sexual connection with your partner. Source: Silverstein, R. G., Brown, A. C. H., Roth, H. D., & Britton, W. B. (2011). Effects of mindfulness training on body awareness to sexual stimuli: implications for female sexual dysfunction. Psychosomatic Medicine, 73(9), 817–825.

Crafting Your Life and Work Course

Regain clarity, direction, and motivation for your next chapter, starting with a powerful foundation of self-awareness and commitment to your values and aspirations.

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Career Tips for Young Professionals

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The job market today? It’s tough. If you’re a young professional just starting out, or even a few years in, you know the feeling: the landscape is brutal and the competition is fierce.

Consider the following: The unemployment rate for new job market entrants—including recent college graduates and others just beginning their full-time careers—reached a nine-year high this year, according to federal data. Their share of the total unemployed population also climbed to its highest level in decades.

Meanwhile, the once-reliable path from college to career may be breaking down. For the first time in modern history, the bachelor’s degree is failing to deliver on its core promise of access to white-collar jobs, according to researchers at The Burning Glass Institute, a labor-focused research and data lab. Federal data shows that 20- to 24-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees now face the highest relative unemployment levels of any education group.*

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has pointed out that we’re in a “low-firing, low-hiring environment,” which makes it tough for young workers (and others) to break into the labor force. The result for many young workers is frustration and self-doubt. One observer has called it “Gen Z’s career apocalypse.”

Landing a great job in this environment can feel like an uphill battle. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed or unsure about how to approach the beginning of your career.

But here’s the good news: there are great opportunities out there if you know how to approach things and differentiate yourself.

 

Career Tips for Young Professionals

Given this challenging context, here are 12 career tips for young professionals:

1. Know yourself deeply. That means knowing your personal values (what’s most important to you), your strengths (the things at which you most excel), your passions (the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time), and your purpose (why you’re here). This requires time for reflection. Knowing yourself well gives you a strong personal foundation—and safe harbor in the storms. That will help you stay true to your own guiding lights and not get caught up in chasing other people’s definitions of success.

“…the secret of career satisfaction lies in doing what you enjoy most. A few lucky people discover this secret early in life, but most of us are caught in a kind of psychological wrestling match, torn between what we think we can do, what we (or others) feel we ought to do, and what we think we want to do. Our advice? Concentrate instead on who you are, and the rest will fall into place.” -Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger, Do What You Are

2. Focus on learning and growth. When considering job options (if you’re fortunate enough to have them), prioritize opportunities for learning and growth. Find out whether the organization offers valuable learning and development opportunities.

Adopt a “growth mindset” (not a fixed mindset), and look for organizations with a “learn-it-all” culture (not a “know-it-all” culture). Your ability to learn quickly and adapt will serve you well. Be curious, ask questions, and seek feedback (and get good at receiving and acting on it). Develop a consistent habit of lifelong learning.

“…prioritize continuous learning and skill development…. Investing in your ongoing learning not only boosts your current job performance but also positions you for future career opportunities, showcasing your commitment to personal and professional growth and enhancing your adaptability in a dynamic job market.” -Cole Amstutz, Vice President of Commercial Business Development, ServiceMaster by Rice

3. In this age of technology and A.I., double down on human skills. As technology handles more and more routine tasks, your professional value is increasingly tied to uniquely human traits. Things like critical thinking, emotional intelligence (EQ), empathetic communication, and team collaboration. Machines can do a lot, but there’s no substitute for the human factor. Ultimately, strengthening your EQ and problem-solving abilities will help you navigate nuanced client or group interactions, lead teams, and drive innovation.

Crafting Your Life and Work Course

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4. Explore and test your career options. If you haven’t yet found that powerful combination of what you like to do, what you’re good at, and what you can get paid for, you’re wise to remain in what I call “discover mode” and try things. Get exposure to different functional areas. Consider important variables like the size (small, medium, large) and stage (early-, middle-, late-) of the venture that suits you. Be open to career pivots. Very few careers these days are straight lines. Meanwhile, each role you take can teach you something valuable if you have a growth mindset.

“One of the things is putting pressure on having that perfect solution lined up. While we should dream big, sometimes we need to make smaller moves and small experiments to build confidence and gather data and grow more organically in a new direction. In reality, what works is getting anchored in existing strengths and experiences and have a general feeling of success. There is no real way to know the answers… of what to pursue next in our careers unless we’re running small tests and learning from them.” -Jenny Blake, author and podcaster

5. Find a wave and ride it. Venture capitalist Erik Straser wisely urges young workers to find a powerful market trend that will continue for decades and take advantage of it. (Examples: AI, automation, clean tech, smart infrastructure, aging populations, mental health, urbanization, upskilling and reskilling, multigenerational workforces, circular economy, etc.) What are current trends that pique your interest and that you’re well positioned to help advance (or could be)? Remember: you have a choice about which industry and sector you work in.

6. Focus on building “career capital.” In his excellent book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Georgetown University computer science professor Cal Newport emphasizes the importance of “career capital” (vocational assets that you can leverage). You build career capital by developing and using rare and valuable skills, not by chasing prestige or convenience, and adding value to your colleagues and organization via smart and hard work. Once you have enough of it, you can trade it for desirable things like autonomy, a flexible schedule, and meaningful work. It gives you freedom and leverage to shape your career and choose work that fits you well and that matters to you.

“(Career capital) is the key currency for the work you love.”
-Cal Newport

Have a high standard of performance and do excellent work consistently. And don’t wait for permission. Take initiative by volunteering for projects, suggesting improvements, and “leading from below.”

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

7. Look for a great boss. It can make all the difference in your work experience and in the opportunities you get (or don’t get) to contribute and advance. A strong manager provides guidance, challenges you to grow, and opens doors you might never reach on your own. Good leaders help you build skills and set a foundation for long-term success. Often, choosing who you work for is just as important as what you do.

8. Vet the organizations you’re focusing on. Interviews should be a two-way street. Yes, you need to demonstrate your value and give them compelling reasons to hire you. But you should also ask thoughtful, specific questions about their culture, training, and career paths during your interviews. Doing so shows you’ve done your homework and signals that you have high standards for where you invest your time and energy. (See my article, “How to Find a Great Organization to Work For.”)

9. Engage in “discovery-driven networking.” In their book, The Innovator’s DNA, Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen distinguish between two types of networking. “Delivery-driven networking” (the standard type) focuses on accessing resources, selling products, and advancing caeers. It’s transactional and focused on getting what you want. “Discovery-driven networking,” by contrast, focuses on learning new things, obtaining new perspectives, and testing ideas in process. It’s more relational and reciprocal—and effective and enjoyable.

“The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.”
-Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone

Your networking should be focused on building real connections, not trying to extract things from people. Seek out people who inspire you and listen deeply to their guidance. Also, make sure that your relationships are reciprocal. Be generous and help others, even when you’re young. If you take time to develop and maintain a strong network, it will be one of the greatest assets in your career.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

10. In a crowded job market, find ways to be a “purple cow.” Seth Godin’s “purple cow” is a metaphor for remarkable things that stand out so much they get noticed (like a purple cow in a field of ordinary cows). In a crowded market, being ordinary can make you invisible. Think of a hiring manager with way too much to do and a stack of fifty resumes and a full day of interviews. How can you be the person who stands out from the pack and makes the interview memorable, engaging, and fun?

11. Play the long game. When you’re young, it’s easy to get caught up in immediate concerns like starting pay or benefits. Yes, those are important—but still only pieces of the bigger picture. Focus on opportunities that help you grow, build valuable skills, and work on things that truly matter to you. (It helps to develop a vision of the good life, including clarity about what a good career looks like for you.) And make sure you’re not caught up in your own ego. Never stop asking yourself how you’ll serve and make a difference.

“Be patient, but don’t get complacent. Exercise some patience while putting in the work today that will get you closer to achieving your long-term goals. In a society that wants everything on demand, be willing to sacrifice some short-term gains in order to reach greater success in the long run.” -Nick Blyth, Senior Vice President, Holmes Murphy

12. Don’t neglect the fun factor! Enjoying what you do isn’t just a perk. It fuels your energy, creativity, and resilience. When your work engages and excites you, you’re more likely to grow, perform at your best, and stick with it long enough to build valuable skills and encounter exciting opportunities. A career you love makes your hard work worthwhile and also brings out the best of you in other settings.

