Growing up, from time to time my Dad would sit me and my sister down and ask us what our Purpose was. Even when I was young, I knew the Purpose he was talking about had a capital “P” and had to do with things like Fortune and Contribution (also capitalized words) and the motivational cassette tapes he listened to.
I never had a good answer to this Purpose question. He would ask, “Sarah, what’s your Purpose?” and the first thing that would pop into my head would be, “To be happy?” Even in my head, this answer had a question mark at the end. I knew this wasn’t what my Dad was looking for, so instead I would shrug my shoulders and say, “I’m not sure.”
“Well figure it out now,” my Dad would say, “you don’t want to spend your whole life looking for it.” And I would be left wondering what this ‘It’ really meant.
Before too long, my sister had figured out a really good answer to this Purpose question: she would go to an Ivy League College, and then to medical school, and then she would become an eminent doctor and help lots of people. The funny thing about having a Purpose is, it pretty much works. My dad made his Fortune and his Contribution– he started and grew and sold his environmental instrumentation business. And my sister is now an award-winning Pediatric Oncologist.
My capital “P” purpose has become more defined too. These days, if you asked me the Purpose question, I wouldn’t answer with a question. My Purpose is to be happy– and, to tell you the truth, for the most part, I pretty much am. If you asked for specifics, I’d add that I’m also working on becoming simple, compassionate and kind. It’s all a work in progress, but I feel like I’m going in the right direction.
However, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, and fortune and contribution don’t start with capital letters for me. I’m pretty sure I’ll be in the same boat when I’m 80, so at this point, I’ve stopped trying to come up with a clear path for myself, and instead I’m working on embracing my eclectic, creative nature. I know I’m happiest when I’m working on my design business and tending my garden and going running and hiking in the hills and meditating regularly and volunteering in my community and doing some writing and making some drawings… even if there isn’t a specific desired outcome attached to any of these activities.
I want to be a designer, a programmer, a writer, an illustrator, an animator, a teacher, a coach, a farmer– and that list just keeps growing, as do all of the creative projects I want to pursue in each of these fields. I want to do it all– I don’t want to pick just one thing and focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. And, I should add, that I feel very fortunate to live in our current world full of creative freelance possibilities, where a person like this can not only create a viable career for herself, but can continue to develop her career path as her passions and skills grow and change.
I know I’m not alone– I’ve met many other multimedia-types who are somewhere along their own spectrum of embracing or rejecting their eclectic, creative natures. The downside of this personality, and the reason why we tend to reject it, is that having many varied interests means you tend to feel like you’re throwing a wide, shallow net and you either get scattered with all of the possibilities or overloaded by them. Not having a single focus means you either spend a lot of time going around in circles or you simply get stuck, not knowing what to do next.
That’s where goals come in. I’ve had goals in the past: goals for creating and building a business that would let me be flexible, creative and kind; goals for having a loving relationship with my husband and creating a simple, sustainable home and garden; a goal of being a foster mom, a goal to qualify for the Boston Marathon, a goal of drafting a novel. And, I have to tell you, these goals, as arbitrary as they may have felt when I set them, have all worked out pretty well. Having a specific focus and direction meant I could walk in a straight line and get the job done.
But setting goals can feel uninspiring. If I have a new creative idea every day, how can I pick just one to focus on? How can I tie myself to one path when creative inspiration may take me in another direction entirely? I have big, general aspirations for my relationships, business, home, spirit and health that haven’t changed much over the years, but it has been a while since I’ve taken stock of where I’m at with my growing list of creative projects and what– specifically– I want to do next. At the same time, I’ve experienced so much satisfaction and personal growth when I’ve moved forward with even one of these projects, that I know its time for me to figure out how to move forward with some others.
The start of a new year is a great time to sit down and get my act together. In my next post, I will describe a simple creative goal setting process that I cobbled together from various sources and what worked best for me. This process helped me get specific and realistic about what I want to do in the near-term. Initially, I did feel the pain of picking some activities at the exclusion of others, but I let my gut help me choose, and I’m finding that the act of making a decision can in itself create inspiration and motivation.
I also know that goals don’t need to be as rigid as everyone seems to think– if I set them to help me live a wonderful life, they can be flexible. I can reevaluate and reconfigure them if I need to. Moving forward in any direction will help me develop new skills and a new perspective — and ultimately help me continue to grow and evolve as a person. And if that isn’t the primary Purpose, I don’t know what is.
One Response
You should repost this and the following post! Loved reading this as I am having trouble picking a focus for myself and my business. I like your permission to accept my eclectic nature. Thanks!