Use Your Gifts

It's easy to confuse purpose with profession. But a purpose could be manifested through multiple different professions. Three different people in the same profession could be manifesting three different purposes through that same profession. A profession is a set of skills and activities. A purpose is a why. It doesn't follow that there's a one-to-one correlation between purposes and professions. There is a many-to-many relationship. With myself, for example, the purpose I discovered when I discovered my purpose was to show people the way. When I was in college I studied orienteering, which is basically running around the woods with a map and a compass trying to figure out where you're going. When I was in the Navy I was an expert navigator. When I became a consultant, I focused on helping organizations find their vision and find their purpose. All of those are different ways of helping people find their path, of showing them the way. I'm a ways map editor. All of those are purposeful activities for me because they're all different ways of showing people the way. I give great driving directions. When I used to interview MIT students from certain schools who wanted to go to MIT, I was their interviewer. I would take that opportunity to counsel them about how to decide which school to go to. All of those activities are purposeful and lead to completely different professions, but are all expressions of the same purpose.