 

Conclusion: Craft a Career You Love

There’s no doubt the job market today is challenging and competitive. It may feel hopeless sometimes. But you have agency.

You’re at the start of a career journey that will likely span several decades. You’ll be spending a huge portion of your life at work. Your career isn’t something that happens to you or something you should settle for or stumble into. It’s something you can choose and craft if you play it smart.

So, take responsibility, be intentional about your choices, and recognize that every move you make today can start setting you up for a better tomorrow. The market may be tough, but with clarity about who you are and what you want—and conviction about building a career you love—you can rise to the challenge.

Wishing you well with it, and let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

Tools for You

Crafting Your Life and Work Course

Regain clarity, direction, and motivation for your next chapter, starting with a powerful foundation of self-awareness and commitment to your values and aspirations.

Learn More

 

Related Articles & Resources

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Career Tips for Young Professionals

  • “One of the best pieces of advice for young people is, Get to yourself quickly. If you know what you want to do, start doing it.” -David Brooks, The Second Mountain
  • “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
  • “Big career decisions don’t come with a map, but all you need is a compass. In an unpredictable world, you can’t make a master plan. You can only gauge whether you’re on a meaningful path. The right next move is the one that brings you a step closer to living your core values.” -Adam Grant, professor
  • “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” -Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha)
  • “Don’t obsess over finding your true calling. Instead, master rare and valuable skills. Once you build up the career capital that these skills generate, invest it wisely. Use it to acquire control over what you do and how you do it, and to identify and act on a life-changing mission.” -Cal Newport
  • “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.” -Stephen R. Covey, educator and author
  • “Go to work for an organization or people you admire. It will turn you on. You ought to be happy where you are working. I always worry about people who say, ‘I’m going to do this for 10 years’ and ‘I’m going to do 10 more years of this.’ That’s a little like saving sex for your old age. Not a very good idea. Get right into what you enjoy.” -Warren Buffett, investor
  • “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”–Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple
  • “Align where you spend your time with what you care about the most. You’ll connect with like-minded leaders and feel the fulfillment of living out your purpose each day.” -Shannon Draayer, Director of Health and Well-being, WesleyLife
  • “Shadow Career is the term used to describe people who go on an alternative path from their true dream because they’ve given up on themselves.” -Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Be Your Future Self Now
  • “We spend far too much time at work for it not to have deep meaning.” -Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
  • “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue… as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.” -Victor Frankl, psychologist, author, and Holocaust survivor
  • “…God is calling you to serve Him in and from the ordinary, material, and secular activities of human life. He waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.” -Josemaria Escriva, Conversations
  • “Your career is like a garden. It can hold an assortment of life’s energy that yields a bounty for you. You do not need to grow just one thing in your garden. You do not need to do just one thing in your career.” -Jennifer Ritchie Payette, author
  • “Don’t be afraid or guilty to switch directions. You are not a failure for changing your mind on what you choose to do with your life. As someone who ended up finding a different career path, I initially struggled with this, but over time, I have taken comfort in realizing the ability to adapt and change is a skill.” -Dannie Patrick, Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines
  • “Networking isn’t just about collecting business cards; it’s about genuinely connecting with people, understanding their needs and finding ways to add value to their lives or businesses. Invest time in cultivating meaningful connections, both within and outside your industry. These relationships can open doors, provide valuable insights and even lead to unexpected opportunities down the road.” -Erin Knupp, Director of Business Development, Beal Derkenne Construction

* The Burning Glass Institute partly attributes the problem to the growing number of young Americans earning four-year degrees, outpacing demand for such workers—a gap unlikely to close soon. Also, the rise of artificial intelligence threatens entry-level knowledge jobs. A recent Stanford study found that U.S. workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles have seen a 13% drop in employment since 2022.

Crafting Your Life and Work Course

Regain clarity, direction, and motivation for your next chapter, starting with a powerful foundation of self-awareness and commitment to your values and aspirations.

Learn More

 

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Health and Vitality: Keys to Your Quality of Life

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Article Summary: 

Without health and vitality, even success and good relationships can feel empty, as stress, fatigue, or poor habits drain your joy and resilience. This article guides you through the 12 most important elements of physical and mental well-being—like nutrition, sleep, exercise, mindfulness, and resilience—so you can identify gaps, take practical steps, and build a foundation for thriving in life.

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You want to live a good life and you want to do well at work, but without health and vitality, everything else suffers. You can achieve success and build healthy relationships, but if your body is run-down or your mind is frequently stressed, it all feels hollow. Health and vitality are the foundation that everything else rests upon. They determine how much energy you bring to each day, how resilient you are in the face of challenges, and how much joy you can experience in the moments that matter most.

Here we explore the 12 most important components of health and vitality, including both physical and mental health. Together, these elements help you thrive. By taking stock of each one, you’ll gain a clearer sense of where you’re strong and where you need work.

 

1. Nutrition

Are you eating well and drinking enough water? Nutrition is a cornerstone of health and vitality. It influences your energy levels, mood, cognitive performance, and overall well-being. Proper nutrition can also have a big impact on heart health, blood pressure, immune system, mental clarity, sexual function, and longevity. Poor nutrition is a leading cause of premature death and disability, according to Dr. Michael Greger’s research. To help you make better dietary choices, check out the “Healthy Eating Plate” from Harvard researchers. (See my article, “Good Nutrition for Health and Wellness.”)

What will you do to improve your nutrition and hydration?

 

2. Sleep

Are you getting enough high-quality sleep? Sleep is a cornerstone of health and vitality, yet it’s often the most overlooked aspect of well-being. Quality sleep has a profound impact on your cognitive function, emotional regulation, and physical health. It’s an active process that rejuvenates the body and mind, preparing you for the challenges of the day ahead. Poor sleep can lead to impaired memory, mood disturbances, and decreased productivity. Practical strategies include establishing a consistent sleep schedule, creating a calm and restful sleep sanctuary, and stopping your screen time well before bedtime. (For more: “Great Sleep for Health, Wellness, and Great Work.”)

What will you do to improve your sleep quality?

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

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3. Exercise

Do you move your body and exercise often and well enough? Exercise is a cornerstone of health and vitality, influencing nearly every aspect of your well-being. From enhancing mood and mental clarity to boosting energy levels and longevity, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread positive changes. Incorporating movement into your daily routine can lead to improved cognitive function, better sleep quality, and lower risk of chronic diseases. The key is consistency and finding a routine that fits well with your lifestyle. (More here: “Exercise and Movement for Health, Wellness, and Great Work.”)

What will you do to move your body more and improve your exercise habits?

 

4. Strength

Do you feel strong and powerful? Strength is a cornerstone of your physical vitality. When you build and maintain muscle, you’re not just improving your appearance—you’re giving yourself the ability to handle life’s demands. Consistency matters more than intensity at first. Start small and build gradually. Focus on all major muscle groups, including your core. Pair your training with proper recovery—including rest days, stretching, and adequate protein—to let your muscles repair and grow. Strength training also protects your bones, boosts your metabolism, and improves posture, making it one of the best investments you can make in your long-term health and vitality.

What will you do to develop your strength?

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5. Flexibility

Are you flexible and able to navigate physical activities with a good range of movement?

Flexibility is often overlooked, but it plays a vital role in your health. When your muscles and joints move freely, you reduce the risk of injury, improve posture, and make everyday movements like bending, reaching, or twisting easier and more comfortable. You can enhance your flexibility through regular stretching, yoga, or mobility exercises, focusing on all major muscle groups and joints. Even just a few minutes each day of dynamic stretches or gentle movement can maintain or increase your range of motion. Flexibility also complements strength and endurance, helping your body move efficiently and recover more quickly after physical activity.

What will you do to enhance your flexibility?

