Podcast Episode 19 – An Initial Look At Purpose

This is The Three Petals podcast hosted by Jim Trofatter. The Three Petals is dedicated to exploring the threefold journey of spiritual awakening, where awareness, embodiment and mutuality intertwine to create a vibrant, transformative life and represents a new paradigm for enlightened living.

In each episode, we’ll delve into what it means to truly inhabit our human experience, while opening our hearts and minds to the infinite nature of consciousness. Whether you’re completely new to this path or have been on a spiritual journey for years, The Three Petals will offer insights, practices, and compassionate guidance to help you deepen your connection with yourself, others, and the world at large. The Three Petals: Where the Infinite meets the Intimate.

Part 1: I’m Supposed to be Doing Something Important

David had become increasingly concerned that he was supposed to be doing something important with his life. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, but he was fairly certain he wasn't doing it. He had a good job, a decent marriage, two children who still spoke to him, and a golden retriever who seemed completely satisfied with his performance. But somewhere along the way, David began reading books about finding your purpose. Within six months, his previously acceptable life had become evidence of a serious spiritual problem. Other people apparently woke up at four thirty in the morning, overflowing with passion, changed the world before breakfast, and knew exactly why they had been placed on Earth. David woke up at seven fifteen and mostly wanted coffee.

So David began searching. He took the Myers-Briggs personality test, a strengths assessment, a career inventory, and an online quiz entitled “Discover Your Soul's Mission in Seven Minutes.” He bought a journal to discover his purpose and wrote, "What am I here to do?" on the first page. Six weeks later, that was still the only sentence in it. Eventually, his wife found him staring solemnly out the kitchen window as his lasagna cooled and asked what was wrong. "I just feel like I'm supposed to be doing something important," he said. She looked at the overflowing garbage can beside him and replied, "Well, you could finish your lasagna and empty the garbage. That would be a start." David was disappointed. He had hoped for something more spectacular, like saving humanity from its imminent destruction.

Hello and welcome to The Three Petals, a podcast dedicated to exploring the synergy of three essential aspects of spiritual awakening: awareness, embodiment, and relationality. I’m your host, Jim Trofatter, and I’m glad you could join me today. In today's episode, we'll take an initial look at what purpose means and why the search for it can become such a powerful source of struggle in our lives. From an early age, we receive countless messages from our families and society about who we should become, what we should accomplish, and what a meaningful life should look like. We can spend decades trying to fulfill these expectations while quietly wondering why the life we have worked so hard to create still doesn't feel entirely like our own. Today we'll begin exploring what happens when we question these inherited ideas and consider the possibility that purpose may be very different from what we have been taught.

Part 2: The Question That Won’t Leave Us Alone

Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life? What is my purpose? These questions can begin surprisingly early and follow us for decades. We are surrounded by messages suggesting that each of us has a particular purpose waiting to be discovered and that a meaningful life depends on finding it. We hear people say, “I found my calling,” or “I finally discovered what I was meant to do,” and there is something wonderfully inspiring about that. But hidden in this idea is another, more troubling message: What if I never figure mine out? What if everyone else has a purpose and somehow I missed the instructions?

The search for purpose can then become another measure of our worth. We begin looking at our careers, relationships, accomplishments, and contributions, wondering whether they are significant enough. Perhaps I should be doing something more meaningful. Perhaps I should be helping more people. Perhaps I should have accomplished more by now. We compare ourselves with people who seem certain about their direction and conclude that our uncertainty means something is wrong. What began as a beautiful question about the meaning of our lives can gradually become a source of anxiety, disappointment, and even despair and hopelessness. Instead of purpose giving meaning to our lives, the inability to identify our purpose begins to make our lives feel less meaningful.

But another possibility is worth considering. Much of what we initially call our purpose may not have originated within us. Long before we were capable of consciously choosing the direction of our lives, others were already making those choices for us. Without realizing it, we may spend much of our lives trying to fulfill a script someone else helped write. Perhaps one of the first steps in discovering a deeper sense of purpose is not finding the right answer but becoming willing to question the answers we were given.

