#75: What If The Purpose Is Just to Live?

Why chasing achievements keeps us from experiencing the life we're already living

Hola friends! 👋

I've been thinking about purpose a lot lately. Coming from a conversation I had with Michelle from We Cultivate a while back, on why we do what we do.

And I want to share my perspective that might be uncomfortable or unpopular.

What if our purpose isn't to find our calling, build our legacy, or change the world in some measurable way? What if they’re just potential outcomes of living our purpose instead?

Because what if our purpose is simple: to truly live and experience this life.

To feel good and safe in our bodies. To build and strengthen relationships. To do things for the sake of doing them. To get to know ourselves and what matters to us as we live our day-to-day and continuously evolve as human beings.

So that we can (just to name a few):

• Learn from our mistakes as much as we learn about topics we’re curious about.

• To find joy in ordinary Tuesday afternoons.

• To grieve the things that we’ve lost.

• To be able to sit with ourselves in quiet without feeling the need to distract ourselves with noise and doomscrolling.

• And to fight for the things we believe in (but also be flexible to change them).

I write this from a place of privilege, of course. My context might be different from yours. I have the luxury of questioning purpose because my basic needs are met, because I'm not fighting for survival, and because I can afford to sit with philosophical questions instead of scrambling for the next paycheck.

But just what if?

I’m writing about this now because a huge chunk of the people coming to me for coaching are either burned out or burning out. Then you have the other chunk of people who are constantly questioning their worth because of what’s been happening in their careers while also asking themselves if “Is this it? is this all I’m supposed to do?

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The Cost of Making our Careers the Purpose

One thing that’s common between all of my clients (and myself) is that we spend so much time chasing the next goal, the next milestone, that we forget to enjoy the experience of the chase itself, much less everything else. And in the process, we forget what we’ve gained along the way.

Last August, I spent my holiday scrambling to fill my pipeline with leads instead of actually taking a vacation. I got frustrated by how slow things were, completely forgetting that it was August and people were on vacation... including me. It was my first August as a full-time entrepreneur, and all I could focus on was how empty my calendar was. I spent a good chunk of my holidays doubling down on work, trying to fill up my empty calendar until somebody had to remind me that I was on holiday too.

I have a client who's had a stellar career these last few years. When we first started working together, we worked on getting her relocated to a country she’s always wanted to move to for a job. That was a year ago. But now she called me again because she's feeling unhappy where she is, despite the high-visibility and highly strategic projects she’s got her hands in — not because the work is terrible, but because she's already focusing on the next milestone that feels so far away. The stress is real, for sure. And so is the strain this is putting on her relationships.

And one of my clients who just finished coaching with me recently had a similar-ish story when we first started working together. At first it was for looking for a new job, then when she found her new job, it was about positioning herself well at work, then it was about finding a side hustle, then there was the marathon, the house to buy. It never seemed to end. And yet no matter what milestone she hit, there was still the feeling of not doing enough, even though she was exhausted all the time. But slowing down felt like giving up.

Is it wrong to keep wanting more? Bigger scope? Shinier titles?

Absolutely not. I don’t think being hungry with ambition is wrong (it is my job to help people achieve their career goals after all!). However, why are so many of us not allowing ourselves to digest? When do we get to enjoy and smack our lips in satisfaction from the fantastic meal we just had before we start wondering what to have for the next one?

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What We Miss When We're Always Moving

When we're constantly chasing the next milestone, we miss the actual experience of being in this moment… in this life we're living right now, including the joy and satisfaction from what we’ve achieved.

When my client got that incredible job relocation, she spent her first year in a new country focused on what comes next instead of letting herself feel the ground beneath her feet in the place she’s wanted to move to for years. She missed so many opportunities to lay down roots and build a life outside of the office walls.

When we're always running toward something, we miss:

• The relief of feeling the weight of our body settling into a chair after a long day.

• Enjoying taste of our coffee in the morning, before we even check our phones for Slack messages and emails.

• Feeling satisfaction of finishing something - not for what it leads to, but for the simple completion itself.

• Finding humor in the conversations that go nowhere productive, but leave us feeling connected to another human.

• Getting lost in the books we read not because they'll make us better at our jobs, but because they make us imagine something different.

