The Importance of Building a Career and Life aligned with Purpose.

Earlier this year I attended the World Happiness Summit which for 2024 had the theme of “Purpose”.?? The World Happiness Summit isn’t something that I would typically have attended as my Northern (UK) sensibilities wouldn’t have trusted that this wasn’t some ‘woo-woo Hippy’ type event, the like of which works for some but isn’t the least inspiring to me personally.?

However, my curiosity was piqued by the theme – Purpose!? ?If you have seen any of my recent Social Media activity you will know that my newly created coaching business, Matt Adamson Coaching, is centered on this very subject.?

In 2022 I quit my job, which I had previously loved, having gone through a period of burnout, anxiety, and ultimately depression.? In my recovery from this experience, I identified that for me personally, one key element in my journey to burnout was that I had lost sight of my ‘why’.? I could no longer make the sacrifices, that I had previously willingly and happily made to further my career, make sense.??? Reading the Simon Sinek book “Start with Why”, which is in essence a book for business leaders on how to create successful business’,? I recognised that this notion of ‘why’, or to broaden it further ‘Purpose’, was something that I on an individual level had lost sight of and that this was actually critical to my ability to be successful in my chosen vocation.? My loss of this not only brought my previously successful career to a juddering (albeit temporary!) halt, it also impacted my life – through my health, my relationships and on a fundamental level my happiness and fulfilment.???

I am certainly not alone in this experience of ‘burnout’, Deloitte’s recent Workplace Burnout survey noted that 77% of respondents have experienced burnout at their current job with over half saying that it had occurred more than once.? This isn’t good for anyone because the report goes on to state (resonating strongly with my own experience) that? “91% of respondents say having an unmanageable amount of stress or frustration negatively impacts the quality of their work and 83% of respondents say burnout from work can negatively impact their personal relationships”.?? Now let me be very clear, having a clear sense of purpose or ‘why’ will not make you immune to stress or even burnout, other personal and (more likely) organisational factors can still trigger this in the most purpose-led individuals.? For this reason being aware of the signs, something that I will discuss in a future post, is critical.? However, tying in to the words of Nietzsche which were also echoed by Frankl, who experienced levels of stress in concentration camps we can only hope we never have to endure; “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any how”.

This notion fed directly into a desire to combine my 20+ years of experience in guiding and shaping careers with a focus on an individuals ‘purpose’ to help individuals firstly identify the right career path for them and their Life, and then support them in progressing along that path, strengthened with a clear sense of ‘why’!

Returning to my research into and ultimate attendance of the World Happiness Summit, my digging showed that not only was the author of the above noted Deloitte report, Jen Fisher, going to be a keynote speaker but also present would be a whole host of Senior Medical professionals such as the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as well as the Highly Acclaimed TV Personality, Podcaster and Author Dr Rangan Chatterjee.?? This was clearly no ‘airy-fairy’ ‘hippy’ type conference as had been my fear, rather a conference appealing to my data-led, factual brain that would take a very scientific as well as broader holistic view of the Topics of Happiness and Purpose.?

The Summit was inspirational!? I took away from that summit enough information to write several books on the topics of both ‘Purpose’ and ‘Happiness’ let alone a relatively short linked-in article.? Numerous lightbulbs went off in my head as I thought about my new business as well as my own personal journey and recovery. ??These will likely be the subject of future articles, posts and podcasts however one soundbite stood out for me more than any other as I digested what I had learned.?? It was delivered by Dr Kelli Harding from Columbia University – she is a Psychiatrist and Public Health Doctor who has also become an Author alongside her position at Columbia(!) and she delivered a talk very much in tune with this article,? “The Purpose Rx: How living your purpose can boost Health and Happiness”.? ??