Part 3: How We Inherit a Purpose

Our ideas about purpose begin to take shape long before we are old enough to ask what our purpose might be. From childhood onward, we are surrounded by people and institutions that communicate what a successful life is supposed to look like. Families may emphasize education, financial security, marriage, children, service, achievement, or carrying on a family tradition. Schools reinforce accomplishment through grades, awards, competition, and eventually preparation for a career. Religion may offer another set of expectations about what constitutes a good and meaningful life. The larger culture adds its own powerful messages about money, status, homeownership, productivity, attractiveness, influence, and social recognition. By adulthood, we have absorbed an enormous number of assumptions about what a worthwhile human life should look like.

Very little of this is consciously chosen. A young child does not sit down to carefully evaluate the values of the surrounding culture. Children absorb them because belonging is essential. They quickly learn which behaviors are praised and which bring disappointment, which achievements make their parents proud, and which parts of themselves are welcomed or discouraged. Somewhere beneath all of this learning lies a simple, deeply human conclusion: If I become this kind of person, I will belong. If I succeed, achieve, behave correctly, make people proud, or become what is expected of me, I will be loved and accepted. Purpose therefore becomes connected not only to meaning but also to some of our most fundamental needs for love, safety, belonging, approval, and worth.

This is why the search for purpose can carry such emotional intensity. We may believe we are choosing a career because it is our calling, even as part of us is still trying to make a parent proud. We may pursue wealth because we believe financial success represents freedom, while another part of us tries to escape the insecurity we experienced growing up. We may devote ourselves to helping others because service genuinely matters to us, but it may also be the way we learned to receive love. Even our noblest aspirations can contain several motivations at once. This does not make them false or unhealthy. It simply means that what we call purpose may be woven together with needs we have been trying to satisfy for a very long time.

We can spend decades pursuing what we believe is our purpose without recognizing the deeper needs that drive that pursuit. We achieve something and feel satisfied for a while, but soon the old restlessness returns. We receive recognition, yet somehow it is never quite enough. We create the life we were told would make us happy and wonder why something still feels missing. Perhaps the problem is not that we have failed to fulfill our purpose. Perhaps we have been asking our achievements to provide what they were never capable of providing. A career cannot permanently give us worth. Recognition cannot guarantee belonging. Success cannot create the fundamental safety we may still be seeking within ourselves. As we begin to understand our needs more clearly, we can also begin to separate what we genuinely value from what we have been pursuing in the hope that it will finally make us feel whole.

Part 4: Purpose and the Construction of the Successful Self

One of the most deeply held assumptions in our culture is that having a purpose means doing something important. Purpose becomes associated with career, accomplishment, influence, contribution, or leaving a legacy. When someone asks what we do, we rarely describe the quality of our relationships, the kindness we bring into the world, or how deeply we appreciate being alive. We usually tell them our occupation. Gradually, what we do becomes confused with who we are, and the significance of our life is measured by what we produce. Purpose is no longer simply about meaning. It becomes evidence that our life matters.

Beneath this cultural message lies a more troubling question. “What is my purpose?” can quietly become “What must I accomplish to justify my existence?” We may never say those words consciously, yet we can live as though they are true. We accumulate degrees, promotions, possessions, achievements, followers, experiences, and recognition, hoping that eventually we will arrive at a place where we can finally say, “Now my life has been worthwhile.” Apparently, simply being born wasn’t sufficient. Somewhere along the way, we were told we also needed a mission statement, preferably with measurable outcomes and perhaps a five-year strategic plan.

This connects directly to the hypermasculine culture we explored in the previous episode. A society organized around achievement, competition, productivity, and control naturally turns purpose into another project. We must identify it, develop it, optimize it, accomplish it, and, if possible, monetize it. Even activities once done primarily for pleasure can become accomplishments. We no longer simply walk. We count our steps. We no longer merely exercise. We measure our performance. Hobbies become side businesses, personal interests become brands, and spiritual practices can become self-improvement programs. The underlying message remains remarkably consistent: whatever you are doing, you should probably be doing more with it.