 

6. Energy

How are your energy levels? Maintaining a good energy level is essential for living a vibrant, fulfilling life. Your energy fuels everything you do—from work and exercise to hobbies and family time. To keep your energy high, focus on foundational habits like getting adequate sleep, staying hydrated, eating well, and moving your body regularly. Avoid long periods of sedentary behavior and manage your stress, because mental fatigue can drain your vitality just as much as physical exertion. Small practices—like taking short breaks throughout the day and practicing deep breathing—can make a big difference. When you intentionally cultivate and protect your energy, you ensure that you have the capacity to do the things you want to do.

What will you do to develop and maintain high energy levels?

 

7. Endurance

Are you able to continue expending effort despite fatigue or stress? Building stamina allows you to engage in physical activity longer, recover faster, and handle daily demands without feeling exhausted. You can improve endurance through aerobic exercises like running, cycling, swimming, brisk walking, and dancing. Combining cardiovascular training with strength exercises enhances overall stamina, while proper nutrition, hydration, and rest ensure your body has the fuel and recovery it needs. By investing in endurance, you not only improve your physical capacity but also boost your mental resilience and energy levels.

What will you do to boost your endurance?

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8. Mindfulness

Are you able to focus your awareness on the present moment and calmly acknowledge and accept your thoughts and feelings? Mindfulness is a cornerstone of mental clarity and emotional resilience. In our fast-paced world, many of us grapple with stress, anxiety, and a constant barrage of thoughts (i.e., “monkey mind”). This mental chatter can disrupt focus, elevate stress levels, and hinder your ability to be present. Mindfulness can help train your mind to become more present, focused, and still.

Practicing mindfulness can significantly enhance your mental well-being. It helps quiet the mind, reduce stress, and improve emotional regulation. By engaging in mindfulness practices such as meditation, deep breathing, or simply paying attention to the present moment, you can develop a deeper connection with yourself and your surroundings. (For more: “Why We Need Meditation and Mindfulness Now More than Ever.”)

What will you do to enhance your mindfulness?

 

9. Emotional Calm

Do you have peace of mind and a sense of inner calm on a regular basis? Emotional calm is a vital part of your mental health and greatly influences your overall vitality. When you cultivate a sense of calm, you reduce stress, make better decisions, and experience more clarity and focus. Simple practices like meditation, deep breathing exercises, or journaling can help you manage emotional turbulence and create inner stillness. Regularly checking in with yourself, setting boundaries, and prioritizing restorative activities like time in nature, hobbies, or connecting with supportive people all contribute to your emotional equilibrium. By nurturing emotional calm, you create mental space and energy to thrive in your life.

What will you do to bring more emotional calm into your life?

 

10. Relaxation

Do you take enough time to relax during your days? Relaxation is essential for your health and vitality. Giving your mind and body intentional downtime helps reduce stress hormones, lowers blood pressure, and restores energy so you can function at your best. You can relax through activities like listening to music, reading, stretching, practicing gentle breathing, or just pausing and looking out at the horizon. When you take time to recharge, it makes a big difference.

What will you do to relax more?

 

11. Resilience

Do you maintain a regular and robust ability to adapt and recover in the face of adversity? In challenging times, resilience enables you to navigate stress, uncertainty, and setbacks without losing your sense of purpose or well-being. According to Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project, there are three pillars of resilience: self-awareness (identifying what you’re feeling), self-regulation (calming yourself in the face of anxiety, anger, or fear), and self-care (taking good care of yourself and maintaining your energy reserves).

What will you do to enhance your resilience?

 

12. Self-Care

Do you engage in regular self-care practices that replenish your energy and help you cope with hard times? This can include taking regular breaks, exercising, eating well, engaging in hobbies, and having places or practices of sanctuary that bring you peace. By building these things into the fabric of your days, you can build a strong and durable foundation that supports and sustains your health and vitality, even in difficult times.

What will you do to take even better care of yourself going forward?

 

Conclusion

Health and vitality aren’t luxuries. They’re the foundation of a good life. Without them, everything else becomes harder and less fulfilling, no matter how much success you have in other areas. By investing in your physical and mental well-being, you give yourself the capacity to thrive.

Choose one area to strengthen today and watch how it lifts the rest of your life. Focus on progress, not perfection. The more you invest in your health and vitality, the more fully you’ll be able to live, love, and lead.

Wishing you well with it.
–Gregg

 

Tools for You

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

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Appendix: Safety

You can’t get very far with any of the elements above if you don’t feel safe. With health and vitality, safety is the foundation. If you don’t feel safe, everything else takes a back seat, because your mind and body remain on high alert. Pay attention to both physical and digital safety. What will you do to protect and maintain your safety?

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Health and Vitality and Quality of Life

  • “It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” -Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Happiness lies first of all in health.” -George William Curtis
  • “The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” -Ann Wigmore, holistic health practitioner
  • “Any food that requires enhancing by the use of chemical substances should in no way be considered a food.” -John H. Tobe, researcher, naturalist, and author
  • “Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness.” -Joseph Pilates, German-born physical trainer, writer, and inventor
  • “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” -Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and author
  • “Good things come to those who sweat.” -unknown
  • “Exercise is a celebration of what your body can do. Not a punishment for what you ate.” -anonymous
  • “When it comes to health and well-being, regular exercise is about as close to a magic potion as you can get.” -Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk
  • “If you don’t make time for exercise, you’ll probably have to make time for illness.” -Robin Sharma, Canadian lawyer turned writer
  • “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” -John F. Kennedy, former U.S. president
  • “Exercise is amazing, from the inside out. I feel so alive and have more energy.” -Vanessa Hudgens, actor and singer
  • “Sustained high achievement demands physical and emotional strength as well as a sharp intellect. To bring mind, body, and spirit to peak condition, executives need to learn what world-class athletes already know: recovering energy is as important is expending it…. When people feel strong and resilient—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—they perform better, with more passion, for longer. They win, their families win, and the corporations that employ them win.” -Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, “The Making of a Corporate Athlete,” Harvard Business Review
  • “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit…?… honor God with your bodies.” -1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV)
  • “Sleep is a necessary part of life, though most of us scrape by with as little as possible…. It turns out that sleep can make or break your ability to lose weight, age slowly, prevent cancer, and perform at a high level.” -Dr. Sara Gottfried, physician-scientist
  • “Proper sleep has helped me get to where I am today as an athlete, and it is something that I continue to rely on every day.” -Tom Brady, American football quarterback and champion
  • “Tired officers are always pessimists.” -General George S. Patton, U.S. Army General
  • “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” -Vince Lombardi, legendary football coach

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Elevate Your Life with a Strong Personal Core

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Article Summary: 

We all want to have a good quality of life but too often we don’t know how to get it, especially given the demands we face. Here we identify how you can elevate your quality of life with a strong personal core, a foundation that includes contentment, happiness, meaning, gratitude, and more.

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In a world full of pressure and constant change, it’s easy to get pulled in a dozen directions—reacting to demands and losing sight of what truly matters. Without a strong personal core, you risk drifting or living by someone else’s script. But when you anchor your life in clarity about who you are, what you value, and what gives you meaning, you can elevate your quality of life.

Here are nine building blocks of a strong personal core:

 

Contentment

Do you have a sense of peace and satisfaction that comes from appreciating what you have in the present moment? A calm confidence that your life, as it is right now, has value and meaning?

Contentment grounds you in the present, helping you savor life rather than merely chase what’s next. When you cultivate contentment, you reduce inner friction, judgment, and comparison, creating space for gratitude, joy, and authentic living. It stabilizes your emotional foundation, allowing you to pursue purpose and growth from a place of ease rather than restlessness or neediness.

What will you do to bring more contentment into your life?

 

Happiness

Do you have a genuine and strong sense of wellbeing and contentment that comes from feeling at ease with yourself and your life? A deep, enduring satisfaction and joy?

Happiness is an essential part of your personal core because it acts as both a compass and a fuel. When you cultivate it, you create a foundation for making choices that honor your core values, deepen your connections, and bring meaning to your life. Without nurturing happiness, other aspects of your personal core can feel harder to access. (See my article, “What Leads to Happiness?”)

