How to Find Your Purpose as a Man
Wondering how to find your purpose as a man? Pick a responsibility worth carrying, write a code for how you'll carry it and show up for it every day.
By Your Bro · · Self Improvement
There's a scene at the end of Saving Private Ryan that every guy I know remembers. Tom Hanks is bleeding out on a bridge in France, a bunch of good men have already died getting to this one private, and with his last breath he pulls Matt Damon close and tells him to earn this. Then the movie jumps ahead about 50 years and old James Ryan is standing at a grave in Normandy, asking his wife if he's been a good man. That's the whole question, isn't it? He didn't spend his life hunting for his purpose. Somebody handed him a weight, and he spent his life carrying it.
So you're trying to figure out your purpose. Maybe you're the guy who's read every self-help book on the shelf and still can't answer the question when somebody asks what you want out of life. Maybe you've got a good job, a wife and a mortgage, and you still feel like you're drifting through it. Either way, you've probably been told that purpose is something you discover, like it's buried in a field somewhere and you just haven't found the right shovel yet.
Purpose is something you build
The fact of the matter is simple: most men who feel purposeless are waiting for a feeling to show up before they commit to anything. They want to be fired up first and then pick a direction. It works the other way around. You pick something worth carrying, you carry it every day, and the sense of purpose shows up somewhere along the way, usually when you're too busy to notice it arriving.
Look at the guys you actually respect. The father who coached your Little League team, the uncle who ran his own shop for 30 years, the buddy who took care of his mom when she got sick. I'd bet none of them ever sat around wondering what their purpose was, because they were up to their necks in responsibility they had chosen. If you're still in the stage where you can't even figure out which way to point yourself, start with what to do when you feel lost in life as a man, because you have to get moving before you can pick a direction worth keeping.
Pick the weight you're going to carry
Sit down with a notepad and write out who depends on you right now and who you want depending on you 10 years from now. Your wife or the woman you're going to marry, the kids you have or want to have, your parents as they get older, the guys at work who look up to you, your church or your town. Then ask yourself an honest question about each one: are you carrying that weight like a man, or are you just showing up and hoping nobody notices you're coasting?
That list is where your purpose lives. A lot of men get hung up on wanting some grand mission, like curing cancer or starting a company that changes the world, and if that's you, go for it. Most of us will find ours a lot closer to home, at the kitchen table and in the driveway. There's nothing small about being the guy your family can count on, and I've written before about why you should be the provider even when the world tells you it's old-fashioned.
Write a code you can live by
Responsibility without a code turns into a man running himself ragged trying to please everybody. Once you know what you're carrying, decide how you're going to carry it. What do you stand for, what won't you tolerate and what are you willing to give up to do this right? I laid out a simple way to do this in stop floating and define your life code, and if you only do 1 thing after reading this article, do that one. A man with a written code doesn't have to rethink his values every time life gets hard. He just looks at the page.
Stop letting the past keep you small
A lot of guys avoid taking on real responsibility because deep down they don't think they deserve it. They screwed up a marriage, blew some money, let somebody down, and now they figure the best they can do is stay out of the way. I get it, because I spent years in relationships I should've walked away from much sooner, and I carried that around longer than I'd like to admit. I wrote a Bro Chat on this called Your Shame Is Trying to Save You, and it's worth a read if your past is the thing holding you back. Your mistakes don't disqualify you. If anything, they're proof you know what it costs when a man doesn't show up.
Show up every day, especially the boring ones
Purpose gets built on regular Tuesdays. It's getting up before the kids to train, coming home and actually putting the phone away at dinner, paying down the credit card instead of buying another toy and calling your dad back when you'd rather watch the game. None of it looks heroic, and nobody hands you a medal for it. Do it for a year and you'll look up one day and realize the question you used to lose sleep over doesn't bother you anymore, because you're too busy living the answer.
Where to start
If you want a real plan for building the habits, the code and the discipline that make a man worth depending on, take a look at The Strong Men System. It walks you through it step by step, so you're not trying to figure it all out on your own, and you can start this week.