There is nothing inherently wrong with achievement, ambition, contribution, or wanting our lives to make a difference. These can be beautiful expressions of creativity and care. The difficulty arises when our accomplishments are relied on to establish our worth. Then purpose becomes another burden the successful self must carry. Instead of asking what we genuinely want to express through our lives, we ask what would make our lives appear meaningful enough. Perhaps an important step in exploring purpose is recognizing that our existence does not first need to be justified by accomplishment. Only then can we begin to distinguish between a life driven by the need to prove its value and a life that expresses value because it is already deeply alive.

Part 5: When the Life That Was Supposed to Work Doesn’t Work

For many people, the crisis of purpose does not begin because their life has gone badly. It begins because their life has gone remarkably well. They did what they were supposed to do. They received the education, developed a career, found a partner, bought the house, raised children, accumulated possessions, traveled, earned recognition, or established themselves professionally. They followed the map handed to them and reached many of the destinations it promised. Then, sometimes in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day, a disturbing question appears: Is this it? There may be nothing obviously wrong with their life, and yet something inside them knows that the life they have built is no longer enough.

That realization can be surprisingly painful because it may have no external explanation. If your marriage is falling apart, you lose your job, or you are facing a serious crisis, at least you can point to something and say, “That is why I am unhappy.” But what happens when the marriage is good, the career is successful, the bills are paid, the children are doing well, and you are still lying awake at night wondering why you feel empty? That experience can bring tremendous shame. You may look around at people struggling with genuine hardship and think, What right do I have to be dissatisfied? Other people might envy the life I have. Why can't I simply appreciate it 

So we often try to silence the questions. Maybe we need a new job, a new house, another vacation, another relationship, another degree, another spiritual practice, or some new challenge to make life interesting again. Sometimes those changes are appropriate, but sometimes they simply rearrange the furniture within the same identity. The deeper discomfort remains because what is being questioned is not necessarily our circumstances. Something more fundamental may be happening. The identity that organized our life around achievement, approval, security, and belonging may no longer be able to carry us forward. The person we worked so hard to become may no longer feel entirely like who we are.

And dissatisfaction is not always evidence that something has gone wrong. Sometimes it may be a signal that something new is beginning. The uncomfortable question “Is this it?” may be the first crack in an inherited identity, through which a much larger life can eventually emerge. We do not yet know what that life will look like, and this is precisely what makes this stage so unsettling. The old sources of meaning are beginning to lose their authority before new ones have appeared. What initially feels like emptiness, failure, or loss of purpose may actually mark the beginning of realizing that the life we were given to live and the life that wants to emerge through us are not necessarily the same thing.

Part 6: The Suffering of Trying to Find Your Purpose

Once we become convinced that we are meant to discover a particular purpose, finding it can become an enormous project. We take personality tests, career inventories, aptitude assessments, and online quizzes promising to reveal our hidden gifts. We read books, attend seminars, listen to motivational speakers, create vision boards, consult coaches, change careers, and ask friends what they think we should do with our lives. Spiritual seekers may add retreats, teachers, meditation practices, astrology, personality systems, and other forms of guidance to the search. None of these things are necessarily problematic, and some can provide valuable insight. The suffering begins when we approach them with the belief that somewhere there must be an answer to the question, What was I put here to do?

When the answer does not arrive, the search can grow increasingly desperate. We may feel inspired for a while after reading a book or attending a workshop, convinced we have finally found our direction, only to see the excitement fade a few weeks later. Then we begin searching again. Each unsuccessful attempt can quietly reinforce the suspicion that everyone else received an instruction manual for life and ours somehow got lost in the mail. Instead of questioning the assumption that there must be one clearly identifiable purpose, we conclude we simply haven't searched hard enough. The absence of an answer becomes evidence of a deficiency in ourselves.

Comparison makes this even more painful. We encounter someone who says she knew at age eight that she wanted to become a physician, someone else who founded an organization that changed thousands of lives, or someone who speaks with absolute certainty about being called to a particular form of service. We look at their apparent clarity, then at our own uncertainty, and ask, What am I doing wrong? Social media intensifies this because we rarely see the confusion, accidents, failures, doubts, privileges, and changing circumstances behind another person's path. We see the polished story after all the messy parts have been edited out. Their life appears purposeful, while ours still feels like a work in progress.

