It’s Hard

Purpose is harder.

Before my recent vacation, I felt like I was making tremendous headway in how I think about and practice development. For years I called it “leadership development.” Lately, as I’ve studied more of the psychological and theological literature, I’ve realized I’m actually working in the broader space of human development—even if I still see myself as a student of the formal field.

I’m confident the identity work I do is genuinely helpful. I’ve had the opportunity to walk people through a process of seeing who they are through the lens of their beliefs, values, personality, groups of belonging, preferred ways of working, and their goals for life. It has been deeply fulfilling to “walk with” leaders as they gain clarity on who they are and then begin to reframe the “how” of their work with deeper understanding.

I define identity simply as: “Who I am.” That feels foundational to any real growth and development.

But purpose—“Why I am”—is turning out to be a harder question.

Yesterday, I sat with an amazing leader who described his life as purposeless. This was after he had spent the morning investing in the growth and development of another leader, serving in a very difficult context in Central Asia. From the outside, most of us would say, “That’s meaningful work.” Yet his internal experience was still one of purposelessness. That kind of dissonance keeps raising the question for me: why is purpose so hard to locate, even when our lives are full of good work?

In his book The Purpose Code, Jordan Grumet, MD, breaks purpose into two categories: Big P Purpose and little p purpose. He describes Big P as those big, audacious, goal-oriented visions of impact—what Jim Collins might call BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Little p purpose, on the other hand, is found in the daily activities that bring joy and meaning, the work and relationships that make our actual days feel worthwhile.

Grumet argues that in the United States, we place enormous value on being unique. He connects some of this to our frontier heritage and the culture of rugged individualism that grew up around it. In my own, far less eloquent way, I’ve often described American culture as a gathering of people from all over the world who either didn’t want to be told what to do, or desperately wanted a chance to do better for themselves than their homeland allowed.

Whatever the exact historical mix, we’ve come to equate success with big, visible, large-scale impact. Anything less can feel like failure. I believe this is wrong, and I suspect it feeds the “mental health crisis” we’re seeing reported in our culture today, where anxiety and depression are increasingly common.

Grumet’s own story illustrates the problem. He became a doctor because his father—also a physician—died when he was seven. His childhood loss propelled him into a career path many would envy from the outside. Yet over time he realized he hated being a doctor and even felt embarrassed to tell people what he did for a living. That’s a red flag. Eventually, he began a deep process of reexamining his purpose and transitioned into hospice work, where he has learned a great deal from how people reflect on their lives near the end.

Listening to stories like his, and to leaders I serve around the world, I’m more convinced than ever that my own purpose is to help people like us grow and develop. To help us know who we are and why we are. To discern where and how to live our “why” in the real constraints of work, family, and community. To grow the internal skills to live our values consistently, and then to grow the external skills that allow us to add real value to others—in organizations, teams, neighborhoods, and ministries.

Behind the scenes, I’ve updated my biblical framework from ten purposes to twelve, and I had planned to share it this week—but I’m going to save that for next week’s post.

For now, I want to leave you with two questions to sit with in the coming days:

Who are you?
What’s your purpose—both the Big P story you’ve carried, and the little p purposes that actually bring your days to life?