How to Find Your Purpose in Life Without Waiting for One Big Calling

When I finished grammar school, I didn't really know what to do with my life. The ideas ranged from becoming a beautician to studying dentistry. I loved mathematics, so I enrolled in maths, and almost on the side in economics part-time. At the Faculty of Economics, the first to welcome us was an English professor. She said we were probably feeling quite confused and promised to explain everything simply. Her warmth made such an impression that I soon decided to study only economics.

Nobody handed me a mission. But looking back, I can see the thread. At grammar school I often tutored others at home. At 23 I started working at that same faculty, because I had always felt that working with people was my vocation. I wrote my doctorate on happiness because it intrigued me, and when more and more people came to me for advice, they kept telling me to put it all together. That is how my book was born. Today I know my calling is to share what I have learned about happiness. I didn't find it in one flash of insight. I built it, one curious step at a time.

In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness, I write that I am convinced all of us have a purpose here, a calling worth listening to. But if you are in your forties and quietly feel that life was meant to be something more, I want to take the pressure off that word. Purpose is rarely one big mission waiting to be discovered. It is a direction you build.

What does life purpose mean?

Life purpose is a sense of direction: knowing what matters to you and letting it shape your goals and everyday choices, usually in a way that also reaches beyond yourself. Psychologists Patrick McKnight and Todd Kashdan describe purpose as a central aim in life that organises your goals and gives you a sense of meaning. They compare it to a compass that gives a navigator direction, and they add that following the compass is optional¹.

A compass doesn't tell you where you will be in ten years. It tells you which way to take the next step.

Signs you're longing for more purpose

You might recognise yourself in a few of these:

• your life looks good on paper, yet you keep thinking there should be something more
• you are busy from morning to night, but can't say what it is all for
• you envy people who seem to know exactly why they get up in the morning
• you have done the quizzes and still have no answer
• the moments you feel most alive are rare

None of this means something is wrong with you. It means a part of you is asking for attention.

Why do I feel like I have no purpose?

Usually not because you don't have one, but because there has been no room for it. For years your days may have been organised around other people's needs, deadlines and expectations. That is responsible and often loving, but it leaves little room to notice what lights you up. If that sounds familiar, read how to find yourself again too.

The other reason is the story we are told: that purpose is one grand passion, and once you find it, everything clicks. While you wait for that big moment, ordinary signs go unnoticed. One honest note: if the emptiness comes with exhaustion that rest doesn't lift, or a low mood that has lasted for weeks, please talk to a doctor or a mental health professional. That deserves care first.

Your purpose leaves signposts along the way

When I look back, I see what I call signposts: people, moments and sentences that quietly turned me in a direction. In my book I wrote that life was sending certain people my way to serve as signposts on the road. That English professor was one of them. Years later, already her colleague, I told her what her welcome had meant to me, and she was very glad to hear it.

Never underestimate the power of one sentence to change your life.

Your signposts are probably already there: the subject you always come back to, the thing people ask you for help with, the afternoon you forgot the time. They rarely look important when they happen. And as I also wrote, some people realise they are quite satisfied with what they have. Purpose doesn't always ask you to change your life. Sometimes it asks you to live it more consciously.

What happiness research says about finding your purpose

As an economist who has spent many years studying happiness, I find one distinction especially freeing. Psychologist Michael Steger and his colleagues measure two separate things: how much meaning you already feel in your life, and how much you are searching for it. In their studies the two were barely related, and it was the meaning people already felt, not the searching, that went together with greater life satisfaction².

Age plays a role too. In a sample of almost 9,000 people, those at later life stages generally reported more meaning in their lives, while younger people searched more. Searching was also more strongly linked to lower well-being at later life stages³. I read that as an invitation: in midlife, endless searching costs more than living what you already know matters.

So where does purpose come from? Todd Kashdan and Patrick McKnight describe three paths: gradually, through effort over time; after a life event that brings sudden clarity; and by observing and learning from the people around us⁴. Paul O'Keefe, Carol Dweck and Gregory Walton found that when a new interest became difficult, people led to believe that passions are fixed and only need to be found lost interest more than people who saw interests as something you develop⁵.

Purpose may matter beyond how we feel. Patrick Hill and Nicholas Turiano followed more than 6,000 American adults for 14 years. People with a stronger sense of purpose were less likely to die during that time, even after accounting for other aspects of well-being, and this didn't depend on age⁶. It is a link, not proof, so I share it as a reason to take purpose seriously, not as a health promise.

How to find your purpose in life: seven gentle steps

You don't find purpose by thinking harder. You find it by paying attention and acting, in small steps.

1. Let go of the one-big-mission idea. You don't need a perfect sentence about your purpose. Start with a direction: what do you want more of in your life, and what less?
2. Collect your signposts. Write down when you lose track of time, what people ask you for help with and which compliments you brush off. On paper, patterns appear.
3. Ask who benefits. Purpose usually reaches beyond you. Whose life is a little better because of what you do? For me, that knowledge is still my greatest motivation.
4. Try it on, small. Give a possible direction one month: a course, a few hours of volunteering, a conversation with someone who already does it. Treat it as an experiment, not a verdict.
5. Expect the dip. Every new interest becomes difficult at some point. That doesn't mean you chose wrongly; interests grow when you keep developing them.
6. Learn from people who inspire you. Choose two people whose lives move you. What exactly attracts you: their freedom, their courage, the way they help? That is information about you.
7. Bring purpose into the life you already have. You may not need a new job. Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton describe hospital cleaners who made themselves part of patient care and came to see their work as being about healing people⁷. Ask where you could do the same at work, at home or in your community.

How to find my purpose in life after 40

If you are asking “what is my purpose in life?” at 45, you are not late. You are better equipped than at 20: you have decades of signposts behind you and a much clearer sense of what you don't want. Midlife often loosens old roles, and the question finally gets some space.

Sometimes the answer points to different work, and then career change at 40 is a good next read. More often it starts closer to home: a project that has waited for years, a way of helping that fits your real life. You will meet many names for this search, from ikigai and soul purpose to doing what you love. Whatever the name, the principle is the same: small steps in the direction that feels like yours.

Your purpose doesn't have to be grand to be real. It grows from the attention you pay to your signposts and the courage to follow them, one step at a time. That is the heart of my programme Permission for Life: permission to live your own life, in your own direction. To see where my own path began, read the free introduction to my book.