Purpose Can Help You To Be Happier

Here we look at; Pivotal Moments; Purpose Should Be Separate to Money; and Prosocial Behaviour Improves Wellbeing. This is part of our series on Living Sustainably.

If you already know that purpose is one way to fulfillment and consistent happiness, here are the options to find your purpose and help to reverse climate change:

Take a look at the bluezones.com Purpose Checkup
Try the Sustainability Roadmap with 40+ Solutions to Climate Change

If you want some more facts before making any decisions, let’s get into the details:

I took a major step in my journey with sustainability and helping climate change when I started contemplating my purpose, the meaning of my life.

Yep, I’m a father, and my son is the most important person to me. That’s an amazing purpose.

However, work takes up a significant part of my time, and the jobs I had weren’t achieving anything other than money.

Yes, I’m very lucky to be able to contemplate having a job that’s more than just earning money. Millions of people are in jobs that make them miserable because they have no other option.

But, I’m in the privileged position that my skills are relevant to jobs that are regularly available, and I don’t need to put up with work that’s not fulfilling.

Pivotal Moments Can Help Us Find Purpose

I’ve experienced some pivotal times in my life. Times that have made me conscious of the linear journey I was on to get a job, climb the ladder, find a partner, buy a house, get married, become a parent. The linear journey that I ‘thought’ was the right thing to do. It’s the journey that advertising, tv shows, films, songs, society portrays as success.

Those pivotal times have made me more aware of my life, my actions. They’ve made me question my purpose.

It’s purpose that I feel is the key to my happiness; because being happy isn’t a thing, it can’t be quantified, but purpose is a thing, big or small, and I feel it’s an important part of being happy.

I feel that without purpose, it’s difficult to be happy.

Without purpose it’s easy to keep chasing happiness.

Many people reach retirement then feel they have nothing to do in life, feel lost, feel without purpose, all because they’ve stopped doing their job. They feel unhappy, unfulfilled.

Purpose doesn’t have to be the big and existential ‘purpose of life’, it can be helping a neighbour, doing something really well, volunteering, learning a new skill, supporting friends and family.

Purpose is also a great way to be consistently happy.

Aristotle claimed that true happiness is not fleeting, like a feeling, but rather a measure of how well you’ve lived to your full potential @Bluezones

Purpose Should Be Separate to Money

But, my feeling is that purpose cannot be purely money based.

Purpose also has to be separated from the curse of consumerism where we’re brainwashed by adverts and social media platforms, engineered to keep us scrolling, keep us hooked, keep us feeling inferior, always chasing success.

If you take away the money or the gifts or the cars or the ‘stuff’ then what’s left?

One example that purpose shouldn’t be connected to money:

Winning the lottery doesn’t create happiness. Satisfaction requires effort @Bluezones

And that’s it, becoming rich overnight won’t, all of a sudden, make us happy. Money certainly gives us more choices. Money can help us to feel freed, unleashed, unshackled, if we’ve been trapped in a life without money, constantly struggling to pay bills or repay debt, but then what…

Some of the inspiration for this piece comes from the Blue Zones article titled ‘Huge Study Confirms Purpose and Meaning Add Years to Life’, which references a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association that linked purpose with a lower risk of all-cause mortality after the age of 50. The study followed about 7,000 adults that were over the age of 50. Researchers assigned life-purpose scores based on participants’ responses. What’s interesting with this study is that the researchers followed-up with the participants five years after the first set of responses. They found that participants with the lowest life-purpose scores were 2 times as likely to have died than those with the highest scores.

I also feel that purpose cannot be purely selfish, it has to be something that considers others.

Prosocial Behaviour Improves Wellbeing

One example of this comes from the latest World Happiness Report, which found that Prosocial (or helping) behaviour has been shown to improve well-being in many studies before the [Covid] pandemic.

This type of purpose can create satisfaction that leads to happiness.

I’m considering my current situation.

I recently separated from my wife, after years of not feeling fulfilled. Just two different people, on different journeys, our son as our common interest, but outside of trying to be the best parents we can be, we weren’t bringing our whole selves to the relationship, we were stopping each other from finding happiness.

Separation was the right thing to do. For both of us.