Purpose then becomes another measure of inadequacy. Instead of helping us discover meaning, the search begins to reinforce the belief that we are somehow behind. Perhaps the suffering doesn't come from a lack of purpose at all. Perhaps some of it stems from the assumption that we should already know what our purpose is. There may be tremendous freedom in recognizing that a human life does not necessarily come with a single assignment we are responsible for discovering and completing. Our direction can change. What matters deeply at thirty may not matter at fifty or seventy. Purpose may unfold as we do. And perhaps not knowing what comes next is not evidence that we have lost our way. It may simply mean that the next part of our path has not yet revealed itself.

Part 7: Whose Purpose Am I Really Living

Eventually, we will have to change the question from “What is my purpose?” to “Whose expectations am I actually fulfilling?”  It asks us to take a critical look at the life we have created and to become curious about where our choices actually came from. How much of what I value originated from my parents, my religion, my teachers, my socioeconomic class, my community, or my culture? How much of what I have pursued has been shaped by my need for approval, my desire to belong, or my fear of being insignificant? We are not looking for someone to blame. We are simply becoming interested in the many influences that helped shape the person we became.

This can be difficult because conditioning rarely feels like conditioning from the inside. It simply feels like reality. If everyone around us believed that financial security was the foundation of a successful life, we might never have questioned why earning money became so important to us. If our family valued education highly, advanced degrees might have seemed like the obvious path. If our religious community emphasized service, helping others might have become central to our identity. If achievement brought praise when we were children, accomplishing things might still produce a powerful sense of worth. These values may be deeply meaningful to us, but we might never have consciously examined whether they are actually ours.

That distinction matters because inherited values are not necessarily false. Choosing to become a physician because you grew up in a family that valued medicine does not make your career inauthentic. Caring for your family because your culture emphasized responsibility does not mean your devotion is merely conditioning. Something can begin as an expectation and eventually become a genuine expression of who you are. The deeper question is whether the choice has truly become yours. Can you hold that value consciously rather than automatically? If approval disappeared, would you still choose it? If nobody were impressed, would it still matter to you? If you were completely free to choose it again, would some part of you still say yes?

We do not have to dismantle our entire identity to begin asking these questions. In fact, trying to reject everything we inherited would simply create another kind of reaction. The invitation is much gentler. We begin noticing. We become curious about which parts of our lives feel alive and which feel obligatory. We notice where there is genuine joy and where there is only fear of disappointing someone. Over time, this inquiry allows us to take conscious ownership of some of what we inherited while gradually releasing what no longer belongs. Perhaps discovering purpose begins not by finding a completely new life, but by becoming honest enough to recognize which parts of the life we already have are truly ours and which came from outside of us.

This realization may result in us changing our lives altogether to something not acceptable to the those around us. This may lead to our family and friends not understanding our decision to change direction. They may tell us we have just lost our way and should take some time off from decision-making to let our desire play itself out so that we can get back to our normal self. If we continue our path, they may say how disappointed they are in us or try to shame us back into place. This is when we need to hold our ground and support our inner unfolding and not their expectations of who we should be. This can sometimes feel like we have stepped outside the tribe and are facing our change completely alone.

Part 8: The Terrifying Possibility That You Don’t Need to Know

What would happen if, just for a while, you stopped trying to figure out your purpose? For someone who has spent years organizing life around goals, achievement, responsibility, and forward movement, that suggestion can feel almost frightening. If I am not moving toward something, what am I doing? If I stop striving, will I become lazy or complacent? If I no longer know what I am trying to accomplish, how will I make decisions? And perhaps the most unsettling question of all: if I let go of the goals and identities that have organized my life, who will I be? We may discover that our search for purpose has done more than provide direction. It has helped hold our identity together.