Happiness is “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.” -Sonja Lyubomirsky, University of California, Riverside psychologist and happiness researcher

What will you do to bring more happiness into your life?

 

Meaning

Do you have a strong and deep sense that your life has significance—that your actions and experiences contribute to something larger than yourself?

“Meaning in life refers to the feeling that people have that their lives and experience make sense and matter.”
-Dr. Michael Steger, Colorado State University

Meaning can give you direction and motivation. When you cultivate meaning, even challenges and setbacks can feel purposeful. Your daily actions gain coherence and richness. It acts as a guiding star, helping you prioritize what truly matters and live a life that’s aligned, intentional, and fulfilling.

What will you do to infuse your life with more meaning?

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

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Fulfillment

Do you have an enduring feeling of pleasure and satisfaction because you’re happy with your life? A sense that your life has been what you’ve expected or hoped for, even despite adversity?

When you cultivate fulfillment, you experience a lasting sense of accomplishment and direction that goes beyond fleeting success or external validation. It helps you make choices that honor your deepest priorities and live a life that feels harmonious, whole, and true.

What will you do to bring more fulfillment into your life?

 

Quality of Life

Taking stock of your quality of life regularly helps to brings clarity and intentionality to your journey. By evaluating key areas such as health, relationships, work, and personal growth, you can identify where you’re thriving and where you need to direct your attention.

This process is about awareness and action, not perfection. It helps you recognize patterns, celebrate wins, and address areas that are holding you back. Regularly assessing your quality of life empowers you to make informed choices, set relevant goals, and live with purpose and fulfillment. (See my article, “Taking Stock of Your Quality of Life.”)

What will you do to ensure you maintain a good quality of life?

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

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Joy

Joy is the feeling of lightness, delight, and exuberance that bubbles up when you engage with life in a way that resonates with your authentic essence. It’s more than happiness—it’s a deep, often spontaneous sense of aliveness and appreciation that energizes your mind, body, and spirit.

Joy summons the pleasures of living fully. When you nurture joy, you immerse yourself in the present moment and make it easier to approach challenges with optimism. It’s a spark that animates your purpose and deepens your relationships.

What will you do to bring more joy into your life?

 

Gratitude

Do you have a practice of noticing and appreciating the positive aspects of your life—both big and small? A mindset that helps you recognize and appreciate the value in experiences, relationships, and even challenges that help you grow?

Gratitude shifts your focus from what you’re missing to what you have. When you cultivate gratitude, you create the conditions for contentment and joy. (See my article, “20 Benefits of Gratitude.”)

What will you do to be thankful for what you have and keep a grateful heart?

 

Authentic Alignment

Are you living in “authentic alignment,” in which you’re being true to yourself and there’s a good fit between who you really are and how you live? Is there a good match between your inner world of your thoughts, hopes, and dreams and the outer world of what you’re doing in your home, workplace, and community? This alignment fosters a sense of integrity and coherence, allowing you to thrive mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Authentic alignment anchors you in your true self. When you’re aligned, you’re more likely to experience clarity, conviction, and contentment. Conversely, misalignment can lead to feelings of inauthenticity, anxiety, and disconnection. This can come from the traps of conformity, comparison, people-pleasing, and caring too much about what other people think. (See my article, “The Power of Authentic Alignment in Your Life.”)

What will you do to live a life of authentic alignment?

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Spirituality

Are you cultivating a deeper connection to something greater than yourself? Engaged with matters of the human spirit or soul, as opposed to becoming overly consumed with material or physical things? Are you exploring life’s deeper questions and seeking alignment with your inner values and beliefs? Spirituality can manifest through practices like prayer, meditation, nature immersion, or acts of compassion, and it often involves a sense of transcendence.

Spirituality provides a sense of meaning, especially during challenging times. By nurturing your spiritual life, you can experience greater inner peace, resilience, and a deeper understanding of your place in the universe. It helps you transcend the ego and material distractions, fostering a life that is more intentional, connected, and fulfilling. For many people, spirituality is a lived practice—often experienced in community—rooted in connection, reflection, and shared meaning. It can involve surrendering to a higher power and embracing the gifts of forgiveness, redemption, and grace, creating space for healing and renewal. (See my article, “On Spirituality and the Good Life.”)

What will you do to nurture your spiritual life?

 

Conclusion

You don’t build a strong personal core overnight. You cultivate it over time through small, consistent choices that honor what matters most. It’s about nurturing contentment, happiness, and joy; fostering meaning; checking in on the quality of your life; practicing gratitude; embodying authentic alignment; and deepening your spirituality.

In our busy and noisy modern world, this work can feel challenging, but it’s well worth it. Give yourself grace along the way, and remember: even amid life’s pressures, a strong core will help elevate your life.

Wishing you well with it—and let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

 

Tools for You

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Personal Core and Quality of Life

  • “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” -Henry David Thoreau
  • “Every day we have decisions to make about how we want to live…. We must take charge of how we spend our days…. Otherwise, we may one day wake up to find ourselves brilliantly situated for a life we do not want.” -Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek in LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives
  • “Life goes by so very fast, my dears, and taking the time to reflect, even once a year, slows things down. We zoom past so many seconds, minutes, hours, killing them with the frantic way we live that it’s important we take at least this one collective sigh and stop, take stock, and acknowledge our place in time before diving back into the melee.” -Hillary DePiano, New Year’s Thieve
  • “Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.” -Clayton Christensen

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Most Common Myths about Passion and Work

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Just follow your passion. Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. So goes the common advice from scads of college graduation speeches. As if it were so simple. Is it good advice? How can you find your passion anyway? What are the most common myths about passion and work? And what are the realities that bust those myths?

It helps to start with what passions are and aren’t. Researchers have defined passions as strong inclinations toward activities you value and like or love, and in which you invest your time and energy. I like to think of passions as the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time.

Signs of passion at work (whether paid or volunteer or in the household or with children) include:

  1. Loving what you do
  2. Talking often about what you like about your work
  3. Working extra even when you don’t have to

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Find Your Passion

 

Myths about Passion and Work

For many people, the advice about following your passion feels confusing and unrealistic—and in some cases even discouraging. In fact, some of the most common messages about passion and work are based on myths that will hold you back instead of helping you move forward. Let’s set the record straight and unpack those myths.

 

Myth: You should just know what your passion is.

Reality: Many people struggle with this. The idea of finding their passion feels overwhelming. For most, passion doesn’t strike like a lightning bolt with instant clarity. Many people try out different interests for a number of years. Those who do discover their passion often go through long periods during which it wasn’t obvious.

 

Myth: You really need to find your passion.

Reality: Finding your passion isn’t the best way to think about it for many people. Business owner and author Emily Perron notes that for many people it feels like a frustrating “wild goose chase.” According to University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth, passions tend to be developed more than they’re discovered, and they usually develop and deepen over time.

Finding something suggests a search with a set endpoint, or that it’s out there for you to just come upon. Developing something, by contrast, calls for growing it or causing it to grow and become more mature.

In reality, you’re likely to notice that you have certain interests and that some of these can become passions when you keep pursuing those interests long enough. Many people give up before reaching that point due to a lack of focus or discipline, a belief that work is a grind that you just endure so you can pay the bills, or settling for work that’s just okay. (Note: In advanced economies, the average person spends about 90,000 hours at work.)

 

Myth: You need to find your passion when you’re young.

Reality: For many people, passions take time to discover (and then develop and deepen). And that’s okay. That just makes your passions richer, and it helps you appreciate them.

Very few people discover their passion early in life and stick with it consistently. As we grow and gain new experiences, our interests naturally shift—and so do our passions.

With passions, as with so many things, the path is winding.

The pressure to figure it all out early in life can lead to frustration from feeling “behind” and choosing things for reasons that won’t hold up well over time. In truth, your interests and values evolve over time. It’s not a race. Instead, it’s a process of growth and discovery that tends to go much better with a blend of action and reflection, including significant time in what I call “discover mode.”

