Find Your Purpose in 10 Mins With a Simple List
So, at 28, I knew I had to turn my life around, but I had no idea where to start. New Year’s resolutions weren’t working. Goals came and went, and I felt lost until I found my why.
NY’s Resolutions Aren’t Effective
The problem with resolutions is I’d tick a few boxes and bump the rest the next year and repeat the cycle. But eventually, I started noticing that some boxes were just never getting ticked. And I think that’s because most of us set goals that we think we should do because we see other people doing them, but we never stop to think, why am I doing this? What do I actually want?
And so, if you have no emotional connection to your goal, you have no motivation. There will always be days where you feel like giving up. And when those days arrive, what’s going to be there to stop you? This is the number one reason businesses fail, because people give up too soon.
My Intro
Hello world. I’m Michél Lipan, ex-9-5-er turned founder, sharing my journey building MELIA, a data-driven wellness app from scratch. I share the ups, the downs, and the lessons learned from building the life of my dreams.
Purpose Before Plans
Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why, and Moran and Lennington’s book, The 12 Week Year, both emphasise the need for purpose before plans.
You don’t need a longer to-do list. You need a dream. Some call it your ikigai, your reason for waking up in the morning. You need a vision that you can look at every morning and you can feel right here in your heart. That sense of purpose that drives your actions, that drives you out of bed every morning.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just working on myself. I had a destination and a road map.
Building My Vision
So, following the 12 Week Year, this is how you do it. Brain dump three columns: everything you’d love to have, do, and be before you die. Think long and hard about it. Anything goes, nothing’s impossible. If you want a Ferrari, fine. Nobel Prize, sure. Put it down there. Everything that you think you’d want in your dream life before you die.
Then you sort them into your long-term goals, 5, 10, and 20+ years. And then you sort them into your mid-term goals, 1 to 3 years. You can just do this as bullet points like I’ve done this here, but I found it more effective to map it visually. I used a free Miro flowchart. You can also use Draw.io or draw it on paper. This was way more effective for me.
Seeing every dream slotted onto a timeline showed me how little time I really have. If I want to have my first child at 32, that only gave me four years to build a successful business. There was no more time to waste.
What was incredible was that I saw these two themes emerge. I wanted to live an extraordinary life, have fun, travel, and do meaningful work. And on the other side, I wanted to be extraordinary, have outstanding mental and physical health so that I’m still lifting grandchildren at 80. And what was even more interesting was that I had discovered that money turned out to just be a tool to fund those themes, not the destination.
Redefining Success
So here’s the twist. I’d read Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F, in 2019. So I knew that money and fame were crappy goals. He argues that good goals are goals that never finish, like being a good partner, parent, friend. You need to work on those every day.
Fast forward to today, staring down motherhood. Something started to bother me again. Have I wasted my potential? I had dreams of quantum physics breakthroughs, even a Nobel; teachers and friends called me destined for greatness. Marketing wasn’t that. Then I watched gymnast Simone Biles shatter world records, and I felt that old sting of unused talent. Was I about to repeat my mother’s regret? Raising kids while mourning unrealised dreams.
Mapping my have/do/be in this timeline changed everything. I saw that extraordinary work is just one pillar of living an extraordinary life, not the pillar of being an extraordinary person. And what I really want is to master something meaningful, earn respect, and most importantly be fully present for my family.
So, my tombstone test clarified it. Three things that you want written on your tombstone. I found out that I cared more about what my loved ones will say about me after I’m gone than the world. And this was a huge mental shift for me. On my deathbed, I want to be surrounded by a big, loving family. And after I’m gone, I wanted it to be said that I was an extraordinary wife and mother. And then lastly, that I inspired others to live fully. No plaques needed.
My family would be my biggest legacy for generations. And if my own company can help people and fund my dream life, that is extraordinary enough. On my deathbed, I’ll have zero regrets.
Your dream doesn’t have to impress the world. It just has to satisfy you. It can be as simple as climbing out of bed, tending to your garden, and spending time with loved ones. But you do need an image of your dream. You need a vision.
Creating a Vision
Visuals are powerful. I used to be terrified of pregnancy. All I’d heard my whole life were horror stories of pain, weight gain, and permanent body damage, until I came across Lisa Fit, a fitness influencer who showed me how strong and beautiful pregnancy can be. She gave me a new vision and suddenly my fears disappeared and I decided that’s going to be me.
Same with ageing. I used to dread it. Every year I’d get closer to frailty, dependency, and losing my dignity. But then I saw and heard of older people still living full, vibrant lives, hiking, horse riding well into their 70s. And then I realised that frailty wasn’t inevitable. It was a choice. And I decided that’s not going to be me. So now I train in the gym not because I should, but because I need to. To be the mother that my children deserve. To live long enough to meet my grandkids. And to live with dignity in old age. That’s my why.
Now I wake up and I look at that vision board and I feel that fire that burns inside me. It reminds me of what I’m working for and it makes everything else in the world, the chaos, the distractions, the opinions, all noise. And now every decision I face has a filter: does this move me closer to my dream or not?
Choose Your Suffering
Buddha realised that everything that you don’t have, friends, money, success, causes you suffering. But also the things that you do have, family, money, success, also cause you suffering. So either way, as long as we want, we’re going to suffer. But I don’t think it’s realistic for anyone to not want anything.
I think the real empowerment comes from when we choose our suffering and you decide this is what I’m fighting for. This is what I’m suffering for. When I feel tired or discouraged, my vision reminds me of what I’m suffering for and gives me the strength to carry on.
So go list your have/do/be. Slot them on a timeline and discover your purpose. And comment below with your dream life or purpose to time-stamp it. Not just to inspire others, but so that your future self can come back, see that time-stamp, and smile at how far you’ve come.
Next Vid: 12-Week Plan
In the next video, I’ll go over the second part of the 12 Week Year: setting up my weekly tactics, my daily actions, and the lessons that I learned from it. And for those who still couldn’t figure out what their dream life or purpose is, I’ve got some practical tools for you. Stay tuned.
Thank you for watching. Please subscribe if you found this valuable, and I’ll see you in the next one.
A note to myself for finding the courage to publish my second YouTube video despite being terrified: Well done, Michél. Don’t give up. Just keep going. Doesn’t need to be perfect. Just need to try your best. In a couple of years, maybe a year from now, you’re going to look back at all this suffering and discomfort that you are putting yourself through, and you’re going to thank yourself for it.