This is where the spiritual path begins asking something very different of us. Instead of immediately replacing one set of answers with another, we may be invited to become comfortable with not knowing. Not knowing can be legitimate spiritual territory. In fact, some of the most important transitions in our lives require us to enter a period when the old answers have stopped working but the new ones have not yet appeared. We know that something is changing. We may even know that we cannot return to the way we were living before. But we cannot yet see where we are going. The mind naturally wants to resolve this uncertainty as quickly as possible because uncertainty feels like vulnerability.

This in-between space can feel like emptiness, confusion, disorientation, or even failure. Friends may ask what you plan to do next, and you may have no answer. The ambitions that once energized you may no longer carry the same force, while nothing new has yet to arise to replace them. It can be tempting to seize the first available identity simply to escape the discomfort. We might adopt a new career, a new spiritual philosophy, a new teacher, or a new mission and immediately begin constructing another purposeful self. But sometimes the deeper movement is to remain in uncertainty long enough for something more authentic to emerge.

This seemingly empty territory is not empty at all. Think of a field that has been left fallow after years of cultivation. From the surface, it may look as though nothing productive is happening, yet the soil is quietly restoring itself. Something similar can happen within us. When we stop demanding that life immediately tell us what comes next, we create space to notice quieter movements that were previously drowned out by expectation and striving. Curiosity can return. Desire can become clearer. Values can reorganize. A different relationship with ourselves can begin to form. Not knowing may therefore be less a failure to find our purpose than the fertile ground from which a more authentic sense of purpose can eventually grow.

Part 9: From Purpose as Achievement to Purpose as Expression

It may be worth considering that purpose is not something waiting somewhere in the future for us to finally discover. Perhaps no single hidden assignment must be uncovered before we can begin living the life we were meant to live. We might begin with something much simpler: noticing what feels alive right now. What draws our attention? What matters to us even when no one is watching? What naturally moves through us when we are not trying to impress anyone or prove our value? Instead of searching the horizon for a grand purpose, we can become curious about the small movements of authenticity already present in our lives.

This requires a different kind of listening. We might ask: Where does my curiosity naturally lead me? What do I care about when there is no reward or recognition? Which activities leave me feeling more connected to myself rather than depleted by trying to meet an expectation? Who are the people around whom I feel most able to be myself? What situations awaken compassion, creativity, wonder, or a desire to contribute? The answers may not look particularly impressive. Someone may discover that they love teaching children, tending a garden, caring for animals, solving complex problems, making music, listening deeply to friends, building things, creating beauty, or simply bringing warmth to the lives of the people around them. None of these need to become a career or a grand mission to matter.

Purpose, then, may begin less as an achievement and more as a direction for authentic expression. It may also change as we change. The purpose that organizes one period of our life may eventually give way to something different. Raising children may become central for a time. Creating a business may matter deeply during another period. Caring for an aging parent, exploring creativity, healing old wounds, serving a community, or simply learning to become more fully ourselves may become important at another time. When we release the demand that there be one permanent purpose for our entire life, we create room for purpose to be alive, responsive, and developmental.

Perhaps a more useful question than “What was I put on Earth to accomplish?” is simply “What is life asking of me right now?” That question brings us out of an imagined future and back into relationship with the life that is actually happening. Sometimes the answer may involve taking a courageous step forward. Sometimes it may involve letting something go. Sometimes life may be asking us to serve, create, speak, listen, rest, grieve, learn, or wait. We do not yet need to turn this into a grand spiritual understanding of purpose. For now, it may be enough to notice that purpose does not always arrive as a declaration about what we are supposed to do with our entire lives. Sometimes it arrives quietly, as the next authentic response to the life directly in front of us.

