When I took my 2 years out of the merry world of banking, I spent a lot of time hanging out on the sensible older cousin of social media:

LinkedIn.

We're going back about 3 years now. 

As I found my feet as a LinkedIn newbie, I noticed a surge of posts, carousels, images, shorts, long-form videos, links to TED talks and unicorn & rainbow memes all preaching from the same gospel:

The Gospel of Passion and Purpose.

It was like all the content creators had decided that if everyone discovered their passion & purpose, we’d have world peace, an end to global warming and puppies would never be sad again.

So it was purpose quotes here and passion stories there.

And here’s how to find your passion.

And if you don't find your purpose, well, that’s a bummer because now you’re doomed to a life of aimlessness and existential despair. 

That was the long & short of the dimfluencers’ droning.

And, very helpfully I thought, those same dimfluencers were also offering guides and webinars and 19 step frameworks to anyone who wanted to leap out of bed each morning with a fiery sense of destiny in order to change the world before breakfast.

What the dimfluencers missed was that purpose isn’t something you find. 

Passion isn’t something you discover.

Instead, they’re both something you grow.

Rosa Parks didn’t wake up one morning planning to become the face of a worldwide civil rights movement. She was simply tired after work and refused to give up her seat on the bus.

Same thing with Malala Yousafzai. She didn’t “discover” her purpose was to become a global activist. She just wanted to go to school and it all stemmed from there.

Sure, those are a couple of big examples.

But they started with the tiniest actions rooted in authenticity.

That’s the key point.

How would I sum it up?

If you want to find your passion & purpose, stop looking for them and tune into what feels real & meaningful right now.

Before I sign off:

I’m about to start posting again on LinkedIn. 

The more LinkedIn notifications which pop up on my phone, the more I get itchy feet. Someone needs to cut through the fluff.

Maybe this email will be my first post?

We'll see.

Whatever the case, if you’d like to follow along then drop me a connection request here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/itstomgrundy