Episode Summary

In this episode, we’re taking one of the biggest, most personal questions there is — what is my purpose? — and turning it into something clear, grounded, and usable in real life.

I break down why purpose so often feels abstract or confusing, and I share the definition I’ve landed on through my own journey and years of coaching: the purpose of life is joy and service — in that order.

You’ll also learn why joy isn’t comfort, why happiness and joy aren’t the same, and how to recognize the kind of service that’s already woven into who you are — without slipping into overgiving, burnout, or servitude.

In This Episode… (You’ll Learn)

• A clear definition of purpose: joy and service — in that order
• The difference between happiness vs. joy (and why it matters)
• Why pursuing joy doesn’t mean a life without challenges
• How to identify your unique form of service without forcing it
• The key distinction between service vs. servitude
• How purpose becomes the foundation of a personal, professional, or business playbook

Ready to Activate Your Inner Ninja?

If this episode sparked something in you and you’re ready to ignite your inner ninja in your career, business, and personal life, book your complimentary Clarity Conversation — your inner ninja will thank you later.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Pocket Ninja Podcast, where big picture wisdom meets practical tools.

Have you ever found yourself wondering what your purpose really is? Like really wondering — not in the what job should I do kind of way — but in a deeper quiet moment where you stop and ask, what am I even doing this for? If you’re chasing goals, doing all the things you’re supposed to do, yet something still feels off, empty, like you’re missing the point entirely.

I’ve been there. I’ve coached so many brilliant, high-achieving people through the questioning. Or you have a sense of purpose, but you can’t quite explain it, and you still don’t feel happy. So if you’ve ever felt like purpose is this mysterious thing that everyone talks about, but no one can actually explain, this episode is for you.

Today I’m diving into what I believe is the real definition of purpose. I’m breaking down what it actually means beyond cliches so you can start using it as a compass for your life, your work, and your decisions. By the end of this episode, you’ll understand how your purpose isn’t just a title you have.

You’ll learn the difference between happiness and joy and why that matters, and you’re going to discover how your unique form of service is already woven into who you are. Let’s unpack it all and redefine purpose on your own terms.

The question about the purpose of life can be a struggle. The idea of purpose can be very existential and an abstract concept. We might have a vague sense of what it’s about, but then you don’t really know how to implement it in our own lives, or we often have a very limited notion of purpose.

Like at the beginning of my career, I started out in nonprofits and that really resonated with my sense of service. So I thought working in nonprofits was the way I had to serve — and that’s a really limited take on service.

But through my years of struggling with this question, exploring it for myself, and through all my learning and coaching, I wanted to nail down a definition. Like, what is this? And the key was that it had to be universal. It would have to make sense for everyone, and I think I have nailed it down.

The purpose of life is joy and service — in that order — and we’ll get into that later.

The purpose of everyone’s life is exactly the same: joy and service. But how we define joy and service for ourselves is different, individual to individual.

Okay, so how I always think about this purpose is that in all we do in life, including our career, I want to be in joy and/or service, or I want to be working towards joy and service. And let’s be honest, most of the time it’s the working towards part of it, right?

But if what I’m doing isn’t working towards part of joy and/or part of service, then I don’t want it, and it means I’m off track.

Those who have worked with me or have been following my work know that I love to get very exact about definitions and frameworks and processes because, as we know, clarity is a superpower — and clarity means the quality of being easy to understand.

So we have to ensure that what we’re talking about is easy to understand. Because a lot of words come really loaded. They come full of a lot of unacknowledged expectations, limitations, opinions, value, judgment. So we need to unpack all of that if we’re going to achieve clarity on these words.

Okay. I believe that our life belongs to us and it’s our sacred property. We are meant to have a life that fulfills us, and yes, there is a service component to fulfillment. But first and foremost, I believe we are here to live a life that is joyful for us.

And that doesn’t mean a life that’s totally comfortable or without challenges, and it doesn’t mean everything just works out easily and we’re happy in every moment.

That’s not joy. That’s comfort.

I want to talk about the difference between happiness and joy as we define them. Then I want to look at a realistic view of life.

The first premise is that life inherently has its struggle, and there is no way to avoid a struggle in life. There’s always going to be challenges, even if things are going really well.

Even if things are going really well, there will be challenges. I get my dream job, but then there’s challenge. I’m in my dream relationship, then there’s challenge. There will be so many things to handle. I might feel overwhelmed.