The words I write here sound like it’s been easy, but it was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

Telling my [then] 7-year-old son that his mummy and I aren’t going to live together, don’t love each other any more, and that he’s going to have two homes, and only going to be with each of us half the time, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

When I first discussed that conversation with my ‘ex’, I couldn’t stop breaking down in tears. But, after pacing around the living room, practicing what I was going to say, and deciding that me being a crying mess would be the wrong thing to support my son, I managed to get through it with composure and compassion. Afterwards, I left the room and broke down on my own.

We have our amazing son, that’s what I see as the purpose of our relationship, however there’s an amazing quote from Carl Jung that I read in a book called Broken Open*:

“nothing has a more disturbing influence psychologically on children than the unlived life of the parent” – Carl Jung @ElizabethLesser

And that’s where I feel we were as a couple.

It showed in our son’s behaviour. Happier when he was with just one of us, bigger mood swings when he was with both of us.

Children are a great barometer for their parents, and the signs were there that it was right for us to separate.

There was nothing wrong with either one of us, we just weren’t right together.

I feel that a lot of this had to do with me changing, me being on a journey of awareness and enlightenment, me questioning my life, me seeking something greater, me searching for my own purpose in terms of my contribution to people and planet, and, ultimately, my son’s future.

I’d often questioned why I was doing the job that I had; what was it contributing to others, would it be missed if I stopped doing it tomorrow; is it helping my son’s future and the climate crisis where we have until 2030 to halve global emissions before achieving net zero by 2050 to avoid a world that will eventually become uninhabitable for humans.

And that’s the point; when I considered my son’s future I also considered my impact on others, and at that point I started seeing what my purpose could be.

That’s what motivated me to leave a job to launch Nafford Junction to help inspire others to grow, eat, and live sustainably.

Purpose That Considers Others

My separation has also made me realise that I’ve spent the last 10-years just thinking of myself, my partner, and my son, I virtually forgot my family and friends.

Reconnecting with my family and friends through the incredibly difficult time of splitting a marriage has made me realise that I’ve missed so much of others lives. I’ve missed their highs and their lows. I haven’t been there to support them. I felt guilty. I feel guilty. I feel motivated to be better in future. To make sure that I’m there for others, when they need me. A purpose that revolves around considering and caring for others. It’s a great feeling, genuine purpose, not linked to money or work or ‘stuff’.

I’ve realised that I can’t change the entire world, but I can improve my little corner of it. I can’t control everything. I alone can’t fix the climate crisis. But I can control what I do, the decisions I make, my actions.

I can be a good person, doing something I feel has value, and that’s me doing good in the world. I can live in a way that might just inspire others. This often happens when I catch-up with friends; we get talking about what we’ve been up to and I find myself naturally telling my story and talking about switching from washing powder to soapnuts or making my own body wash to avoid chemicals and save money. That’s my way to improve my little corner of the world. That’s my purpose, how I feel satisfied and happy.

If you’re interested in the idea of purpose you could take a look at the bluezones.com Purpose Checkup to help reveal your lifelong gifts, passions, and values.

Here Is What You Can Do

Take a look at the bluezones.com Purpose Checkup
Try the Sustainability Roadmap with 40+ Solutions to Climate Change
Check out #VoteWithOurMoney with 6 Steps to Help Stop Climate Change
Use the Company Directory to Help You Grow, Eat, and Live Sustainably
Be inspired. We can help climate change if we do something about it
Talk to your friends and colleagues
Share this with others

Where Next?

There is so much inspiring information to give you ideas of how to help climate change by growing, eating, and living sustainably, you can:

Help Us Inspire Others

If you are passionate about helping climate change, please consider supporting Nafford Junction, you can:

Become a Patron to Give Regular Contributions
Buy Me a Coffee to Make a One-Off Contribution
Create for Us and Publish Thought Provoking Content
Become an Inspiring Leader and Advertise with Us
Go to NaffordJunction.co.uk/support

Sources Used to Create This

Production Notes

This was produced by me, James Walters, as a personal project to help stop climate change by inspiring others to grow, eat, and live sustainably.

Any advice given is the opinion of those involved and does not constitute medical, financial, or legal advice.

* We include links we think you will find useful. If you buy through those links, we may earn a small commission. It’s one way to support our work and to inspire as many people as possible.