Purpose: The Forgotten Dimension

This is my final contribution of 2025, an offering on purpose, and an invitation to pause before the new year begins.

Rather than entering another year searching for purpose or hoping it shows up, this episode invites you to start the year already grounded in it.

You’ll learn:
• Why searching for purpose can actually disconnect you from it
• How modern culture distorts our understanding of purpose
• The real origin and meaning of the word “purpose”
• Why purpose is less about seeking and more about sharing
• How generosity becomes the engine of meaning and fulfillment
• What this shift changes in how we think about work, success, and impact

Purpose isn’t something to chase. It’s already with us, if we let it. And when we do, happy work is closer than we think.

Follow on Linkedin: Olivier Egli

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I'm your host Olivier and this is the Do Happy Work Podcast where we look at work in a different, more natural, and more peaceful way. Welcome back to Do Happy Work. As this year comes to a close, we're invited, almost compelled, to look back, digest what has happened, and imagine how we want to move into the next chapter. And I think never has this been as important as at the end of this tumultuous year. I'm not a big believer in the artificial cutoffs we create with dates and calendars, but I do respect traditions, and this particular tradition matters because right now people are more open to reflection, renewal, and to deeper work. So when someone recently asked me what I would want to leave people with as a final thought for the year, I didn't hesitate. For me it was purpose. But purpose in a bigger sense. Purpose as a word that drives humanity, but that also connects us all at a deeper level. Purpose, you see, is something every one of us needs. It's something we all crave. And paradoxically, it's something our modern world has never been further from understanding. We crave it, yet we don't have a coherent grasp of what it actually is and what it does. We don't understand the concept, but we feel its absence like a gravitational pull. That alone tells us something important. Purpose is not a human invention, it's primal, it's eternal, and modern culture has done a pretty good job of distorting it. Purpose is a word that's been trampled, commercialized, and packaged by the global hustle mindset, by the modern tech industry. Many people treat it like a single instruction they're supposed to decode and then execute. We hear it in the language we use. I need to find my purpose. What is my purpose? Where is my purpose? As if it's an object hidden under a rock somewhere, as if it's a price on a timeline, something that we have to somehow fish out of a lake or find behind a rock. This obsession with destinations, with achievements, awards, and endpoints has made us believe purpose is one more trophy to collect. And the cruel irony, the moment you believe purpose is something in the future, you disconnect from yourself in the present, and therefore from purpose itself. You become a hunter of purpose, which means the act of searching becomes your actual purpose, and so the cycle goes on indefinitely. Some people even attach their purpose to objects or other people. A child becomes someone's purpose, a job becomes someone's purpose, but that's not purpose. That's attachment dressed up as meaning. Because we lack our own self-informed meaning, we project it on something or someone else. And if that attachment changes or fails, the so-called purpose collapses. So what is left? What is purpose then? For years I believed it was a mission statement, a sentence I could print, frame, keep above my bed. I even followed the official Merriam-Webster definition, the reason something is done or used. But that definition always felt incomplete, mechanical, too small. Then I looked at the Latin root of the word purpose, proponere, which means to set forth or to propose. And that changed everything radically. Purpose isn't a destination. Purpose isn't a command, purpose is an offering. Purpose is fulfilling the obligation that comes with the gift of life. It's the forwarding of that precious gift we were given at birth. To share it generously, relentlessly, authentically. The gifts you were born with, your abilities, your intelligence, your way of thinking, your creativity, they're not meant to be kept, hoarded, or used only for personal gain. They're meant to be nurtured and then released into the world. That's purpose. Think about it. Nothing you accumulate stays with you when you die. What remains is the light you shared, the impact you had. If you live with purpose, there should be almost nothing left of you to bury because you gave it all away. Not because you burned yourself out, but because you poured yourself out into the world, into people's hearts and minds. And in doing so, you illuminated others. Your candle give light to their candle. This also resolves a common misconception that each of us has our own separate individual purpose. In truth, the purpose is the same for all of us. To express and share the gifts we've been given. What differs is the form those gifts take, how we go about it. The why is the same. And this is why at the beginning of this episode I said that purpose connects us all at the base. It's what pushes humanity forward as a whole. Your light has a different color than mine, but the purpose of light is always the same. To shine, to shine together. This is what work is actually about. Work is not a grind, it's not a competition, it's not a ladder. Work is a gateway for purpose, a channel through which our light enters the world. But here's the catch. Many of us love gratitude, but recoil at generosity. Gratitude lets us feel full. Generosity asks us to open our hands. And opening our hands feels risky. It feels like losing. But that's the scarcity illusion. Because when we give with an abundant heart, we always receive abundance in return. Purpose is not impoverishment, it's circulation, it's life flowing through you, not stopping with you. Maybe we need to add generosity practices to our gratitude practices. We're so good with practicing gratitude, but so bad with practicing generosity. Just unconditional generosity. I'm not talking about fundraisers, I'm talking about a general aspect of generosity, of giving what you have in you to give. So as we move into the holidays, I want to leave you with some questions. Is purpose for you a destination or an obligation? A place or a path? Is it about winning something or giving something? What would shift in your life if purpose meant sharing, not seeking? Sit with these questions. Let them breathe inside you. You may find that the endless search for meaning dissolves and something far more natural and far more joyful begins to appear. Purpose as your constant companion. This is what I wish for you, now and in the new year. A shift towards a more generous definition of purpose. A shift toward happy work.