Thus, we should never think that pursuing joy means no challenge. What we want to do is keep joy as our main target in life.

Now, let’s distinguish between happiness and joy because they are not the same.

Happiness in life is defined as an overall sense of feeling good, often tied to your overall satisfaction with progress and outcomes over time — an overall average of feeling good about progress and/or results.

Where joy in life is the profound depth of feeling in life when the mission, the work, a moment of overall happiness converge in a peak, and you can fully feel it all deeply. It’s a deep, uplifting sense of delight, aliveness, or inner lightness.

So joy is our life’s mission to work on, and happiness is an overall sense of feeling good along the journey. So you can see they are not the same.

I believe, through what I have experienced in myself and witnessed in others, that we are meant for joy and that joy is our life’s purpose. Not as a thing to achieve once, but as an ongoing pursuit — like the thrill of the journey.

Disclaimer: for a lot of people, this might be a difficult concept to digest. There might be a lot of voices coming up and saying, that’s not available to you. You’re not good enough. You can’t get there from where you are. You have responsibilities or constraints, and there’s so many things wrong that joy isn’t possible.

Or that joy is just having fun all the time, which is immature and irresponsible.

And to that, I would say that we want to distinguish joy from happiness, from fun, adventure, comfort, and taking a break. Joy may include happiness. It may include fun, adventure, comfort. But joy is a profound depth of feeling when goals and work and happiness meet in a peak.

And this takes something to create, and that’s where I see joy as a purpose.

The purpose of life is to work towards joy to achieve it. Meaning, when those joyful moments in your life happen, you have the experience of joy — as a purpose, as a journey, as a mission.

The goal is to handle everything that comes up in life in the way of joy and work through those things to warrant joy.

For example, joy for me is freedom. It’s like breaking the limits. It’s doing things I never thought I could.

Empowerment is joy for me — when I feel empowered. When I help others feel empowered, that’s always when I feel joy.

Now, the idea of joy might be a big one for some of you to take in. So here are a few resources that might help you with that concept and that your life purpose is to pursue joy.

So the first one, I think, is going deep to the root of the problem, and it’s a book called The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner. This book is targeted to women, but of course everyone can find benefit in it.

The second resource I recommend is The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by the Dalai Lama. This is definitely a book that cracked open my concept that the purpose of life could be about joy or happiness.

And the last book: Untamed by Glennon Doyle.

So those might help you crack through maybe some of our limiting beliefs about joy being the purpose of life.

Now let’s get into the second part of Pocket Ninja’s definition of life’s purpose: joy and service.

Service, I say, is when you do something that makes a difference for someone else or others. So this could look very traditional, like being a teacher, being a nurse, being a friend who always shows up with food when someone’s down.

But it can also look like being the person that always makes sure that meeting ends on time, or being the one who always makes sure everyone gets the communication.

How you find what your service is, is not to look out there at what you can do, but to look where your heart breaks or where you naturally have strength. And your service isn’t created additionally outside of your natural personality. It’s something already there, and it’s about you bringing it into your awareness and into your pursuits in life.

Service is not something you have to invent.

If you look in your life at things you’re compelled to do, in ways you want to help, you’ll find it. It might end up being something you do as a profession or a mission, but it might just be something you do as you go about your life. When the opportunity comes up, that’s enough.

I think it’s Eckhart who said, when your personality comes to serve the energy of your soul, that’s authentic empowerment. And I would say that’s what I define as service.

So for example, for me, I naturally love learning. I am very passionate about empowerment, and I love concepts. I love talking. So even when my career wasn’t teaching, training, coaching, I still naturally shared ideas with people, pumped people up.

I showed up for people who were having a hard time, and now that I’ve managed to turn that into a profession—

Now for another very important point on service. There’s a distinct difference between service and servitude, and I am very passionate about this concept.

And I am very passionate about this distinction because it shows up in so many of the clients I train and coach.

So service is when I can give without taking from my overall goal of wellbeing, happiness, and success.

Servitude is when giving costs me significantly in my life.

So I’ve experienced this in my life and I’ve helped a lot of clients with this. Yes, all my clients are very passionate and purposeful people, myself included, have ended up sick or unhappy because we were overgiving for a cause.

And that’s not how service is supposed to work.

