had images of us enjoying the high life as a young married couple in New York, London, Paris, or maybe somewhere more exotic … Shanghai, Hong Kong, Rome … Berlin, maybe?
A few months later Andrew arrived home one evening excited but also a little nervous. He thought he'd landed us an opportunity … ‘But it's not where we were thinking,’ he said with some apprehension.
My mind started racing. Rio? Mexico City? Delhi? Kuala Lumpur?
Nope. Port Moresby.
Papua New Guinea. Mecca for cultural anthropologists since some of PNG's 600 indigenous tribes (speaking 850 languages!) had only just encountered modern civilisation.
Truth was, Port Moresby, the not-very-sophisticated capital of PNG, wasn't on my top 500 list. But we were ready for adventure and, not wanting to spend our lives in the one city (or country), we signed up.
While many people thought we were crazy — at the time it was one of the most dangerous countries in the world outside a war zone — we saw it as an adventure.
So off we went and I traded my ‘upwardly mobile’ career at a top consulting firm to work for a small PNG-based marketing company. It was an interesting role and I found myself doing everything from directing television commercials to running market research for global brands selling everything from beer to instant noodles.
It would be easy to fill a book with intrepid tales from our time in PNG, which still had remote tribes practising cannibalism at the time. But while it was filled with some off-the-beaten-track adventures (like climbing Mount Wilhelm, the tallest peak in Oceania at 4509 metres) and scary moments (like evacuating political coups amid tear gas and being held up at gunpoint), one of the most profound experiences I had was discovering my gift for helping others to, in the simplest language, ‘get out of their own way’ and be braver.
Yet while ‘helping people be braver’ was very rewarding, I had a limited ‘toolbox’ beyond my own hard-won wisdom, so I returned to study, enrolling in distance postgrad studies in Psychology. At the time, I'd never heard of coaching. I didn't even know there were people who spoke on stages and were paid for it. I just knew that helping people uncover their fears and take more courageous action was something that lit me up and came naturally.
By the time I left PNG, seven months pregnant with our first child, Lachlan, I was on my way to living a far more purpose-centred life than I had been when I landed there nearly three years earlier. Sure, adventure travel was still important, but pursuing work that drew on my talents and served others in a meaningful way had become even more so.
Did finding a deeper sense of purpose in my life permanently eradicate all my fears? Hardly! Time and time again my fears — of not having what it takes, of failing, or looking foolish, of being rejected or exposed as inadequate or having people think I'm ‘up myself’ or ‘too ambitious’ — have risen up and tempted me to play small and safe. But my passion for my work has helped me rise above those fears — to be brave in those moments when I felt anything but. Helping others be braver, to live their own purpose and fulfil their unique potential, became the new metric for which I wanted to measure my life.
WORK FOR A PURPOSE, NOT FOR APPLAUSE
Just as a boat under power can handle any size wave if perpendicular to it, there is little you can't do if you have a purpose you believe in. While there's no one pathway for discovering your life purpose, there are many ways you can gain deeper insight into yourself, and a larger perspective on what you have to offer the world. This can make all the difference as you look ahead at what you'd love to do with the rest of your precious life.
Since leaving Papua New Guinea in the late 1990s, my professional path has been anything but linear. I've had to restart my career/calling/business (they're all wrapped up together) on multiple continents as we moved around the world with Andrew's career — from Moresby back to Melbourne, over to Adelaide, off to Dallas, Texas, weeks after 9/11, then up to Washington, DC, back Down Under, up to Singapore, now back to the USA, though this time on our terms.
Sometimes it's been tough going. Yet whenever I've considered just throwing it all in and ‘getting a job’, I've always circled back to the same place … that is (and indulge me in the double negative) — I cannot not do what I do. Such is the pull of my calling.
Figure 2: finding purpose in work
Four questions follow (as illustrated in figure 2) to help you find the ‘sweet spot’ that rests in the intersection between what you care about, what you can contribute and what will be valued most from you:
Passion — What makes you come alive?
Strengths — What are your innate talents and gifts?
Expertise — Where do you make the biggest impact?
Values — How will you measure success?
WHAT GIVES YOU ENERGY AND MAKES YOU COME ALIVE?
My two youngest sons, Matthew and Ben, were fortunate enough to be taught by Emmy Bocek when they were in kindergarten. While Emmy had been teaching rambunctious kindergarteners for 30-odd years by the time I met her, she had no shortage of energy or passion for a classroom of noisy little humans. Emmy told me once that she believed she had the ‘best job in the world’. This was self-evident from both her enthusiasm and patience. I was always grateful for her passion (almost as much as I was that I didn't have to manage a classroom of kids every day — my own four were plenty!).
Over the years I've met many people from all walks of life who feel passionate about their work. From sheep farmers and chefs to scientists and beauticians — while how they spend their days spans the spectrum, they all had a passion for what they did that brought meaning to their days and, as research shows, will most likely add years to their life.
So, what makes you come alive? I'm not referring to taking your dream holiday or watching your team win the game. I'm talking about a why that moves up the food chain from being about you to being about something bigger than you. It's about connecting with what you feel passionate about, knowing that when you focus your attention and effort on something that puts a fire in your belly — that draws on your innate talents — you will have an invaluable and unique influence on all those your work impacts.
There's no reason to feel daunted. You don't have to declare at this point that you want to cure cancer, invent the next iPhone or solve the world's energy problems (though you might). This is about doing something that lights a spark and inspires you in some way. In fact the word ‘inspire’ comes from the Latin inspirare, which means ‘to breathe or blow into’. So when you think about something that really lights you up, you will feel a sense of ‘new life’ breathing … awakening … within you.
For instance, my friend Ron Kaufman has a passion for uplifting service. In fact he wrote a book with that title. Yet his passion for service is far more than a commercial venture. Ron lives and breathes what it means to be of service in the world — it permeates every part of his life. You cannot be in Ron's presence without feeling lifted up and cared for. As Ron shared on my podcast, his whole life is
