It’s the start of a new month. A new year. Everyone is screaming at you to “set goals,” “define your yearly objectives,” create lists, and journal about what you want to change.
Others are totally rejecting the “new year, new you” propaganda and going in the opposite direction: “you’re fine as you are,” “resolutions don’t work,” “do X instead.”
Yeah, it’s predictable. But it still leaves you in the same place: wondering how the f*ck to navigate your journey ahead.
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If you’re like most sensitive folk, you feel lost right about this time of year. Perhaps a little overwhelmed and inundated with all the info.
But deep down, you still ache to find your purpose and pursue it. So I’m going to keep this short and sweet and cut through the noise.
Table of contents
My Experience With Losing Purpose
I used to want to find my purpose.
Sometimes, I still buy into this fantasy, thinking it will be the solution to my problems.
But purpose is a fickle creature.
Would you believe that I’ve lost and regained my purpose about ten or more times through my years running lonerwolf? This struggle is a silent despair that happens behind the scenes – one that feels like a rollercoaster of joyful highs and deep lows.
If I were to base my life on “finding purpose,” I would have probably shut down lonerwolf years ago in one of those low moments of grief and self-doubt.
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But I’ve kept going. Why?
I keep doing what I do because I know my deeper truths.
I know that my core needs center around being creative and making a difference, and my core values focus on love, freedom, and contribution.
Sure, there are other elements at play here that I won’t go into right now. But without knowing these guiding lights, I’d be totally lost in the dark.
Why You Should Quit Searching for “Purpose” This Year
It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are. — Roy Disney
Let me get straight to the point here. Searching for your “purpose” is a poor use of your time and energy because it’s an externally driven goal.
Purpose isn’t something you “find” out there.
It’s something you internally “feel” as a result of living in alignment with your core needs and values.
Purpose isn’t a destination – it’s a side-effect of alignment.
Read that sentence again, slowly.
Directly seeking purpose is like chasing a rainbow. You never catch it! But if you stand where the sunlight hits water droplets (aka, alignment), you get the pleasure of seeing that beautiful multi-color miracle over and over again.
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Here’s another analogy:
So many people try to build the ‘house’ of their lives (Purpose) before they set the foundation (Values). But without that solid base, the house just comes crumbling down when the winds of life come.
This is why you keep struggling to find your purpose in life: you’re searching for external answers to an internal problem.
You don’t have a purpose problem. You have a values problem.
What I Recommend Doing Instead
Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future. ― John O’Donohue
Firstly, stop trying to “find” your purpose. It’s a crazy-making exercise that results in tons of wasted time and energy. It’s a sucky way of starting the new year.
Instead, start clarifying your core needs and values. This is a much wiser use of your time.
The first helpful question to ask yourself is this:
“If you could live by three values for the rest of your life, which would you choose?”
Do this for your core needs as well.
Next, to test the strength of your choices, you can ask this question:
“Without this in my life, do I feel a fundamental part of me is missing, drained, empty, or unfulfilled?”
If your answer is a quick “yes,” then great! If you still hesitate or aren’t sure that your response is confident enough, then go back to reflecting.
Here I’ve given you two powerful questions to start with.
But if you find yourself hesitating, feeling chronically stuck in life, or in the dark, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
Sometimes, we need a clear path to help us bypass the mind’s confusion and get straight to our Soul’s truth.
If you want to stop guessing and know, with 100% certainty, what your foundation is, I’ve created a specific process for this. The Soul Work Compass is designed to take you out of the ‘seeking’ loop, into clarity and alignment.
Stop searching for a purpose. Start building your inner compass.
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You don’t need a “new you” this year. You just need to find and align with your Soul’s inner compass.
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I really love the depth this course offers through what appears to be such a simple path.” – Elisa F.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I felt like I really dove into finding my true authentic self and my true purpose.” – Stephanie M
Get the Soul Work Compass (15% Off)Alignment, Direction, Purpose
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. — Mahatma Gandhi
Alignment – not purpose – is the keyword to focus on here. How aligned are you with your deeper needs and values? How aligned are your choices and habits each day?
Because if you aren’t aligned with these deeper truths of your Soul, you will keep wandering around in the dark, wondering, “Why do I feel so purposeless and lost?”
Alignment → Direction → Purpose.
That’s how it works.
Let me know what comes up for you in response to the two questions in this post in the comments.
