The Purpose Problem
"Follow your passion" is terrible advice if you don't know what your passion is.
"Find your purpose" is worse. It implies there's one specific thing you're meant to do, and if you miss it, you've failed at life. That's paralyzing.
Here's a better frame, borrowed from a 3,000-year-old text: You don't find your purpose. You discover it through action. And you probably already have clues.
The Dharma Approach
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna introduces the concept of dharma—roughly translated as "sacred duty" or "rightful path." But here's what makes it practical: dharma isn't something you pick from a menu. It emerges from who you are.
Your dharma is based on your nature, your circumstances, your stage of life, and your genuine abilities. A natural teacher has a different dharma than a natural builder. Neither is better. Both can be fully lived.
The first step isn't figuring out what you want. It's paying attention to what you already are.
Clue #1: What Do You Do When No One's Watching?
Forget about career advice for a second. What do you actually do with your free time when there's no pressure to be productive?
Someone who spends free time tinkering with code has different nature than someone who spends it organizing social events or researching obscure historical periods or making things with their hands.
These unprompted activities are signals. They reveal what genuinely energizes you, stripped of external validation.
The question isn't "what should I do?" It's "what am I already pulled toward?"
Clue #2: What Problems Do You Actually Care About?
Aristotle argued that purpose comes from contributing your abilities to something larger than yourself. The question is: what's the larger thing?
Think about problems in the world. Not abstract problems—real ones you've encountered. Which ones make you angry? Which ones keep coming back into your thoughts? Which ones make you think "someone should do something about this"?
That anger is information. It tells you where you're called to contribute.
One person gets angry about inefficient systems. Another about people being treated unfairly. Another about beautiful things being lost or destroyed. Different angers, different purposes.
Clue #3: What Would You Do If Success Was Guaranteed?
This is a thought experiment to bypass fear.
If you knew—absolutely knew—that you would succeed, what would you attempt? Not fantasy success like "become a famous actor." Realistic success: building a business, writing books, teaching, creating something specific.
Often we know what we want but hide it from ourselves because wanting feels vulnerable. The fear of failure keeps the desire underground.
Writing it down helps. Even if it feels embarrassing.
Clue #4: What Have You Already Survived?
The Stoics would say your struggles aren't just random suffering—they're training.
What have you already been through? What have you learned from it? What do you understand now that people who haven't been through it don't understand?
Often purpose emerges from pain transformed. The person who overcame addiction helps others overcome addiction. The person who learned to navigate chronic illness helps others navigate it. The person who rebuilt after failure helps others rebuild.
Your wounds might be your qualifications.
The Common Mistake: Waiting for Certainty
Here's where most people get stuck: they want to be sure before they act.
"I'll pursue this when I'm certain it's my purpose."
That certainty never comes. It can't. Purpose isn't something you discover through thinking. It's something you discover through doing.
Aristotle was clear: you become virtuous by acting virtuously. You don't figure out who you are and then act accordingly. You act and discover who you are in the process.
The same applies to purpose. You start doing things—real things, in the world—and purpose reveals itself through the doing.
A Practical Process
Here's a method that combines ancient philosophy with practical action:
Week 1-2: Collect the clues
Write down answers to the questions above. What do you do unprompted? What problems engage you? What would you do if you couldn't fail? What have you learned from difficulty?
Look for patterns. Don't force conclusions.
Week 3-4: Small experiments
Pick two or three possibilities from your clues. Don't commit to any of them—just test.
Want to teach? Find one opportunity to teach something to someone. Interested in building something? Spend ten hours building it. Curious about a field? Have three conversations with people in it.
Low stakes, real action.
Week 5-6: Notice your energy
Which experiments energized you? Which drained you? Not which sounded good in theory—which actually felt engaging when you did them?
Energy is a better signal than passion. You might not feel passionate about something until you're competent at it. But energy—the feeling of aliveness when you're doing it—shows up early.
Week 7+: Commit to an experiment
Pick one direction and commit for a defined period. Not forever—three to six months. Treat it as an experiment, not a life sentence.
Go deeper. Develop capability. See what emerges.
The Krishna Principle: Detach from Results
Here's the hardest part: you have to do this without knowing if it will work.
Krishna's core teaching in the Gita is about detachment from outcomes. "You have the right to action, never to the fruits."
This sounds like giving up on success. It's not. It's recognizing that attachment to specific outcomes creates anxiety that undermines the work itself.
You can prefer success. But if your sense of purpose depends on external validation—if you'll only feel purposeful when others recognize your contribution—you've handed your meaning to forces outside your control.
The Stoics said the same thing: do the work because it's the right work for you. Results belong to fate.
What If You Have Multiple Interests?
Having multiple interests isn't a problem to solve. It might be part of your nature.
Some people are meant to go deep on one thing. Others are meant to be bridges—connecting ideas, moving between domains, seeing patterns across fields.
The Renaissance ideal was the polymath: Leonardo da Vinci painting, engineering, writing, investigating anatomy. That's a valid path.
The question isn't "which one thing should I pick?" It's "what structure lets me honor my actual nature?"
Maybe that's sequential: going deep on one thing for a few years, then another. Maybe it's parallel: doing multiple things at once in a way that feeds each other. Maybe it's synthesis: finding the space where your interests overlap.
Purpose Evolves
Here's what nobody tells you: your purpose at twenty-five might not be your purpose at forty-five.
This isn't failure. It's growth.
Aristotle talked about stages of life requiring different virtues. Krishna talked about stages of life requiring different duties. The person you're becoming needs different work than the person you were.
Finding purpose isn't a one-time event. It's an ongoing relationship between who you are and what the world needs, renegotiated as both of those change.
Start Before You're Ready
The philosophers agree on one thing: understanding comes through action, not before it.
You can read about purpose forever. Or you can start doing things that might be purpose-shaped and see what happens.
Aristotle: "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."
The answer won't come from more thinking. It comes from engagement. Start small. Pay attention. Adjust.
Your purpose isn't hidden somewhere waiting to be found. It's trying to emerge through your actions, if you'll give it the chance.