So many of us have been living entirely in our heads, strategizing and planning, working long hours well into the night and even the weekend, at the cost of so many other things, until we find ourselves in front of a doctor getting treated for symptoms that feel like they came out of nowhere.

This isn't about finding meaning in mundane moments. This is about remembering that we’re human beings having a human experience. We’re not productivity machines that happen to need food and sleep.

The purpose isn't to make every moment meaningful. It's to be present for the moments that are already meaningful.

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The Discomfort That Comes With Being Present

Here's what I've learned from watching my clients (and myself) try to step off the achievement treadmill: it feels weird at first. And there’s grief.

I had a client who, by the end of our collaboration, decided to prioritize her health, her relationships, and actually enjoying the rewards of the hard work she'd done so far instead of immediately chasing the next milestone. Hurrah, right?

But when she first brought this up, it felt like giving up to her. "What if people think I'm not ambitious anymore?" she asked. "What if I lose momentum?"

The idea of stepping back from constant career optimization, even though she was exhausted and her relationships were strained, felt like failure on its own. We've trained ourselves to find meaning in the pursuit, so when the pursuit pauses, we panic.

We feel anxious about whether or not we're doing enough, being enough, moving fast enough. The fear that if we're not constantly improving, we're falling behind.

This is why so many of us reach for our phones the moment we sit down. Why we fill silence with podcasts and background noise. Why we book ourselves into back-to-back commitments. The discomfort of being present with ourselves, without an agenda, without a goal to chase, can feel unbearable when we're not used to it.

But here's what happens to people (not just my clients) when they give themselves permission to prioritize something else aside from titles and achievements. When they finally allowed themselves to slow down and just be.

They started to reconnect with who they are underneath all the achieving and chasing. And from that more grounded place, they made better decisions about what was actually worth their energy. And from those decisions, along came flow.

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When Being Present Becomes the Purpose

What if being present becomes the purpose vs forgetting to be present in order to chase meaning or find purpose?

I had a client who stopped chasing her “dream job” and chose financial safety first because that’s what she needed at the moment. So she can have the calm space to look for something more exciting. Three months later, the exact opportunity she’d been hunting for opened up, and she was in a stable enough position to pursue it without desperation. When you stop needing something so urgently, it often finds you.

Another client finally realized that choosing where to put her energy - her hobbies, her interests, her health - wasn’t giving up. The space she gave herself helped her detach from work outcomes. So she showed up more relaxed, braver, with stronger boundaries. The result? Better feedback and getting tapped for strategic opportunities. But by then, she wasn’t defining herself by these wins anymore.

This is what happens when people stop putting their worth on the outcome of the chase. They give themselves permission to feel safe, to do things they’ve wanted to do, to make choices based on what feels right for them and their context, rather than what looks impressive. The flow isn’t something they’re trying to achieve - it’s what emerges when they stop trying so hard to achieve everything else and just be present with themselves, their deepest wants, their realest needs.

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Final Thoughts and Feelings

Maybe our purpose isn’t to chase being extraordinary nor to save the world.

Maybe it’s to notice the world. To experience it fully. And to find the extraordinary in the ordinary by being present for our own lives while we’re living it - not as preparation for something bigger, but as the thing itself. To find ease in being fully ourselves instead of constantly providing our worth.

Maybe it’s to let ourselves be human in a world that’s constantly asking us to be more. To find satisfaction and joy in every single moment. And to make decisions from a place of groundedness rather than anxiety. So we can see with more clarity the bajillion opportunities that are, often, already right in front of us.

This is what I think when “truly living becomes the purpose”, actually means. Not the outcomes we produce, but how present we are for the life we’re already living. It isn’t about what we build or achieve or change in the world. It’s about how fully we show up for the world, and for ourselves, exactly as we are, right now (and maybe just, maybe, we change the world in the process)

💙

Kax

p.s.

Honestly, I’ve had a lot of back and forth with myself if I should send out this newsletter because these are still thoughts and feelings I’m stewing in and processing. But there’s a strong pull to “think out loud” hence a shit ton of rambling for now.I’d love to read your thoughts, comments, or even violent reactions about this though!

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