Part 10: Meditation

Let’s take a few minutes to practice together. Don’t do this if you’re driving or working dangerous machinery. First, find a comfortable position. Let your body settle into your chair or on the ground and feel as if you have roots that extend down deep into the Earth. Close your eyes if you feel safe to do so otherwise keep your eyes open but unfocused. Begin by taking a few deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Allow the exhales to be just a little bit longer than the inhales…And allow each inhale to deepen your internal contact with yourself…As your body begins to relax, bring your attention inward…And notice what is happening inside your body right now. Perhaps there is tension somewhere…perhaps there is warmth…or heaviness…or openness… or restlessness…or simply the movement of your breath. There is nothing you need to change. Just allow yourself to be here…inside your own experience…without needing this moment to be any different than it is. Now gently bring to mind the question we have been exploring today…What is my purpose?…Notice what happens in your body when you ask that question. Is there a tightening?…Pressure?…Excitement?…Fear?…Perhaps there is a sense that you should already know the answer. Don’t try to understand any of it. Just notice what your body does when it encounters the need to know…And now, very gently, let another question arise inside you…What if I don’t need to know? Don’t answer the question. Just let it be there…What if I don’t need to know?...What happens inside? There may be relief. Or perhaps anxiety arises. Perhaps some part of you immediately objects and says, Of course I need to know. Let that response be there too. Nothing needs to be pushed away…There is nowhere you need to get to…nothing you need to accomplish…no purpose you need to discover…and no person you need to become. Feel what it is like to release the demand for an answer…You don’t need to know what the next five years will bring…You don’t need to know what your life is ultimately supposed to become…You don’t even need to know what comes next. Just this breath…this body…this moment…And perhaps ask again, very quietly…What if I don’t need to know?...Allow the question to drop beneath your thinking mind and into your body. Let your body receive the possibility that, for this moment, nothing needs to be figured out…Perhaps there is something underneath all the striving…underneath all the plans…underneath everything you have been told you should accomplish or become…Something that has been here all along…You don’t have to name it…You don’t have to understand it…Just notice…Allow yourself to rest in that space…without purpose…without destination…without needing to become anything at all…Feel the support of the Earth beneath you…Feel your breath moving through your body…Feel yourself here…Alive…Present…Not knowing…And perhaps, for this moment, that is enough.…Simply rest here a while…Now bring yourself back into the room…into your body…And when you’re ready, take three conscious deep breaths…and your eyes to gently open…maintaining that intimate contact with your body.

Part 11: Closing Thoughts: An Invitation

Perhaps I can leave you with an invitation. For the next few days, stop trying to figure out your purpose. Just stop. Give yourself permission, perhaps for the first time in your life, not to know why you are here or what you are supposed to accomplish. Notice what happens inside you when you do. Does anxiety arise? Relief? Emptiness? Fear? Does some part of you immediately insist that you need a plan? Whatever appears, simply become curious about it. You may begin to discover how much of your identity has been organized around the belief that you must become something for your life to have value.

Then begin paying attention to your actual life. Notice what draws you. Notice what opens your heart. Notice what gives you energy and what consistently drains it. Notice the people with whom you become more yourself and the situations in which you disappear into performance. Notice what you care about when nobody is watching, applauding, paying, or evaluating you. You do not need to turn any of these things into a new purpose. Just notice them. Let life begin speaking to you in a language quieter than ambition 

Most importantly, resist the urge to turn this into another spiritual project right away. You don’t need to discover your authentic purpose by next Tuesday. You don’t need a new vision statement for your awakened self. You don’t even need to know where the spiritual path is taking you. There is something profoundly important about learning to remain present during the period when the old answers are disappearing and the new ones have yet to arrived. That space may feel uncertain, but uncertainty is not the same as being lost.

For now, release the demand that you must know why you are here and to become curious about the life that is already here. You may discover that purpose was never as far away as you imagined.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Three Petals. If this episode resonated with you, subscribe, leave a review, and share your thoughts. Until next time, remember: awakening isn’t something you achieve. It’s something you allow.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Three Petals. To learn more about Jim Trofatter or this podcast and associated blog go to thethreepetals.online where the words the, three and petals are one continuous string of letters. Contact information is on the website.

The Three Petals Podcast is hosted by buzzsprout.com and the podcast and curated transcript can be found at thethreepetals.buzzsprout.com

To learn more about Trillium Awakening go to www.trilliumawakening.org.

Music was written by JK Productions and was obtained free of charge from www.Pond5.com, that’s www. Dot P-O-N-D, the number 5 dot com.

This episode of the Three Petals was developed in conjunction with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

This is Jim Trofatter and I hope to see you next time on The Three Petals: Where the Infinite Meets the Intimate.