“…we may try many different jobs looking for the right ‘fit,’ the role that instantly flips the passion switch, and we may not take into account the fact that it often takes time to develop one’s passion for a job, along with the skills, confidence, and relationships that allow one to experience passion for work.”
-Jon M. Jachimowicz, “3 Reasons It’s So Hard to ‘Follow Your Passion,’” Harvard Business Review, October 15, 2019

 

Myth: Only certain kinds of jobs are amenable to passion.

(Examples: working in education, health care, social justice, the environment, etc.—or for world-changing startups or social enterprises.)*

Reality: You can integrate your passions into almost any job. Of course, if you do a good job and show that you’re a reliable and productive team member operating with integrity, that typically earns you more autonomy, respect, and credibility. But this can vary depending on how supportive your manager or team are.

Think about what makes work enjoyable, meaningful, and rewarding for you. With that lens, it’s not just about your passion for the work itself but also a number of other things, including autonomy, flexibility, financial security, benefits, healthy work environments, camaraderie, skill, flow, values, purpose, and impact.

Sure, many people are passionate about social issues, groups, or causes. But others are passionate about activities or skills (e.g., analyzing, coaching, coding, communication, data mining, editing, facilitating, healing, leading, parenting, problem-solving, etc.). There are passionate people in every field, industry, and sector.

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Myth: You only have one passion.

Reality: You can have multiple passions, and they can change over time. You may find joy in a number of pursuits. Don’t lock yourself into just one path. Instead, explore all the things that spark real curiosity or motivation.

“When I stopped trying so darn hard to find my one, true passion that I could shape my life around,
I discovered the beauty of multi-pursuits of multi-passions.”
-Emily Perron, business owner and author

 

Myth: Everyone wants their passion incorporated into their job.

Reality: According to the research of University of Pennsylvania Professor Amy Wrzesniewski and others, people have different orientations toward their work (i.e., viewing it as a job, career, or calling). Those with a job orientation view work as means to an end. They work for pay and benefits to support their family and hobbies, and they prefer jobs that don’t interfere with personal life. They’re not as likely to have a strong connection to work as those with a career or calling orientation.

Also, when you turn your passion into your work, there’s a risk of stealing some of its magic as you get bogged down in deadlines and deliverables.

“Some people thrive when they find joy in how they earn a living, but others are at peace with less emotional connection to their work and instead relish the joy in their passions outside their nine-to-five.”
-David Anderson, business executive

 

Myth: Following your passion will lead you to success.

Reality: It’s not entirely wrong, but it’s vastly oversimplified and incomplete. Truth be told, it’s not enough to follow your passions. Your passions can be big performance drivers because of the fiery intensity and enduring commitment that they can help engender, but in our competitive world you still need a business model. You need to add value and do things that others are willing to pay you for—and spread the word about who you can help and how in a noisy world. Meanwhile, not all passions are well-suited to being your primary occupation or to generating your required income.

 

Myth: A passion should last forever.

Reality: Your passions must be tended to, or they might wither and die. They can fade over time as you go through different seasons of life. Two things can help prevent that:

  1. purpose: when you connect your passions to a deeper sense of meaning, you tap into a more sustainable source of energy.
  2. novelty: exploring fresh ways to engage your passions—with new people or in different contexts—can keep them vibrant and alive.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Myth: Pursuing your passion is selfish.**

Reality: As activist and writer Courtney Christenson has pointed out, neglecting your passion(s) prevents the people closest to you from knowing who you are and what drives you. It also limits your ability to make a meaningful impact, live a life of authentic alignment, and inspire others in the process.

“When you don’t pursue your passion it robs your family of truly, deeply knowing you. It robs your spouse from seeing your true self. It robs your children of their most powerful role model. (If you want them to grow up and pursue their passions, you need to show them how.) It robs the world of your voice, influence, and change-making potential. And most importantly, it robs you of truly living.” -Courtney Christenson, activist and writer

 

Myth: You have to find your passion early in life in order to be truly great at it.

Reality: You can discover, develop, and deepen a passion at virtually any stage of life—and still develop mastery with it. Examples abound, including Morgan Freeman, Toni Morrison, Samuel L. Jackson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ray Kroc, Colonel Sanders, Julia Child, Vera Wang, and countless others. It’s a trap to think it’s too late to develop your passions.

 

Myth: You’ll be successful and happy if you follow your passion.

Reality: Integrating your passions into your life and work can be powerfully rewarding and gratifying, but there’s much more to happiness. What about things like anticipation, savoring, gratitude, purpose, service, and healthy relationships?

 

Conclusion

There are many myths about passion and work that can lead you astray. It’s not as simple as just following your passion. Passion alone is not enough. But it may also be a big mistake for you to ignore or neglect your passions.

Passions can be a powerful part of the equation when it comes to productive and enjoyable work as well as happiness and fulfillment. But only part of the equation. Ideally, you’re wise to buttress your passions with your strengths, values, and purpose on the one hand and helping others while filling market needs with an effective business model on the other hand.

Here’s to finding ways to meet your financial needs and fulfill your obligations to your family or others while also integrating your passions into your life and work.

 

Tools for You

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Find Your Passion

 

Related Articles & Books

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Passions

  • “Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play. This turns possible underachievers into happy warriors.” -Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
  • “When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.” -Jean Shinoda Bolen, psychiatrist
  • “Allow yourself to be silently guided by that which you love the most.” -Rumi, 13th century poet and Sufi mystic
  • “If there is any difference between you and me, it may simply be that I get up every day and have a chance to do what I love to do, every day. If you want to learn anything from me, this is the best advice I can give you.” -Warren Buffett, investor
  • “I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for the joy, you can do it forever.” -Stephen King, writer
  • “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” -Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist
  • “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” -Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple
  • “If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’ll lose to someone who does! For every person who is half-hearted about their work or relationships, there is someone else who loves [it]. This person will work harder and longer. They will outrun you.” -Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson, Success Built to Last
  • “The key to creating passion in your life is to find your unique talents, and your special role and purpose in the world. It is essential to know yourself before you decide what work you want to do.” -Stephen R. Covey, author, executive, and teacher
  • “The conventional wisdom on career success—follow your passion—is seriously flawed. It not only fails to describe how most people actually end up with compelling careers, but for many people it can actually make things worse: leading to chronic job shifting and unrelenting angst when one’s reality inevitably falls shorts of the dream.” -Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You
  • “You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true.” -Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
  • “…my recommendation would be follow your contribution. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better and that is the thing to follow.” -Ben Horowitz, 2015 commencement address
  • “…expressing your passion can be beneficial because others admire you more and may help you become more successful. At the same time, it may also make it more likely they will ask you to take on tasks that fall outside of narrow job descriptions, placing you at risk of stretching yourself too thin and burning out.” -Jon M. Jachimowicz, “3 Reasons It’s So Hard to ‘Follow Your Passion,’” Harvard Business Review, October 15, 2019
  • “The message to find your passion is generally offered with good intentions, to convey: Do not worry so much about talent, do not bow to pressure for status or money, just find what is meaningful and interesting to you. Unfortunately, the belief system this message may engender can undermine the very development of people’s interests.” -O’Keefe PA, Dweck CS, Walton GM. Implicit Theories of Interest: Finding Your Passion or Developing It? Psychol Sci. 2018 Oct;29(10):1653-1664.

* Computer science professor and author Cal Newport made this point in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.

** Many women struggle with this myth, in part due to gender stereotypes and cultural conditioning.

Crafting Your Life and Work Course

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Biggest Mistakes New Graduates Make

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Dear new graduate: Congratulations and hats off to you! You’ve come a long way and reached a major milestone in your life.

Maybe you’ve been so busy finishing assignments and getting to graduation that you haven’t taken much time to think about what comes next. (If so, you’re not alone!)

With that in mind, here are some of the biggest mistakes new graduates make:

❌ Putting too much pressure on yourself to have it all figured out right away.

❌ Committing too early to a career path without vetting it deeply and remaining open to new and better possibilities.

❌ Not clarifying what’s important to you when it comes to work. (In addition to pay, for example, what about opportunities for learning and growth, a vibrant culture, chances to work with great people, or meaningful work?)

