Purpose Balancing Act: From Career to Sabbatical and Back
Purpose is such a big, loaded question. We’re often made to think there's a singular answer to it, but there isn't. There are endless frameworks to help us think about purpose and fulfillment. All are helpful, all are informative, but none solve the entirety of the purpose question.
Trigger Points for Seeking Purpose
The quest for purpose is triggered at different times for different people:
A mid-life crisis when you realize you might be more than halfway done with your time on the planet.
A health scare or event that shakes your perspective.
A divorce, move, or other big life shift.
Reaching a breaking point in a job where you just can’t take it anymore.
The birth or death of a loved one.
When something happens to shake us out of our routines and normal life, we often turn to purpose as an answer. We think, "If I were feeling more fulfilled, I’d be happier. My problems would be less. There has to be something bigger for me out there."
My Journey Toward Purpose
My journey toward purpose (and I always say toward instead of to because it’s as much about the journey as it is about the destination) had two separate trigger points.
A Personal Loss
First, my sister died young. And the same year, my mom almost died. This was in the middle of my post-MBA career climb when I was putting in long hours and struggling to try and be in two places at once (my home and work in Washington DC and my family’s location in Minnesota).
Losing a sibling in her 30s shifted a lot of how I thought about my own adult life. All those things I had planned for the two of us—playing with nieces and nephews, holiday celebrations, summers in the garden—had to be rewritten. I also had to consider life without my mom on top of that.
When I opened the hood to do that tinkering on my future plans, the big questions came falling out all at once.
What mattered to me?
Was I doing the things that I said were important?
If not, why?
Who did I want to be in this world?
How was I investing in myself and others?
A Gradual Realization
The second factor was more gradual. I had a voice in the back of my mind telling me, "This isn’t it." My successful-on-paper MBA|corporate job|lots of responsibility life wasn’t the thing.
I knew it wasn’t the thing, and occasionally I would pop my head up out of the corporate busy-ness haze and think about a different life. But I was too tired, too distracted, and too involved in that life to see the full picture and make a big move.
The voice would quiet down. But it was always there whispering.
Listening to the Inner Voice
Eventually, I started to listen more. I got to my breaking point and took a sabbatical. I made a rule that I couldn’t commit to anything for several months (to prevent my habit of filling up time with ‘productivity’ from taking over).
I turned away from finding purpose in work and producing and looked for an answer that had more to do with being. I searched high and low for what purpose would look like in this new framework, the one where I was unbound by the structures of my old corporate life.
Finding Balance
Along the way, I realized that for me, purpose had to have elements of work to be truly fulfilling. It couldn’t be just about being. So I landed in the middle. It shifts from day to day and week to week, but the way I find the most is through balance.
Some comes from seeing the impact my work makes on other people. Some of it comes from looking at my garden and feeling gratitude in the moment. It’s both.
Reflecting on Your Purpose
If you’re searching for purpose and fulfillment, take a moment to think about the chapters of your life and how they have held different combinations of purpose from work and purpose from outside work. Is there a mix that works best for you?