Last week on my In the Driver’s Seat podcast, I talked about Dolly Parton and what we could learn from the way she lived. I was wearing a shirt with one of my favorite Dolly quotes on it: find out who you are and do it on purpose. I love that quote, but there’s a question that often follows right behind it, and I didn’t get to it that day. (If you missed the episode, you can find your favorite podcast platform here.)
What if you don’t know what your purpose is?
Live on purpose sounds wonderful right up until you realize you can’t name the purpose you’re supposed to be living. That’s where we make the idea of purpose much harder than it needs to be. We start looking for one big answer, one calling, one thing we’re meant to do with our lives.
But what if purpose doesn’t work that way?
Purpose tends to show up in threads, not headlines. We recognize it over time, through what keeps drawing us in, what matters enough to hold our attention, and the experiences that shape who we become.
Threads, not headlines
Somewhere along the way, we decided purpose had to be one fulfilling mission. A career. A calling. A single sentence you could say out loud at a dinner party and have it explain your whole life. So, when nothing feels impressive or clear enough, it’s easy to assume we haven’t found it yet.
But most lives don’t unfold that neatly.
Meaning often reveals itself in hindsight. You look back and realize certain interests kept returning. Certain experiences changed you. Certain roles brought out something in you that others didn’t. You may not have called any of it purpose while you were living it, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t shaping where you were headed.
The traces are already there
Think about the parts of your life that have a little more electricity around them. The conversations you could stay in for hours. The work that stretches you but still leaves you satisfied. The problems you care enough about to keep trying to solve.
There are also things you’ve become unusually good at because life required it of you. You learned how to steady a room during chaos, make complicated things understandable, bring people together, advocate for someone who needed a voice, or start over when starting over wasn’t the plan.
None of those things has to become a career.
That’s where we narrow purpose too quickly. We assume that if something matters deeply, we’re supposed to monetize it, build a business around it, or turn it into our official identity.
Not always. Part of living with purpose is recognizing what brings meaning to your life and choosing to give more room to it.
That’s one of the things I noticed in Dolly’s story. Her life wasn’t one straight line toward a single mission. Music was part of it. So were generosity, literacy, and creating space for people to feel accepted. Different expressions, same woman.
Purpose can change with you
Here’s another way we make this harder than it needs to be. We treat purpose as something we’re supposed to discover once and then carry unchanged for the rest of our lives.
The life you were building at twenty-five will not necessarily be the life you want at fifty-five.
At one point, raising children may have given your days enormous meaning. Then they grow up. A career may have challenged and fulfilled you for years, until one day it doesn’t. A goal that once lit you up gets accomplished, and instead of feeling finished, you find yourself asking, Now what?
That question doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. It means you’ve arrived at a place where you get to choose again. How fun is that?
You’ve lived more life now. You know more about yourself. You’ve been changed by things you never could have predicted. Of course, as your perspective transforms, what matters to you can change too.
Your life purpose isn’t a singular destination waiting somewhere in the distance. It’s something you keep discovering as you journey through life, change, learn, and choose what matters to you now.
That’s the part that makes the question, What’s my purpose? feel a little easier. You don’t have to know what the rest of your life is supposed to look like. You don’t even have to know what this next chapter will become.
You only have to be willing to tune into what is calling for more of your attention now.
And then give yourself permission to follow it.
RESOURCES FOR YOU
Magnetic Morning Routine
If you’d enjoy a little guidance, I created this short audio practice to help you begin your day feeling grounded and connected to yourself. Take three and a half minutes to breathe, release some pressure, and believe in possibility. 💛
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