❌ Not doing nearly enough vetting of the organizations you’re considering working with (including their values and culture, your manager, and career path). (See my article, “How to Find a Great Organization to Work For.”)

❌ Accepting other people’s definition of success instead of defining it for yourself.

❌ Living someone else’s life.

❌ Defining yourself by comparison, as opposed to by your own core values and guiding lights.

❌ Defining self-worth by your accomplishments.

Quality of Life Assessment

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❌ Spending your best years and trading your precious life energy on dubious things.

❌ Succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter to you.

❌ Not taking stock of your quality of life regularly.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
-Socrates, ancient Greek philosopher

❌ Chasing status and prestige in your work because of how it will make you look in the eyes of others. (See my article, “The Powerful Pull of the Prestige Magnet.”)

“An easy way to pick the wrong career is to put your image above your interests and identity. A motivating job isn’t the one that makes you look important. It’s the one that makes you feel alive. Meaningful work isn’t about impressing others. It’s about expressing your values.” -Adam Grant, organizational psychologist

❌ Assuming that “climbing the ladder” is the point of work. (See my TEDx talk on LIFE entrepreneurship and “climbing mode” versus “discover mode.”)

❌ Viewing your career as a race against your peers. (See my article, “Feeling Behind? It May Be a Trap.”)

❌ Focusing too much on material comfort and financial gain and not enough on happiness, love, personal growth, and spiritual depth. (See my article, “Beware the Disease of More.”)

❌ Assuming that worldly success will fill you up.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

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❌ Giving too much of yourself or your time away to unreasonable bosses or unacceptable circumstances.

❌ Staying too long in a job that’s not a good fit or with a bad manager.

❌ Letting your life get overly full and cluttered, with not enough white space.

❌ Letting work consume too much of your life.

“…the problem isn’t how hard you’re working, it’s that you’re working on things that aren’t right for you.
Your goals and motivations aren’t harmonizing with your deepest truth.”
-Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity

❌ Not honoring your commitments to those you belong to.

❌ Losing touch with your close friends.

❌ Playing it safe in your career and not taking enough risks early on while you have more time, freedom, and flexibility—perhaps playing small out of fear.

“So many of us choose our paths in life out of fear disguised as practicality.”
-Jim Carrey, comedian and actor

❌ Thinking you’re done learning now that you have a degree.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

❌ Falling into bad habits that will cause you to waste a lot of time or drift away from your values.

❌ Not taking charge of your free time, perhaps because you’re so drained from work.

❌ Letting yourself become cynical and jaded. (See my article, “Guard Your Heart.”)

❌ Making decisions or taking actions that aren’t in line with your core values and top priorities.

❌ Not giving more of yourself to others.

❌ Neglecting opportunities for fun and adventure in your life.

❌ Not daring to put your own distinctive stamp on your workplace, community, and world.

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

Conclusion

When it comes to navigating the early chapters of your career, it’s easy to focus on what other people expect of you and get lost in what our larger culture values. But it’s far better to get busy becoming who you really are.

It’s easy to get caught up in playing the short game instead of the long one—with a broader perspective on what’s important in life and what would be a life well lived.

Before you get too busy with the hustle and bustle of life and work, take the time to get to know yourself well—including your core values, strengths, passions, and vision of the good life. And learn to trust yourself as you craft a life you’ll be proud of.

Wishing you well with it—and let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

 

Tools for You

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Find Your Strengths

 

Related Articles & Resources

Postscript: Inspirations for New Graduates

  • “Big career decisions don’t come with a map, but all you need is a compass. In an unpredictable world, you can’t make a master plan. You can only gauge whether you’re on a meaningful path. The right next move is the one that brings you a step closer to living your core values.” -Adam Grant, professor
  • “One of the things is putting pressure on having that perfect solution lined up. While we should dream big, sometimes we need to make smaller moves and small experiments to build confidence and gather data and grow more organically in a new direction. In reality, what works is getting anchored in existing strengths and experiences and have a general feeling of success. There is no real way to know the answers up to the front of what to pursue next in our careers unless we’re running small tests and learning from them.” -Jenny Blake, author and podcaster
  • “One of the best pieces of advice for young people is, Get to yourself quickly. If you know what you want to do, start doing it.” -David Brooks, The Second Mountain
  • “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
  • “…the secret of career satisfaction lies in doing what you enjoy most. A few lucky people discover this secret early in life, but most of us are caught in a kind of psychological wrestling match, torn between what we think we can do, what we (or others) feel we ought to do, and what we think we want to do. Our advice? Concentrate instead on who you are, and the rest will fall into place.” -Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger, Do What You Are
  • “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” -Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha)
  • “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.” -Stephen R. Covey, educator and author
  • “Go to work for an organization or people you admire. It will turn you on. You ought to be happy where you are working. I always worry about people who say, ‘I’m going to do this for 10 years’ and ‘I’m going to do 10 more years of this.’ That’s a little like saving sex for your old age. Not a very good idea. Get right into what you enjoy.” -Warren Buffett, investor
  • “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” –Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple
  • “Shadow Career is the term used to describe people who go on an alternative path from their true dream because they’ve given up on themselves.” -Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Be Your Future Self Now
  • “I don’t have a problem with what you do, that’s your choice. What I have a problem with is you lying to yourself about why you’re doing the things you’re doing. You have a choice.” -Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO, Reboot
  • “In our time, we workers are being called to reexamine our work: how we do it; whom it is helping or hurting; what it is we do; and what we might be doing if we were to let go of our present work and follow a deeper call.” -Matthew Fox, Episcopal priest and theologian
  • “We spend far too much time at work for it not to have deep meaning.” -Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
  • “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue… as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.” -Victor Frankl, psychologist, author, and Holocaust survivor
  • “…God is calling you to serve Him in and from the ordinary, material, and secular activities of human life. He waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.” -Josemaria Escriva, Conversations
  • “Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy. For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line.” -Alex Dias Ribeiro, former Formula 1 race-car driver
  • “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” -Mark (8:36)
  • “Discovering vocation doesn’t mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond your reach, but rather accepting the treasure that you have been given. But make no mistake about it, well-meaning people around you—friends, family work associates, and others—will push you to run someone else’s race.” -Nicholas Pearce, pastor and professor
  • “Today I understand vocation quite differently—not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
  • “…I (like many others) felt a wrongness in the world, a wrongness that seeped through the cracks of my privileged, insulated childhood…. Life, I knew, was supposed to be more joyful than this, more real, more meaningful, and the world was supposed to be more beautiful. We were not supposed to hate Mondays and live for the weekends and holidays…. We were not supposed to be kept indoors on a beautiful day, day after day.” -Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
  • “Your career is like a garden. It can hold an assortment of life’s energy that yields a bounty for you. You do not need to grow just one thing in your garden. You do not need to do just one thing in your career.” -Jennifer Ritchie Payette, author

Crafting Your Life and Work Course

Regain clarity, direction, and motivation for your next chapter, starting with a powerful foundation of self-awareness and commitment to your values and aspirations.

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Crafting Your Life & Work online course or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Spiritual Side of Purpose

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Article Summary: 

How are purpose and spirituality related? How about calling? Excerpts from my conversation on purpose and spirituality with best-selling author, Richard Leider, in the wake of the publication of the 4th edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro.*

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Gregg Vanourek:

Richard, I want to ask you about defining moments or phases of your life that have been purposeful. What’s your personal experience with purposeful living?

 

Richard Leider:

Well, I think we’ve all had fortuitous encounters with people in our life who have made a difference in some way, who have awakened us. In 1968, I spent a week with Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in three different Nazi concentration camps. He was a world-renowned thinker at the time with Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and others. Frankl he was writing about logotherapy, about meaning and purpose in life—that we’re here for a reason.

In the concentration camp, he would get up in the morning and give others what I call a “small p” purpose action: a kind word, a hug, a crust of bread, hope for the future. Out of that came Man’s Search for Meaning.

