Weird how things converge sometimes isn’t it?

I was walking around London the other day, and within 4 minutes I saw 4 different guys standing on 4 different street corners, each smoking a big fat cigar.

I hadn’t seen anyone standing on a street corner with a cigar for months (I checked my scrapbook just to make sure), then 4 all at once.  Another one was pink limo’s – 3 within 20 minutes (hard to believe so many people with bad taste could be in the same place at the same time).

There’s also been a flurry of articles over the last couple of weeks on the subject of life purpose – when I haven’t seen anything about it for a good couple of years.

Life purpose is one of things that makes me squish my face up like I’ve just licked chilli off a thistle, because it’s something that the fluffier side of coaching just loves.  And I’m not a big fan of the Fluffier Side.

I grappled with my own life purpose in my late twenties, and what I eventually realised was that looking for my life purpose was looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place.

Looking for your life purpose is like looking for the reason behind sponge cake.  What’s the purpose of sponge cake?  What grand plan does sponge cake have for itself?  How is sponge cake going to change the world?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a slice of sponge cake that said, “You know Steve, I feel like I was put here to direct movies about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity.”

Enough about sponge cake, I’m getting distracted.

My point is that you don’t need a life purpose to be successful.  You just need to be confident.

What good is a life purpose if you don’t’ have the confidence to pursue it, or don’t believe you’re good enough to deliver on it?  You could spend a decade coming up with an awesome life purpose, only to find that your self-confidence isn’t up to the job and that you’ve coasted for 10 years.

Jonathan Fields talked about life purpose in a recent article – ““Rather than beginning with the requirement to reveal your life-purpose as a pre-requisite to taking action, why not reverse-engineer it?”

Stop looking at your purpose and start looking at what you’re bloody great at.  Stop looking at your purpose and start looking at what genuinely matters to you.  Stop looking at your purpose and start looking at what would be jump up and down, spin ’til you’re dizzy fun.

As Jonathan says, “It takes away the pressure to know your life-purpose as a pre-requisite to begin the exploration of meaningful work.”

A great example of this is the awesome Jamie Varon.  She’s set up a social media presence with the singular aim of landing her dream job at Twitter.  I’ve exchanged a few Tweets with her as I was really impressed with her approach and the sheer ballsiness of what she’s doing.

I have every expectation that it will work (or that she’ll get something even better), and it started by her looking at what was important to her, what mattered and what would be fun – and then she took action.  Bold, confident action.

If Jamie had sat down and meditated on her life purpose, I can guarantee she wouldn’t be where she is now, so tantalisingly close to making something amazing happen.

Another great example I found is Mike Iskandar, who’s working on a start-up and went on an extraordinary journey half way around the world to make it happen.  Again, Mike knew what mattered to him and had the confidence to see it through.  He WILL be successful, no doubt about it.

And then there’s my own sister (who I just discovered reads the blog – hi sis), who in her mid-thirties, having raised her 2 sons, realised that she wanted to do something for herself; something that mattered to her.  She then had the guts to retrain as a nurse and is now successful in an incredibly demanding field.  I respect the hell out of her.

If you really insist on looking for your life purpose, then do it for the right reasons and don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it has to be a big, grand, life changing “thing” that puts your whole life into context.  It can be small and quiet and graceful too.

Jay Frawley put this brilliantly when he said recently, “I know my life purpose. I have known it for as long as I can remember, but assumed it was too basic a sentence, too simple of a thought.”

Nail on the head Jay.  Nail on the head.

Everyone on Earth has the same purpose.

Now, I’m about to say something that runs the risk of ripping apart my own argument, because I kinda do have a life purpose.  My life purpose is to ‘Be Me’.

That’s the simplest way I can describe it, and I’d suggest that everyone on Earth has the same life purpose for the simple reason that it acts as a catch-all during every change and evolution you’ll go through in your life.

But ‘Being Me’ is useless unless I have the confidence to deliver on it.  It’s like dressing a cow up as a duck and asking it to quack.  Pointless.

It’s like having all the sponge cake in the world but nobody to enjoy eating it with and no parties to take it to.  (What can I say, I like sponge cake).

Confidence has to come first – only then are you able to be yourself and engage with the things that matter to you.

Do that, and life purpose becomes irrelevant.