Stay true to yourself, and happy New Year. ;)
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Its true, searching for your life purpose or soul mission is a mad making task. You’ll Probably loose yourself in the process and that price will always be to high.
I have no clue what the purpose of my life would be, recently i heard big things are ahead of me, helping other people as the energy healer who told me this. As a lifepath number 9 projector… that’s not surprising to me. At this point in time, i dont feel called to pour other people their cups while i am still figuring out how I can keep my own cup filled up. For that… new years resolutions… or maybe just setting new intentions, similar idea, less rigid and or time bounded, is an intresting find!
I started using my new years resolutions as intentions for the year ahead. Things i wanted to comit to or get checked of before the year ended. By accident, i founded some new intentions this first days of the year, i want to commit to. Not because its january, but because i want to make the commitment. (+ Secretly, its just a part of leveling up my selfcare practice, which is always exciting 🤗)
Best wishes and Congrats on the website update! It looks great!
Yes, best to figure out how to fill your own cup first. Although some argue that helping others helps us to find fulfilment— but that’s where you’d benefit from having strong boundaries. Intentions and resolutions can be great for goal setting, so long as we make the a habit. Thanks for sharing Evelien :)
In terms of what I ‘do’ :) I want to paint 🎨 beauty. When that was absent from my life I didn’t feel alive. With others it’s love and compassion. For myself it’s also holistic health.
Thank you for sharing this, Eszter! Painting is a beautiful gift :)
I have realised I was born to be intense.
So this year, I aim to experience whatever I’m doing with the intensity I was born to feel.
I won’t find my ‘purpose’ unless I’m being who I’m supposed to be. I won’t ever get anywhere by trying to think of all the possibilities at once and choose between them. That way leads to overwhelm and paralysis.
I feel alive when intensely absorbed in whatever experience I’m having. So that’s my plan for 2026. To fully focus on whatever experience I’m having, and come alive through intensity. Purpose can wait. 💛
Happy New Year.
Often the search for purpose is the secret desire to be fully alive, aka, fully present. Thank you for sharing this Alison!
I totally understand what you are getting at here, but I would like to share somethings with you, to let you see a different view of purpose.
I want to start off by saying I respect anyone who chooses not to believe in purpose. For me though, since my mother died, I have always felt this part of me, that felt like something was missing, like I am suppose to be doing something bigger then just me. That is true though, I am the one to heal my family lineage from everything they needed to let go of, heal etc…
I also am a lover of astrology as well and the north node is our purpose for this lifetime, and using that perspective transformation, death and rebirth is my Scorpio North Node in the 12th house. Healing and transformation is the easiest way to say what my astrology purpose is.
Lastly though, messages about kids and working with them is also my purpose. My Saturn return also made me realize how much my childhood can be used to help other kids like me, because I have wanted to create a project around that for so I can speak about it.
Hope this helps you out!
Hi Jennifer, thanks for this perspective. Astrology can be helpful in providing that clarity if you subscribe to that sort of approach. Other modalities like human design, the Enneagram, etc., can also provide external answers to internal desires. I just had never found that they’ve ‘stuck’ with me, because I’ve felt that something external was giving me the solution, rather than me earning it through my own inner exploration and self-knowledge. I know that everyone has different approaches, though. And this post just offers my two cents. ;)
My core values are godliness, integrity, and authenticity.
You’re right, when I was chasing my purpose, I was working in spaces that pretended to be morally sound (I.e., non-profits, etc.) and while these places had the perfect mission statement and claimed to help you fulfill your purpose to help others, they also had a level of corruption and soul sacrificing that was unbelievable. It violated my core values in such a deep way, that I knew I wasn’t truly fulfilling my purpose. As you said, it was about alignment. I was severely out of alignment. And as I started focusing on re-aligning, the spaces I was working in became unbearable.
My purpose is to facilitate healing and spread light. But I could only truly do that when being alignment with my core values. And I realize that when I live my life according to my values, my ability to help others heal is infinite because I am being true to myself and true to God, and that helps rise the vibration and over all consciousness within our beautiful planet . I heal by existing and that is enough ❤️
Beautiful, Renee. Thank you for sharing :) Keep facilitating healing for others and living by those core values!
For me life’s purpose is to become happy! Sounds simple but it’s not easy to do. Deep down I think all humans want to be happy. The biggest mistake we make is not being true to ourselves and instead trying to be what others think we should be!
