Our Model
Finding Purpose
How do you find purpose in your life? If you ask a hundred people this question, you'll get a hundred different answers. We know. We have asked them.
The Life Purpose Lab was founded, in 2020, to answer this question as deeply as possible.
We researched the literature, interviewed hundreds of people, and tested dozens of exercises. We examined our own experiences and had countless discussions. Two years into our journey, we had an aha moment.
Finding purpose is all about how we manage the possibilities in our lives.
Are we aware of what's possible? How do examine our possibilities? What do we do with them? Based on this insight, we developed a conceptual framework of the purpose-finding process: the Possibility Management Model.
Here's how it works:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? - Mary Oliver
The Possibility Management Model
Divided into 4 separate steps
CREATE
Most people spend their lives, head-down, walking on the paths already in front of them.
But, is a different life possible? What would it look like?
Each of us could live our lives in many different ways--our own personal multiverse.
Being aware of these possibilities, even though we'll never be able to enact them all, is the starting point in the journey into purpose.
INVESTIGATE
Once we realize what could happen, we have to choose between possibilities.
This involves studying and learning about them, creating micro-experiences, and discerning what we've learned.
As with so many other areas of life, we want to make informed decisions.
We do this by examining what's possible.
COMBINE
"What is my purpose in life" is the wrong question, because we all can and should have multiple purposes across the different areas of our lives.
Once we have created and examined the many possibilities of our life, we have to combine them.
We have many possibilities but only one life, so we have to prioritize which are most important and how to fit them together.
ENACT
Knowing our purposes in life doesn't mean much if we don't act on them.
We're just dreamers--knowing what could happen but not doing it.
Translating a vision of purpose into everyday life is an art that requires lots of effort, and it works best following several basic strategies of vision and behavior change.
The research literature contains dozens of theories about how people find purpose in their lives. For the most part, they identify different ways of creating possibilities for life. In this way, the Possibility Management Model is a powerful explanatory framework that brings together a wide range of thinking about purpose.