If you've ever typed "what is my purpose?" into a search bar, this is my answer.

I have three foundational values: Peace. Purpose. Prosperity.

Purpose sits in the center for a reason. I believe purpose is one of the bridges between who we inherently are and what we create in the world.

My definition of purpose is surprisingly simple:

Know your gifts. Find a meaningful problem you can solve with them.

When those two things come together, I believe you begin living your purpose.

Purpose Isn't a Job Title

When people talk about purpose, we tend to make it unnecessarily mystical. We imagine there must be one predetermined thing we were placed on Earth to do, and our job is to somehow discover it.

I see it differently. I believe every human being has inherent gifts. Some are obvious. Some take years to recognize.

• Tactical gifts: writing, building, organizing, designing, selling, teaching, leading.
• Energetic gifts: the ability to calm a room, inspire people, create trust, recognize potential or bring people together.
• Intuitive gifts: spiritual or difficult to neatly categorize.

And often, the real gift isn't any one of these things. It's the combination.

There may be millions of people who understand technology. There may be millions who understand systems. There may be millions who study esoterics. But the way those gifts combine within one person, filtered through their experiences, worldview, personality and perspective, can become extraordinarily distinctive.

That's where I think we should start looking for purpose. Not outside ourselves. Inside what is already trying to emerge through us.

Gifts Alone Aren't Purpose

There's another half. You can have extraordinary gifts and never do anything meaningful with them. For me, purpose emerges when your gifts encounter a problem worth solving.

Gifts + meaningful problem = purpose.

Your gift is your capacity. The problem gives that capacity somewhere to go. This is where purpose moves from self-discovery into service.

I believe human beings are naturally oriented toward service in one form or another. Not necessarily service in the charitable sense. Service can mean:

• Creating something useful
• Solving something painful
• Teaching something you've learned
• Building something that didn't exist
• Helping another person see something they couldn't see
• Making someone's life easier, healthier, richer, freer, more beautiful or more meaningful

When you discover something you are uniquely equipped to contribute and put it in service of something that matters to you, something changes. You're no longer simply working. You're expressing something inherent in yourself.

Why Money Doesn't Solve the Purpose Problem

I believe a significant amount of the dissatisfaction we see in the world comes from people living disconnected from their purpose. And money alone doesn't appear to solve it.

I've encountered stories from people who are broke, people living paycheck to paycheck, people earning comfortable salaries, and entrepreneurs making millions. Different financial circumstances. Similar underlying emptiness.

Someone can spend decades accumulating money, possessions, status and accomplishments, hoping the next achievement will finally fill whatever is missing. And it still may not. Because you cannot necessarily purchase the experience of being useful in the particular way you were built to be useful.

I happen to think money is extraordinarily useful, and it can solve many problems. But there are forms of fulfillment money cannot simply buy. One of them is knowing that what is uniquely yours is being put to meaningful use.

I Had to Discover Mine Too

My own gifts make much more sense to me in retrospect. Technology has always been one. Systems are another. I naturally look at seemingly disconnected pieces and try to understand how they fit together, where the constraint is and how the whole thing could work better.

But I also look at systems through an esoteric lens. I'm interested in what is visible and what may be operating upstream from what is visible: mind, consciousness, energy, patterns, meaning, human potential.

Another gift I've recognized over the years is my ability to see the gifts and potential in other people, sometimes before they fully recognize them themselves.

When I combine those things, a pattern emerges: Technology. Systems. Esoterics. Human potential. They may look like unrelated interests from the outside. To me, they're not. They are different expressions of the same underlying orientation:

See what is possible. Understand the conditions. Architect something that helps it emerge.

That's a significant part of what keeps me fulfilled today.

Purpose Needs a Mission

Discovering your purpose isn't the end. Purpose becomes considerably more powerful when you give it direction. That's what I believe a mission is for.

If purpose answers "What am I uniquely equipped to contribute?", mission asks "What am I going to do with it?"

My personal mission is: To activate, amplify and accelerate 144,000 human missions by 2040.

