7 Ways To Realign With Your True Purpose

7 Ways To Realign With Your True Purpose

Warwick Fairfax

June 28, 2023

We spoke in January about making a life resolution rather than a New Year’s resolution. That we should make a resolution to live in light of our true purpose. In that blog, we gave some steps to help you find your true purpose and calling.

Now, we are six months through the year which is a great time to think about recalibrating our mission and vision. How do we know if we are drifting off course, if we are suffering mission drift? Perhaps our mission and vision are evolving, becoming more refined. Which is it? It can get confusing. 

For me, my mission and vision have evolved over the years. 

Growing up, I thought my mission was to be the leading figure in my family’s 150-year-old media business in Australia. After my undergraduate degree at Oxford, a stint on Wall Street, and then with my MBA from Harvard Business School, I launched my $2.25B takeover of my family’s media company. 

When that failed, rather spectacularly, I needed a new mission and vison. This time my own mission and vision, not my family’s. It took a while, a long while. I eventually got a job in an aviation services business doing financial and marketing analysis. My first real shift to truly finding my own mission and vision was in 2003 when I became an executive coach, eventually becoming trained and certified by the International Coach Federation. I joined the boards of two nonprofit organizations, including my local church. Then in 2008, after a talk in church, I started writing my book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. This led to me founding Beyond the Crucible, which has a podcast of the same name, blogs, social media posts and speaking. 

The point of this story is that my mission and vision have evolved. That started more recently with executive coaching, then writing my book, then evolved to my podcast, blogs, social media and speaking. It will undoubtedly continue to evolve. 

But at its core, the mission of Beyond The Crucible is to help people not be defined by their worst day; to help people bounce back from the pit of despair after a terrible crucible experience to lead lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others. That is my purpose at Beyond the Crucible. If I start drifting from that to work on other areas such as corporate succession or nonprofit governance issues, that is not my true purpose. 

I also need to avoid drifting from my core skill set and passion; that is to be a reflective adviser. I love working in the thought leader space, learning from others, and trying to share some thoughts so that people will not feel they are defined by their worst day. 

So how can you avoid mission drift and realign with your true purpose? Here are seven key principles: 

1. Know Your Purpose.

You have to know your purpose, the true reason you are doing what you are doing. Mine, as mentioned, is to help people bounce back from their worst day to lead lives of significance. What is your purpose and mission? Write it down, ideally in one sentence. 

2. Evaluate Whether You Have Drifted.

Look at where you are and what you are doing. Are your mission and vision truly in line with your true purpose, or have they drifted? 

3. If You Have Drifted, Move Back To Your Purpose.

Life is about choices. Over time we can make small or big choices that we might feel are good opportunities, but they can incrementally take us off course. Resolve today to go back to what you felt called to do. The good can be the enemy of the great, the enemy of your true purpose, the reason you were put on this earth. 

4. If Your Vision Has Grown or Shifted, But Your Core Purpose Is The Same, Good News.

It means your mission and vision have evolved, but you have not drifted from your true purpose. If you can still say who you are and what you do is in line with your true purpose, mentioned in point number 1, then that is mission and vision evolution not mission and vision drift. 

5. If You Have Drifted, It May Be Time For Tough Choices.

Life is indeed about choices. If you feel that some of what you are doing is out of line with your true purpose, stop doing it. Yes, just stop! Say no! Stop doing activities that are not fully in line with who you are and what you feel you were meant to do in life. 

6. Fellow Travelers Can Really Help.

Having friends and family outside of what you do, or even colleagues who are part of what you do can be really helpful. Ask them whether you are drifting from your true purpose. If you really want to know, those who know you the best and really care about you will tell you. It might take a bit of prompting, but such feedback can be invaluable, even life saving or perhaps more accurately purpose saving. 

7. Give Yourself Some Grace.

Mission drift tends to happen naturally. No one drifts on purpose. Most of us have so much going on that one activity or initiative leads to another, and before we know it, we have drifted from our true purpose. Evolution of our mission and vision, so long as it is line with our true purpose, is fine. It is a natural part of life. Don’t fear the evolution of your mission and vision, embrace it. Growth is a good thing. 

Life is short. We should spend our time on this earth living in light of what we were made to do, living in light of our true purpose. The world is blessed when we are living in light of our true purpose and sharing that with the world. 

Resolve today that you will be exactly who you were meant to be, and sharing your true purpose with the world.