What Does It Really Mean to Find Your Purpose?

Summer has a way of slowing us down a little. The weather invites us outside, and if we allow ourselves, even for a few minutes, nature has a way of making us think about things we were too busy to think about during the year.

One such reflection came to me recently during a morning walk in the woods with my dog. As I walked, I found myself thinking about a question I hear often, sometimes directly and sometimes hidden inside a conversation.

What does it really mean to find your purpose?

I meet many people who are amazed by what I have built with Frolific. They tell me they can feel the passion in my voice when I speak about resilience, teenagers, leadership, confidence, and the skills young people need beyond academics. Many of them say, with so much sincerity, “I wish I could find my purpose like that. I wish I could feel that passionate about something.”

Some of my dear friends have said the same thing to me over the years. And because I care about them, I remember trying to help them find their purpose. I asked them questions. I guided them through reflection. I tried to help them identify what lit them up. But I have to humbly admit something now. I think I was wrong in the way I tried to help.

This blog post is about that realization.

For a long time, I believed purpose was something we had to discover, almost like a hidden treasure buried somewhere inside us. I thought once we found it, life would suddenly make sense. We would wake up with clarity, passion, direction, and an inner fire that would finally explain why we were here.

That belief came from my own journey too.

Before Frolific became what it is today, before I could stand in front of parents and students and talk about my work with conviction, there were many years when I felt like I had no purpose at all. For almost ten years, I carried this restless feeling that I was meant to do something, but I did not know what that something was.

I was young, intense, and full of extreme opinions, as many of us are when we are still figuring life out. For many of those years, I did not even celebrate my birthdays. Somewhere in my mind, I had decided that I would celebrate only when I had identified my purpose in life. Until then, I thought, what exactly was I celebrating?

Looking back, that feels both dramatic and deeply human. I was not ungrateful for my life. I was simply measuring my life against a future version of myself that I had not met yet. I was so focused on finding the big answer that I could not see the meaning already present in the questions I was asking, the choices I was making, and the work I was doing.

Eventually, one circumstance led to another, and I found myself pitching to investors, the concept of Frolific in New York. I had gone through a rigorous process before getting there. Round after round, I had to reflect deeply on who I was, what I was building, why it mattered, and why anyone else should care, and, it was not easy. Each stage forced me to look inward in a way I had never done before.

By the time I stood there and pitched Frolific, I had a story. I could finally connect my experiences, my concerns, my observations, my research, and my love for young people into one clear narrative. That day, I received investment in the company, and for a long time, I marked that day as the day I found my purpose.

But now, years later, I realize something very different.

That day was not the day I found my purpose. That was the day I found the language for it.

The purpose had been there long before the pitch. It was there in the ten years of research I had done before applying for seed funding. It was there in the questions I kept asking about education. It was there in the moments when I noticed things others rushed past. It was there in the choices I made, the conversations I had, the frustrations I could not ignore, and the problems I kept returning to.

I was not purposeless during those ten years. I simply did not have a story to tell about it yet, and I think that is where many of us get stuck.

We think purpose is something waiting for us in the future. We imagine it as a destination we have to reach, a title we have to earn, a company we have to build, a calling we have to name, or a passion we have to feel every single day. So we keep looking ahead, hoping that one day the path will become clear.

But maybe purpose is not always found by looking forward. Maybe it is often understood by looking backward.

We rarely understand the meaning of our choices while we are in the middle of making them. At the time, they often feel like ordinary decisions, personal preferences, small responsibilities, or simply the next step life placed in front of us. We do not always know why one problem keeps bothering us more than others, why certain people leave a mark on our hearts, why one idea keeps returning no matter how busy life gets, or why some experiences continue to shape the way we think and show up in the world.

At the time, those things may feel random. Later, they start to look like dots. And if we are willing to reflect honestly, those dots begin to form a story.

That story is what we often call purpose.

This is why I no longer believe that most people are living without purpose. I believe most people are already living purposeful lives, but they may not have paused long enough to notice the pattern. They may not have connected the decisions they made, the people they helped, the values they protected, the problems they cared about, and the moments where their presence changed something for someone.

Not everyone will pitch an idea. Not everyone will stand in front of investors or go through a process that forces that level of reflection. But that does not mean their lives are any less purposeful. If anything, it means the opposite. It means your purpose does not depend on articulation, validation, or a defining moment of clarity. Your life is already full of decisions, patterns, and impact, you may just not have stepped back far enough yet to see them as a story.

A parent who keeps showing up for their child, through the ordinary days, the hard conversations, the silent sacrifices, and the moments no one else will ever see, is not living without purpose. A friend who becomes the person others instinctively call when life feels heavy is not living without purpose. A child who notices a student sitting alone, speaks up when something feels wrong, or chooses kindness when silence would have been easier is not living without purpose. Anyone who keeps learning, loving, rebuilding, creating, serving, forgiving, questioning, or beginning again after disappointment is already leaving fingerprints of meaning on the world.

They may not have a company, a title, a pitch deck, or a polished story yet. But that does not mean their life lacks meaning.

So if you are someone who feels like you have not found your purpose, I want to gently offer a different way to think about it. Stop looking only at where you want to go. Look at where you have already been.

Look at the decisions you made when no one was watching. Look at the people whose lives would have been different had you not shown up. Look at the problems you keep caring about even when they are inconvenient. Look at the moments that shaped you, the values you keep returning to, and the work you do even before it has a name.

Ask yourself how things would have been different for you and for others if you had not made those choices. Very often, that is where the purpose of your life begins to reveal itself.

Not as dramatic as a a lightning bolt but as a patter. A pattern of what you care about, what you notice, what you protect, what you build, and how you keep showing up.

When I look back now, I no longer see those ten years before Frolific as years without purpose. I see them as the years that gave me the dots. The pitch in New York simply helped me connect them into a story that others could understand.

Maybe that is what finding your purpose really means, not inventing a new life, but finally understanding the meaning of the one you have already been living.

I plan to write a follow-up to this reflection, especially for high school students and parents, because this idea connects so deeply to college application essays. So many students feel pressure to find a big, impressive story about who they are, when often the most powerful story is already hidden in the choices they have been making all along.

So stay tuned for that.

For now, as summer gives us a little more room to breathe, walk, think, and reflect, maybe this is a beautiful time to stop chasing purpose as something far away and start noticing the purpose already woven into our everyday lives.