Health and Happiness – surely when we come down to it, these are the 2 things that we want more than anything else in life!? There is interference for all of us in this basic position from messaging in society and from our own ego about particularly wealth, status and by extension material possessions.? Indeed, I would hold my hand up and say clearly that I still to this day, get comfort and pride from these things, but really, underneath that, if you don’t have health or happiness does it really matter??? To me Happiness had always seemed a given around living with purpose.? You spend a huge amount of your life at work and if that work gives you meaning and fulfilment then of course that feeds into happiness.? I can also undertake periods of discomfort and relative unhappiness in the short-term if I can see that the destination will lead to a greater sense of fulfilment and happiness.? However Health?? That wasn’t a concept that I had considered and again my skeptical brain started to write this notion off, however Dr Harding delivered the ‘Coup de Grace’ to this skepticism when she noted that,? “there have been numerous studies on the link between purpose and health and given mine and others analysis of the results I can say confidently that living your purpose can lead to an average of at least SEVEN(?!) more years ‘quality’ life.”? ‘Surely not’ my skeptical brain said, however look it up for yourself – the research is there - and Dr Harding is far better placed to provide analysis of that data than I! ?An average of SEVEN years extra!!? Who would not want that(!?!?!)? - particularly as the ‘medicine’ required to enable that will also statistically improve your happiness as well!!!

Mind Blown!!!? I went away from that talk saying that right there was my marketing done for me!!? Plus there is my own sense of purpose heavily reinforced!!?

Aside from this, the summit served to reinforce another major notion that I was developing around purpose.?

There is a huge amount of noise in social and mainstream media, encouraged by employers/organisations (always keen to maximise potential, capacity and therefore profitability), about “Optimise!”, “Optimise your life!”, “Become the best version of you!” – in a way clearly linked to money generation etc etc.? Never has pressure and noise come from all sides more to be ‘busy’, to be seen to be maximising and striving for your best.? ?There are elements of this message that concern me, taken in the wrong way it has the potential to be truly toxic with motives, in the wrong hands, designed to maximise the wealth of the few over the health of the majority.?

That said there are clearly also positive intents in the messaging and for some people these notions can very definitely feed into purpose and fulfilment if applied in the right way. ?This is the crucial element here, at the very heart of this, is the notion that you are going to run very hard and very fast if you want to be successful.? However, are you clear on what direction you are running hard in?? What exactly are you Optimising for?? Are you optimising for societal, ego led and potentially organisational pressure to optimise for prestige, status and cash?? Or are you optimising for something truly meaningful to you and your deeply held values?? As a post I made last week noted, Kofi Annan gave a quote I love and I feel is pertinent here:? “To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”

Knowing your purpose can help you cut through this noise – in essence it can throw an anchor into your future so that you know in what direction you are pulling. ?If you can connect with this, ‘your purpose, your why,’ then I feel that you truly can become the ‘best version of you’ in a way that ‘you’ truly want! ??Developing your own notion of what success is and then driving towards it will provide far more ‘richness’ and ‘wealth’ in your life than if you are blindly running hard in a direction that doesn’t necessarily fulfil you.? ?This is based on a truly holistic view of ‘wealth’ however its worth reflecting here on a quote from Mo Gawdat – someone else I will reference further in future.? “While success doesn’t lead to happiness, happiness does contribute to success”.? There are many different ways to take that and I have reflected on it a great deal but at its core I believe if you truly want to increase your chances of success, by any metric, then make sure you are happy doing what you do!

I have always taken joy and fulfilment from delivering the best service to clients, from helping people take the next steps in their career – but now I know – that if I combine my ability and proven track-record of helping people secure their next career steps with ensuring that the step is the right one for them, aligning with their broader purpose and values – then I can provide on average the key to 7(!!) years extra quality life AND truly increase their chances of being successful!

So if you too would like to access the full range of benefits from identifying how to live your life aligned with your purpose, with the added support of that being with someone who has had a 20+ year highly successful career in helping people take their next professional steps, then let’s have a chat.? My LinkedIn profile is www.dhirubhai.net/in/mattadamsoncoaching , connect there and drop me a message and we can arrange a free and confidential chat to discuss how I can assist you.

Matt Adamson