Your Purpose Might Save Your Life

“What’s your purpose in life?”

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Have you ever been asked this?

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It’s a loaded question.

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Some people can answer with complete certainty, without hesitation (“My purpose is to make the world a better place for animals.”)

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Some people think the question is ridiculous, hyperbolic, or impossible to answer (“I don’t know what my purpose is, I’m just a random accident of atoms bouncing around in a meaningless universe destined for heat death like everything else.”)

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Some might crack a joke (“My purpose is to chug as many Pabst Blue Ribbons at a Minor Threat concert as I possibly can, singing at the top of my lungs.”)

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Though heavy, here’s why the loaded question is well worth asking:

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Having a “purpose-in-life” (the technical term) has been shown to lower incidences of stroke, dementia, and cardiovascular disease.

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Additionally, from a performance standpoint, purpose boosts motivation, productivity, resilience, and focus. And it’s a specific type of focus.

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Purpose shifts our attention off ourselves (internal focus) and puts it onto other people and the task at hand (external focus). 

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In doing this, purpose guards against obsessive self-rumination, which is one of the root causes of anxiety and depression.

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By forcing you to look outside yourself, purpose acts as a force field. It protects you from yourself and the very real possibility of being swallowed whole by your new passion. 

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To put this more technically, purpose seems to decrease the activity of the default-mode network, which is the brain network in charge of rumination, and increase the activity of the executive attention network, which is the network that governs external focus.

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Finally, there’s an even greater benefit to purpose: outside assistance. 

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Purpose acts as a rallying cry, inspiring others and attracting them to your cause. 

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This has an obvious impact on drive. Social support provides even more neurochemistry, which produces an even greater boost in intrinsic motivation. 

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More crucially, other people provide actual help. Financial, physical, intellectual, creative, emotional— they all matter. 

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Simply put, on the road to impossible, we’re going to need all the help we can get.

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But don’t expect to find your purpose and support super quickly, and find stopgap measures in the interim. 

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I was a bartender for the first decade of my writing career, which allowed me the time to develop my craft without the terror of having to pay my bills off the results. 

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This was critical to my success. This is also why Tim Ferriss tells entrepreneurs to start out with a hobbyist approach to their first start-up: nights and weekends.

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Curiosity into passion; passion into purpose; and purpose into patient profit—that’s the safest way to play this game.

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P.S. By clarifying your Massively Transformative Purpose, you get more flow in your life. With more flow, you’re much better equipped to fulfill your purpose (and have a helluva fun time doing it).

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If you’d like to tap into this virtuous cycle, consider our flagship program, Zero-to-Dangerous, just click here to apply.

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