Yance says perfectly when she says: what’s in my cup is for me, and what overflows is what I can give to you. And I would even add: what’s in my cup is enough, because just being me and living my life well, I will be able to serve even if just by example.

And that’s why we define the purpose of life as joy and service in that order, because service has to come after joy — or at least with joy — because joy and service can overlap, and they often do, and that’s okay. That’s not only okay, that’s great.

But putting service before your joy will not work in the long term.

So there you have it. That’s the answer to life’s most existential question: what’s the purpose of life?

We say the purpose of life is joy and service, and knowing that definition is so important because achieving that purpose is the whole point of our journey.

So lastly, let’s put this into context. Ninjas are on this journey to fulfillment, which is to achieve the purpose in life: joy and service.

And that’s why they are driven by the four driving forces: daring dreams, purposeful learning, courageous transformation, and bold action taking. These are the forces that fuel the journey, fulfilling the purpose of joy and service.

And remember all that talk about the playbooks and that playbooks have three parts, and the first part is purpose. So this is part one of every playbook.

Whether it is your business playbook, whether it is your professional playbook, whether it’s your personal playbook — the point of it all is joy and service.

And you know, obviously that makes so much sense when we think about my life playbook, right? Of course.

But when we think of maybe my personal playbook or business playbook, like really, is that the point? Is the purpose joy and service?

And I don’t know if any of you have read the book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, and it’s about his building of the business Nike. That book is so riveting. I was on the edge of my seat the whole book — and that’s really quite silly because we know how it ends. We know Nike’s hugely successful around the world.

And like, he built all that from scratch.

But why I bring up that book is because he built this business. But, I don’t know if I should do this — I’m gonna ruin the ending of the book, so maybe close your ears if you don’t wanna know. It’s like his ending point.

He ends the book when he finally goes public and sells, and he goes, my only regret is I can do it all again.

And that blew me away because the story is such a roller coaster. I really recommend it. Sometimes these stories of business development can be kind of boring, but this book literally was really riveting because the journey was so epic.

But he loved the grind. He found a lot of joy. And it made me think joy for him is thrilling, because there was a lot of thrilling moments, and then there was a lot of service in what he did and how he treated people and what he built.

So it really is the whole purpose, right?

Because the purpose is not to suffer for life. I definitely know that’s true.

And I also know the purpose of life is not to not serve when we can — to be stingy and unhelpful, and not share gifts, or not do what our heart calls for to help other people.

I know that that’s not true.

The only thing that has ever rung true for me is this definition.

And again, I have created this for myself in my own life. I have done it with so many clients, and I have not ever found a situation where it doesn’t ring true.

I think everyone’s purpose is joy and service. What that joy might look like is really different for each of us, and what that service looks like is really different.

But I think we’re all meant to pursue it — not have it all the time, but pursue it — in our journey to fulfillment.

Okay, so that’s a wrap for this episode. I hope this has brought you a lot of clarity, and if not clarity, a lot of curiosity.

But before you leave today, I want you to ask yourself: what’s one takeaway from this episode?

Take a moment to identify a key learning that’s changed or expanded your mindset, or given you a new tool or something to practice or look for.

I want you to pause and really think about it because this podcast is about helping you get real results in your life.

My takeaway from the episode is how simple our life’s purpose is. Not that it’s easy, but it’s not this abstract concept that requires us to go on a spiritual quest to figure it out, or we have to be on this philanthropic mission all the time.

Our purpose in life is right here in our life, but we need to get clear about the mission and then work on pursuing it in daily moments and decisions.

Now you pause and identify: what’s your takeaway from this session?

Thank you for tuning in to the Pocket Ninja Podcast, where big picture wisdom meets practical tools. If this episode has sparked something in you and you want to ignite your inner ninja in business, career, and personal life, go to pocketninjast­rategies.com to book a complimentary clarity conversation.

Your inner ninja — well, thank you. Later.

Disclaimer: this podcast is designed to help you unleash your inner ninja because we want you to experience wellbeing, happiness, and success altogether.

That said, the ideas and insights shared here are not customized to your unique circumstances, and therefore are not a substitute for personalized professional advice.

You are the expert in your own life, career, and business. So take what you learn here with your own discernment and discretion. Only you know what’s right for you, what feels empowering, and what risks you are ready to take on.

Ready to go deeper and get clarity on your next level?