At that point, I was trained as a counseling psychologist, but I said, This message needs to go somewhere. I’m going to do what I can with it. It was a fortuitous encounter. I didn’t have any money, and I was the youngest person in the room. But I was there for a reason, I think. And here we are today.

So, think about your fortuitous encounters. You’ve had your own, I know, with your father, with others, who are wellsprings of wisdom we can learn from.

 

Gregg: 

You’re one of them in my life, Richard. I think part of that story is being awake and alert. These fortuitous encounters may come to us, but if we’re not ready, if we’re not willing to take action and follow up, then they’re lost.

And here we are with the redemption of suffering. The most unimaginable evil and cruelty in the world, and yet Dr. Frankl turns that into Man’s Search for Meaning and logotherapy.

Richard, you wrote a book called Something to Live For. Frankl had this idea during the darkest days of the Holocaust, being away from his family, of: I have something I want to share with the world. It helps him survive and also be part of the community of fellow prisoners, helping each other survive.

 

Richard Leider: 

And the Foreword to that book was written by Richard Bolles. He said, I had this dream that I had a conversation with God that I wanted to go to Earth and do something. And God being a loving God said, Well, you need something to do and give while you’re there, so I’m going to give you some gifts to give while you’re there.

Richard wakes up from his dream, and he can’t remember the gifts that God gave him. But he said, All of us have gifts. We have to figure them out ourselves, because no one gave us the manual.

So, my work has really been about discerning, What are those gifts, and how do we give them in ways that are about a “purpose and a paycheck”? We need to have a purpose, but we also need to make a living. Look at our vocation and our livelihoods as well as our dreams and other things. I think that, a lot of times, people get off-kilter because they don’t know what their gifts, passions, and values are.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Gregg: 

Different people have varying conceptualizations and practices when it comes to spirituality. For some, it’s a faith tradition and worship. For others, more of a spiritual outlook or way of being. How do you think about purpose and spirituality? Is spirituality part of the equation of purpose and good living?

 

Richard: 

A while back, I took a year off and went to the seminary for a year to study purpose and world religions, and I found that every religion that I studied basically had the same point of view, and that was: The reason you’re here is to serve. I think serving is central to every faith.

The bottom line is, You’re here for a reason, and that’s to serve. And at the end of your life, when you die, you either did that or you didn’t.

“Is purpose spiritual? Yes! …. Purpose is spiritual wisdom embodied….
Unlocking our purpose is ultimately a spiritual path.”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4th edition

 

Gregg: 

It sounds like that implies part of the journey of living is the journey of self-discovery, of asking, Who am I? What’s my place in the world? What are my gifts, my calling? And then, if there’s a calling, it implies something or someone doing the calling or placing a purpose within you.

 

Richard: 

Well, the call is a felt sense, whether it comes from God up above or it comes from within. The call is people feel like they’re here for a reason, and it comes in different ways, often through a crisis. I’ve interviewed people over the age of 65, as you know, for decades, and asked them if they could live their life over again, what would they do differently? There’s three things that always come up, and that is, if I could live my life over again, I would be more reflective about what matters in life. When are you reflective? It’s usually in a crisis: I get cancer, I get a divorce, I get fired, and then I have to step back and look at what really matters.

Secondly, if they live their life over again, what’s authentic? They want to live authentic lives. People say over and over again, I did what my parents wanted, or what my parents would pay for in terms of my education. And I ask, Well, what really matters? And they’ll say, Work and love. I want to do work that fits who I am, and I want to be in relationships that who fit who I am.

And third, mattering matters. I’ll go to my grave saying this. It’ll probably be on my tombstone. Mattering matters. 100% of the people have said, I want my life to matter somehow. I want to leave my footprint. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It could be just with my family, just with my church, just with my synagogue or temple. But I don’t want to die without some sort of dent.

And so that’s what purpose is all about. Mattering, ultimately, matters. But we all want to do it our own way. In our book, The Power of Purpose, we’re just saying, check it out. Do your homework. Don’t blow it off.

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg Vanourek & Richard Leider

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

 

Gregg’s Tools for You

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

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Related Articles & Books

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose and Spirituality

  • “I believe that we are put on this earth to live our soul’s purpose. To me, that means using our unique gifts and talents to make a positive impact in the world and help create the world we want to see…. We are all born with an inner compass that tells us whether or not we’re on the right path to finding our true purpose. That compass is our JOY.” -Jack Canfield, author
  • “You have to build meaning into your life, and you build it through your commitments—whether to your religion, to an ethical order as you conceive it, to your life’s work, to loved ones, to your fellow humans.” -John W. Gardner, author and civic activist
  • “Everyone has a calling, which is the small, unsettling voice from deep within our souls, an inner urge, which hounds us to live out our purpose in a certain way. A calling is a concern of the spirit. Since a calling implies that someone calls, my belief is that the caller is God.” -Dave Wondra, executive coach
  • “I believe there’s a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.” -Oprah Winfrey, teacher, author, and entrepreneur
  • “Purpose is the recognition of the presence of the sacred within us and the choice of work that is consistent with that presence. Purpose defines our contribution to life. It may find expression through family, community, relationship, work, and spiritual activities.” -Richard Leider, author
  • “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” -Isaiah 55:10-11 NIV
  • Spirituality is “recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.” -Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
  • “Earlier in my life, I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I’ve grown older I’ve become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can’t see–the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are.” -Jimmy Carter
  • “The deepest desire of our hearts is for union with God. God created us for union with himself: This is the original purpose of our lives.” -Brennan Manning, author
  • “We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved.” -Mother Teresa of Calcutta
  • “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” -Proverbs 20:5

“God is the one who can tell us the reason for our existence, our place in the scheme of things, our real identity.
It is an identity we can’t discover for ourselves and that others can’t discover for us.
How we have chased around the world for answers to this riddle, looked in the eyes of others for some hint, some clue, hunted in the worlds of pleasure and experience and self-fulfillment for some glimpse, some revelation, some wisdom, some authority to tell us our right name and our true destination.
But there was, and is, only One who can tell us this: The Lord Himself. And he wants to tell us, he has made us to know our reason for being and to be led by it. But it is a secret he will entrust to us only when we ask, and then in His own way and His own time. He will whisper it not in the mad rush and fever of our striving and our fierce determination to become someone, but rather when we are content to put our rest in him, to put ourselves in his keeping, into his hands. Most delightfully of all, it is a secret he will tell us slowly and sweetly, when we are willing to spend time with him.” -Emily Griffin, Clinging

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Unlock Your Purpose–3 Key Elements

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Article Summary: 

Knowing and living your purpose is hard for many. It helps to break it down to the three key elements of purpose. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.*

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Gregg Vanourek: 

Richard, you have something you call the “napkin test.” You’ve written that calling, which you sometimes use as a synonym for purpose, is a function of your gifts and your passions and your values:

G + P + V = C

Source: Richard Leider
“’Finding your purpose’ is misleading, however, because it’s not something we have to go out and ‘find.’ Rather, purpose is revealed when we turn within and unlock it. We’ve already got it—even if we haven’t clarified it yet! But how do you unlock it? By looking in the most essential places—our individual gifts, passions, and values….
Combining our gifts with our passions and values reveals to us purpose.”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4th edition

What if someone comes to you and says, I don’t have any gifts, or, I don’t have any passions? Say a bit more about how you’d respond to that person who’s really struggling and just doesn’t see it.

Richard Leider: 

I call it the “Got-a-minute school of coaching,” because people say, Got a minute? Can you tell me what I should do with the rest of my life?

I say, Take out a napkin and write down your gifts, passions, and values. And let’s talk about that after you do some work on it.

I’ve interviewed thousands of people over five decades of life. There’s not one person I’ve ever interviewed who doesn’t ultimately own their gifts. They say, Yeah, I really enjoy that, I love that, I’m good at that. So, a gift is the first thing in the formula.

Gregg: 

How do you define a gift?

Richard: 

A gift has four characteristics:

  1. First, it’s something you love to do.
  2. Second, your hand turns to it naturally. Others observe you doing it effortlessly and superbly.
  3. Third, you can’t remember learning it. When asked how you learned it, you might say, I don’t know. I don’t have a degree in that, but I just do it effortlessly and well.
  4. Fourth, you say, I love learning more about it and hanging out with people interested in it.