Yes, I think unless you’re a masochist, happiness is a top priority (and even then, masochism can be a distorted way of trying to feel happy). To me, happiness comes through contribution and making a difference to other’s lives (aka, through this work)—as well as time spent with loved ones and being present in the moment. I love the last sentence you share! Spot on.
Love, empathy and compassion are the three for me. They are very difficult to hold space for because you are constantly being hurt to your core but without them I feel I would cease to exist!
I’m curious about what you see as the difference between empathy and compassion? Thank you for sharing, LeAnne. Boundaries are definitely a must 💜
To me empathy is the ability to sense or feel what someone else is feeling or going through and compassion is when you use your empathy to help that person in some way by listening or doing.
Hello Luna and Sol
I have no idea which is the best course of action right now.
I have nasal valve collapse.
You might have said I should have fix my nasal valve collapse, but do you really think that’s as easy as said?
My family is poor, and recently my father’s work machine broke down again. It doesn’t feel right to ask my parents to cover the cost of my surgery, especially when they are already burdened.
And I can’t force myself to work either, because I’m really at risk of getting dissociated again.
You’re right, I should have fix my bodily issues. Because recently when my soul is getting more ensouled, I thought things could get better. But I was wrong, things are more worser than before. I shouldn’t have do soul retrieval. At this point, I imagined it’s better when I was having soul loss, so that I can still draw to earn money for surgery.
It’s not a good idea to intentionally dissociate myself and make soul loss happen again either, isn’t it?
I regret not following your advice. I should have focus on fixing my nasal valve collapse by drawing to keep earning money without doing soul retrieval.
Now or it’s too late, if you were in my position, what do you think is the best to do right now?
I would focus on making money to heal the nasal issue, Lupin. Look up “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” You need safety first at the bottom of the pyramid before anything else. You can still practice self-care (and therefore care for your soul) in small ways while making money. Just don’t become fixated on trying to prevent soul loss, because by getting overly obsessed with this, you continue harming yourself by not fixing your physical issue.
I definitely LOVE these texts. Yes, I acknowledge the importance of psychotherapy and traditional methods. However, I can say—at least in my case—that this spiritual search goes much deeper into who we truly are. What’s most curious is that this kind of message is not widely spread out there—and I began to doubt many traditional methods, because what is often passed on to us is not our truth, but the therapist’s truth.
As for the text, I prefer to say that “purpose” is something internal—our most intrinsic values (and not external goals). I started to realize that we lose ourselves on the road of life precisely by walking paths that are not our own—paths that diverge from our purest essence. That is why we feel strange and out of place. Each of us is a self to be fulfilled, which is why I neither trust nor believe in pre-established theories of personality (at most, introversion and extroversion).
Nevertheless, it is we ourselves who must ask our Higher Self who we truly are and what we need in this life. Yes, there is also the role of career and certain social obligations, since we are still part of the world, and our interaction with these factors also contributes to our spiritual evolution.
Still, we must always put ourselves first: who we are, what our limits are, what we accept or not, what kinds of people are best for us to relate to, what foods appeal to us, what makes us sad or happy, and so on. That is why, at this time of year, consumerist and materialistic patterns lead people to talk about external goals and achievements—because that is precisely what drives the system.
It is in this interlude that many people are getting lost and, at the same time, losing wisdom: any external goal demands time—perhaps, or very likely, years, even a lifetime. Yet our well-being, confidence, self-esteem, and authenticity are what will keep us strong enough to reach them, because the resilience to get there lies in believing in ourselves—and for that, we must first be at peace with ourselves.
Hi Hans,
I respect your approach. So many people look to personality tests, astrology, psychics, healers, shamans, religious figures, gurus, etc., to tell them who they are. And sure, at some point these can be great anchors. They can help you find some semblance of a path. But after a while they feel like shackles. The deepest and most authentic sense of purpose, in my experience, comes from doing the harder and less sexy work of actual self-examination. “Who am I?” “What do I truly need and value?” “Where do I want to go?” “If I was on my deathbed, what would I have been proud of in my life, and what would I regret?” Asking these kind of questions helps a lot. Thank you for your thought provoking comment!
really, really, really needed this right now 🥹💖🙏🏻
I’m so happy to help, Aadya :)