Your Life’s Work: Harnessing Your Passion, Vision & Purpose

Finding and committing to your life’s work

In October 2023, I attended an event called Founder Mentality, hosted by Patrick O’Shaughnessy (CEO of Positive Sum, and host of the podcast, Invest Like the Best) featuring David Senra, along with Jeremy Giffon. It was a one-off event as Patrick helps launch David Senra and gain exposure to grow his audience as part of the Colossus Podcast Network. The event dove into the craft, commitment, and passion of David Senra with the Founders podcast, touching on the motivations for David’s work, and brought in Jeremy to the conversation to add his insights into what drives him as well. It was a fun event, and really got me thinking about a theme Patrick and David continue to discuss, with finding and committing to your life’s work.

Your life’s work is your own personal mission driving your motivation, discipline, and your expertise. It is your professional why of doing what you do, and is the root of your purpose and love for your work. Your life’s work guides your own personal —> Purpose | Vision | Goal | Mission (Source: ScaleX Summit) as described by Dr. Oleg Konovalov when talking about organizational vision. You are the CEO of your own life and career (Kinglsey Aikins, Network Institute), so having these concepts in your own personal framework can be extremely valuable. Having clarity with a laser-focused direction in mind brings so much power, increasing your capacity and capability, along with your chances for deep fulfillment and success. Scattered focus and time allocation, destroys your capacity for personal leverage, so going through a discovery to find your life’s work can bring you the purpose you may be seeking in your professional career.

Can you live and work without this? Of course you can, and many do, but a select few may see this as walking through life aimlessly, running on the hamster wheel of life, without a why, passion, purpose, or any kind of insight into their own personal vision. And when you think about it, so many live a life with meaning and happiness without discovery into this area, but especially for those with curiosity, drive, and the pull for more meaning and impact, this exercise may be essential if it doesn’t fall in your lap. For some, it comes naturally in some way, through experience, education, handed down through family, hobbies, and for some, it takes a a bit of personal discovery and work to really identify and hone in on what is important to us.

For my own personal discovery, I have done significant deep work over the last 18 months to consider my own priorities and pull in my passion and purpose to understand what I want, and what I can bring to the world (April 2022 - November 2023). I have learned firsthand there is a need for finding focus in what you do. When you go through this discovery phase, you become more self-aware and as you get introspective, it makes you think about how much you spread yourself thin in the course of life, dabbling, weaving in and out, experimenting aimlessly, and never stepping back to look at what do I want, what do I love, and how can I make this my mission.

There are so many resources available on how to find this purpose so I won’t dive into those here, but a few resources are listed below, following this article, along with in the links throughout the article. I have touched on related topics in some of my other writing as well:

• Building an intentional life

• Find your one thing

• Live your life

• Design your career

For today, I want to focus on the value in finding purpose and hopefully give you the final push if you aren’t convinced and haven’t yet found what your personal mission really is. For my own discovery, I started walking through what interests me, what value can I bring, what have I already succeeded at, what do others see in me, what do others ask me for help with, and I have realized that your purpose may take a while to find or refine too. It’s not going to click for everyone with a quick session.

For some, it may take decades, for some they found it when they found it as a child. But the time, effort, self-reflection, and struggle at times - it’s all worth it. The power that comes with clarity in finding your life’s work, harnessing your passion and purpose, and building a vision is one of the most valuable exercises you can do in your life. It’s your own story you’re writing, so why would you not take the time and effort to refine your life’s work. You are worth it and your value can help so many people if you can find a way to find, define, and share it.

Your life’s work is worth seeking, identifying, and committing to the mission, because it is uniquely you, and the world needs to hear you take the podium in whatever platform or avenue you choose.

Check out this post sharing a video of Bill Gurley if you would like some more inspiration.

In the words of Patagonia Founder, author of Let My People Go Surfing:

“The secret to happiness is to be working at your passion. If you want to be miserable, lead a desperate life like everybody else where they drag their asses to work every day because they hate their job.”
_{— Yvon Chouinard}

Hopefully, this added a little value to your business or your career. Thank you for reading.

Climb Higher, Raise Your^ROI