Ask someone, What’s your gift? Ask what they love to do. They come up with it automatically. They know there’s something there.

I created a tool called Calling Cards. It’s available on Amazon, and it helps people to do a deeper dive into that. Sometimes I use that when I’m working with leadership teams, because people are so starved for that.

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Find Your Strengths

 

Gregg: 

What are passions, the second element?

Richard:

Passions are, What do you want to use your gifts in the service of? What do you really care about? What keeps you up at night? But it’s not about your problems. It’s more about your opportunities. What are you reading and thinking about? What do you care about?

I’m 80, and I wake up early in the morning. The first thing I do is write. What I write about is what I’m thinking about, what I care about, and what I read about. It makes me happy. So, What is it that you care about, that you would love to use your gifts in the service of?

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Find Your Passion

 

Gregg:

And what about values, the third element?

Richard:

Values are about where you do what you do. So many people have a good job, but they don’t like where they’re doing it. It doesn’t fit them.

The number-one knockout factor in most career research is this: I don’t like where I’m working. I don’t like the people. It’s not a good fit for me. The job is good, but the place is not. That’s why so many people would rather do their own thing, something on their own.

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider

 

Gregg’s Tools for You

  • Strengths Search to help you identify your core strengths and start using them more in your life and work
  • Passion Probe to help you find the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time
  • Personal Values Exercise to help you clarify what’s most important to you

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

Related Articles & Books

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose

  • “Purpose is already within us waiting to be discovered.” -Richard Leider, author
  • “Respond to every call that excites your spirit.” -Rumi, 13th century poet
  • “Your life is an opportunity to give the gifts that your soul wants to give.” -Gary Zukav, author
  • “I believe that we are put on this earth to live our soul’s purpose. To me, that means using our unique gifts and talents to make a positive impact in the world and help create the world we want to see…. We are all born with an inner compass that tells us whether or not we’re on the right path to finding our true purpose. That compass is our JOY.” -Jack Canfield, author
  • “Purpose is a presence within us all the time. It is a constant presence in our lives that merely needs to be unlocked via reflection and action.” -Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4th edition
“If we lack purpose, we lose connection with our true nature and become externally driven, generating discontent or even angst. Because purpose can be so elusive, we often duck the big question and look for ways to bury that discontent, most often through ‘busyness,’ distraction, or worse.”
-Christopher Gergen & Gregg Vanourek,
LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives

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Purpose Demystified

by

Article Summary: 

Many people resist thinking about their purpose, in part due to common misunderstandings about it. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.*

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Gregg Vanourek: 

Richard, congratulations on your new book, the fourth edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro. Great to see it doing so well. I want to start at the beginning. Many people, when they think about purpose, might be a little skeptical. They might struggle with it. Some might come to you and say, Purpose sounds a little abstract, Richard. It sounds a bit distant and philosophical. I live in the real world. What would you say to them?

Richard Leider: 

Well, the quick answer is, I talk about “Big P” purpose and “little p” purpose. Big P purpose is what they’re struggling with when they say that. It’s like, I need to save the planet. So, it’s having a cause or being committed to something you care about. Little P purpose is what you do when you arise this morning to make a difference in one person’s life. It can take 10 seconds. You can give a hug, a kind word. There are 1,440 purpose moments in a day. Can’t you find just one purpose moment to make a difference in another person’s life? That is the power of purpose.

Gregg: 

I love it. There are 1,440 minutes in a day, and you can use even just a few of them for little P purpose. You don’t always have to get caught up in Big P purpose.

Richard: 

Yes, Big P is good, but mostly, it’s not what I talk about these days. What I talk about is that people live the lives they need to. As you said, Gregg, I live in the real world. Well, the real world is 1,440 purpose moments.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Gregg: 

What would be an example of a Big P purpose versus a little P purpose?

Richard: 

Well, my Big P purpose is to help others unlock the power of purpose. That’s how I make a living. It’s my vocation. That’s what I’m known for. But my little P purpose, right now, is what we’re doing to make a difference in one person’s life today—and then again tomorrow.

Gregg: 

And you can do that in so many different ways that are much more accessible. It can be a nice conversation with somebody. Recognizing someone. Thanking the barista. Holding doors open for someone.

Richard: 

Exactly, but you have to be intentional. This is who we are as human beings. It’s in our DNA to be part of a group or community. How do we do that? We do that through what you just said, with the barista, at the gas station or the store. We turn to somebody and say, Oh, you look great, or, Thank you. And out of that comes a felt sense. The bottom line here is that purpose is a felt sense. You feel it because it is who we are as human beings.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

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Gregg: 

It sounds like it’s something that, instead of being distant and abstract, you end up living into with your day-to-day actions and mindset. You come back home to that DNA that’s your heritage. You come back into it, as opposed to being separate from it.

Richard: 

Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people. Often, we hear from retired people, Well, I’ve had my career, I’ve done my job, I’ve done my role. And I say, You haven’t done your life. Your life still exists as part of the community. What’s your reason to arise?

“Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people.”
-Richard Leider

Gregg: 

What are some other things that people often don’t understand or get right about purpose?

Richard: 

My favorite quote about purpose is from the American essayist, E.B. White, who says this:

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.”
-E.B. White

He got it right. It’s about both saving and savoring. You want to savor life. Yes, you want to do the things you love to do and enjoy. You don’t have to be Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or some Big P purpose person. What you have to do, though, is not just be about you. The dark side of purpose is self-absorption. When we’re around narcissists, self-absorbed people, we don’t like that.

Purpose is always about serving others.

But you don’t have to have your whole life be about that. It can be just a few minutes a day. It’s about the balance between saving and savoring.

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

Gregg: 

I think many people can have this mistaken idea that purpose sounds like navel-gazing, that it’s all about me, sitting around thinking, What’s my purpose? You’re saying it’s not. It’s serving. And giving is fundamental to living on purpose. The subtitle of the new edition of The Power of Purpose is “To Grow and to Give for Life.”

Richard: 

One of the examples of that is a story about a man named Ed Rapp. He was one of the presidents of the three big units within Caterpillar Inc., and he was about to become the CEO of Caterpillar worldwide. He was out running with his son, and his son noticed his foot was dragging. Long story short, he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Ed is from a farm community in Missouri. There were 30 kids in his high school class. He was the first in his family and class to go to the University of Missouri, get a business degree, etc. Here he is about to ascend to the higher levels of leading on purpose, and he has to resign because he’s got ALS.

I talk to him regularly, and he has the Big P purpose and the little P purpose. His Big P purpose is to make a difference with the science and research of ALS. He created an organization, Stay Strong vs. ALS. I think they’ve raised about $20 million. Every day, five days a week, he gets up and he coaches somebody just diagnosed with ALS, someone who’s scared and wants to know, What can I do?

He said, Richard, I get more juice out of that. It’s not going to save my life. I’m going to die from this. But it brings more aliveness to me than almost anything else, that ability to make a difference in one person’s life.

Gregg: 

I love that, and it raises the issue of suffering in the world. Part of the human journey is that we all suffer. Many people today are concerned about the state of the world. There’s a lot of pain and concerning things happening, but purpose is something that can redeem suffering. Ed’s story is also interesting because it’s not this abstract thing. He found purpose in a way that was personal for him, and ways in which he could really connect with the people who are newly diagnosed, because it’s been part of his story—his story of making the best of it and doing good with it. That’s the personal piece.

Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

++++++++++++

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

 

Gregg’s Tools for You

 

Related Articles & Books

Some of Richard Leider’s books

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose

  • “When we are clear about our purpose, or at least working toward it, our lives come together in powerful ways.” -Christopher Gergen & Gregg Vanourek, LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives
  • “Purpose reveals itself when we stop being afraid and start being ourselves.” -Richard Leider, “An Incomplete Manifesto for Purpose”
  • “If there’s just one habit you can create to help you find your purpose, it would be helping others.” -Amy Morin

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