That mission gives my gifts direction. From it, I've created a portfolio of companies designed to work together as an ecosystem around a shared vision. Each company has its own mission and solves a different part of the problem, but they emerge from the same upstream philosophy.

This is why I don't think mission statements should begin in a boardroom. They should begin much further upstream.

Before Purpose Comes Perspective

Before you ask What business should I start? What product should I build? What should my mission be?, I think there are more fundamental questions to ask. Start with this one: What do you see?

Look at the world. The good. The bad. The ugly.

• What bothers you?
• What inspires you?
• What feels unnecessarily broken?
• What do you believe humans are capable of?
• What do you think we've misunderstood?
• What could be better?
• What would you change if you could?
• What do you believe to be true?

These questions begin revealing your worldview, and worldview sits upstream from philosophy. Your worldview is what you see. Your philosophy begins articulating what you believe it means and how you believe we should respond.

From that philosophy, certain problems become important. Your gifts make you particularly suited to some of them. And suddenly purpose becomes much less mysterious.

There is an architecture to it:

Worldview → Philosophy → Gifts → Problem → Purpose → Mission → Creation

And creation can eventually take form as a product, service, company, movement, body of work or contribution that perhaps nobody else could create in quite the same way. Because nobody else arrived there through exactly your combination of perspective, experience and gifts.

Purpose Can Create Prosperity

This is where purpose and prosperity begin meeting. When your gifts solve something another human genuinely values, value can be exchanged.

• Your knowledge can become a service.
• Your insight can become intellectual property.
• Your method can become a product.
• Your creativity can become an experience.
• Your solution can become a company.
• Your contribution can create economic value.

But prosperity, to me, is bigger than money.

• Health is prosperity.
• Wealth is prosperity.
• Love is prosperity.
• Meaningful relationships are prosperity.
• Freedom is prosperity.
• Having the capacity to live the life you came here to live is prosperity.

This is why I place purpose between peace and prosperity. Purpose can give our energy meaningful direction. That direction can create value. Value can create prosperity. And prosperity, when consciously architected, can create more of the conditions for peace.

Then something beautiful happens. Peace gives us greater capacity to hear ourselves. That deeper awareness can reveal more of our gifts. Those gifts create new possibilities for service. Service creates value. Value creates prosperity. Prosperity creates capacity. And capacity allows us to contribute at an even greater level.

It becomes regenerative.

Peace → Purpose → Prosperity → Peace.

Your Gifts Are Clues

So if you're searching for your purpose, I wouldn't begin by asking "What am I supposed to do with my life?" That's an enormous question. Start closer to home.

• What are my gifts?
• What comes naturally to me that seems difficult for others?
• What do people consistently come to me for?
• What can I see that others often miss?
• What have my experiences uniquely prepared me to understand?
• What problems do I actually care enough about to spend part of my life solving?

And where do those two things intersect? Your gifts. A meaningful problem.

Start there. Then build. Test. Learn. Serve.

Let reality show you where your gifts actually create value. And as your understanding develops, allow your purpose to develop with it. Purpose doesn't need to be a prison sentence handed down for life. It can emerge. It can mature. It can reveal itself more clearly as you do.

I believe the clues have probably been there for a very long time. They've been showing up in:

• What fascinates you
• What frustrates you
• What comes naturally to you
• What you can't stop thinking about
• What other people recognize in you
• What you wish were different about the world

Your purpose may not be something you need to find. It may be something you need to recognize, and then choose to put into service.

So, What Is Your Purpose?

Here's the short answer. Your purpose is where your gifts meet a problem worth solving. It isn't a job title, and it isn't one predetermined destiny you have to hunt down. It's already showing up in what fascinates you, what frustrates you and what you can't stop thinking about.

So the next time you ask yourself, "What is my purpose?", start with two questions: What are my gifts? What problem do I care enough about to solve?

Then build. Test. Learn. Serve.

That's how the question "what is my purpose?" stops being a mystery and starts becoming a mission.