We hate feeling unmoored, uncertain, and directionless. It’s uncomfortable, unsettling, and, if we’re honest, sometimes terrifying. The moment we sense that void, we scramble to fill it. We want answers, and we want them now. So, we search. And in that search, we often take shortcuts.
Instead of slowing down and doing the deep, often messy work of self-discovery, we grab at ready-made ideas of purpose. We scan self-help books, take personality tests, and listen to influencers who promise clarity. We look around at what others are doing and think, “Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s my thing.”
And it makes sense. Who wouldn’t want a clear path handed to them? Who wouldn’t prefer a fast answer over an extended period of uncertainty? But the problem is, borrowed purpose rarely fits.
The Allure of Ready-Made Purpose
Personality tests, life coaches, career quizzes, they all exist for a reason. They offer neat, digestible frameworks for understanding ourselves. They promise to solve the problem of feeling lost.
And sometimes, they do offer useful insights. But more often than not, they become just another way to avoid the real work. We treat them like an answer key to life rather than a starting point. We latch onto an identity that someone (or some algorithm) suggests, hoping it will feel like our own.
Then, when it doesn’t quite fit, when it feels hollow or forced, we assume we just haven’t found the right one yet. So, we keep searching. We hop from one idea to the next, trying on different versions of ourselves like outfits in a fitting room. It keeps us busy. It makes us feel like we’re making progress. But it doesn’t lead to real fulfillment.
Why This Cycle Repeats Itself
When we chase purpose through shortcuts, we stay in motion but never quite arrive anywhere meaningful. That’s because true purpose isn’t something we can adopt wholesale from someone else. It’s not something we stumble upon in a neatly packaged form.
And yet, we keep hoping it will be.
It’s why influencers and self-proclaimed gurus thrive. They offer the illusion of clarity – of a shortcut to certainty. It’s why we love personality tests so much. They seem to give us a structured answer to the messy, open-ended question of who we are. It’s why we chase “good on paper” things that don’t excite us—jobs, relationships, lifestyles that look great from the outside but feel empty on the inside.
We want to bypass the discomfort of not knowing. But in doing so, we end up stuck in a different kind of discomfort: the kind that comes from living a life that doesn’t quite feel like our own.
The Harder (But More Honest) Way
There is another way. But it’s not fast, and it’s not comfortable.
Finding real purpose requires us to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty for longer than we’d like. It requires us to slow down instead of rushing toward the next answer. It requires us to examine our programming – the beliefs, values, and expectations we’ve absorbed over time – and ask whether they truly belong to us.
This process often feels worse before it feels better. It’s frustrating. It’s unsettling. It can feel like taking a wrecking ball to the identity we’ve carefully constructed. But it’s also the only way to build something real.
When we take the time to truly understand ourselves—to separate what we’ve been taught from what actually resonates—we can start making choices that feel right, not just look right. We stop chasing purpose as if it’s something outside of us and start recognizing that it’s something we build from within.
It’s a slower process. But it’s one that leads somewhere real.
