Want to Find Purpose and Passion? Relive Your Own Stories
Let me take a guess about you. If I asked you to recall a “peak experience” — a time when you did something well and enjoyed doing it — I’d bet that this experience went down a little something like this.
You did it.
You enjoyed it. Maybe you loved it. Maybe you saw how you helped improve someone else’s life. Maybe you felt more alive than you had before or after.
And then you moved on.
Perhaps you noted that you enjoyed it. You may have told other people about it. But then the next thing in your busy life demanded your attention and that was that.
You didn’t go back to think. You didn’t try to understand what made that experience so great. You didn’t give any thought to how to recreate the magic that you experienced.
I am guessing this because I’ve seen it over and over.
In my work with strengths-based development, one of my go-to questions is asking people about what is called “a peak experience.”
This is something that you felt that you did with ease, excellence, and enjoyment. All three are essential. If you did something well but didn’t actually enjoy it, that’s fine but it doesn’t get to the core of strengths which are actually things that you do well AND also light you up.
The three criteria for a peak experience are ease, excellence, and enjoyment. Ease because it came to you naturally. You didn’t have to try to muster something you felt you didn’t have even if it was challenging. Excellence because you felt that you did it well. And enjoyment because, to be honest, lots of us are good at things that we feel quite drained by. And I don’t recommend trying to do more stuff like that.
Most people don’t have trouble remembering a peak experience from their past that they did well and loved doing. They recall it without too much trouble. Sometimes people choose something from their professional life. Other times, it’s something that’s purely personal. I tell people that either experience is valuable fodder for development and growth. In fact, one of my clients utilized her reflection on a purely personal peak experience to gain pivotal insights for direction in her professional life which had been unclear and confusing to her.
So without knowing you I’d bet that the problem isn’t that you can’t think of a peak experience. The problem is you haven’t thought about what that experience meant and how it could offer greater clarity, focus, and joy in your life.
To use an example from the Bible, it’s like when Jesus multiples some loaves of bread and fish to feed a crowd of 5,000 and his disciples who helped pull it off have a stunning level of ignorance about what happened. Later on, they actually start bickering about not having any bread. Jesus tries to remind them, “How many loaves were there?” “How many baskets of leftovers did you gather up?” Yet they still seem pretty darn clueless almost as if willfully so.
So too are we.
We have experiences in our lives that could be called miraculous. These are moments when we overcame challenges that we never thought possible. We used the best of who we are. We lived the profound truth that purpose is the coinciding of our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger the way Frederick Buechner described. We felt energized as we poured ourselves out in a wonderful but mysterious process of receiving through giving. We impacted the lives of others for the better.
I don’t know about you but I call that a miracle.
That seems like kind of miracle that the world desperately needs more of.
The problem isn’t that we never have these experiences. It’s that when they happen, we barely stop to register it. They’re like a tiny blip on the screen of our consciousness. We hardly notice it before we move on to the next thing.
Forgive me if I’m being unfair. It’s just that I’ve seen it happen so many times. And even though I hate to speak in absolutes, I can almost always guarantee that there’s a peak experience in your life that you forgot too quickly. There’s at least one miracle that happened in your life that you didn’t pay enough attention to. If you’re like me, probably more.
Just because you lived it doesn’t mean you learned from it.
Why is this all not the best? I think it’s because these experiences happen to be one of the most powerful things at our disposal for clarifying our purpose in life.
When we learn to really maximize these experiences for all they are worth, we gain insight into some really important questions. Questions like:
Of all the things I could be doing with my time, which truly deserve the best of me and which could I let go?
What do I love to do and how is that connected to how I am designed?
What brings me energy? And what drains me?
What was I made to do? What’s my purpose in life?
Another bonus is that peak experience thinking is so much more accessible than pure passion. As one author says, passion is wonderful when you know what yours is and you have clarity. But it becomes really frustrating and discouraging to be told to “follow your passion” when you have no idea on earth what that might be.
Instead, I love the question of peak experiences because it’s so equalizing. We may not all be able to name our life’s passion yet but we can all look back and recall a peak experience and start from there.
When I see people do this (usually because I’m gently forcing them to), it’s amazing to watch what happens. As they recall and remember this thing that lit them up in the past, it lights them up all over again. Their energy increases just recalling how it felt to operate in that zone of genius. If it’s a group I’m working with, the collective feel in the room is palpably different. More joyful and more alive. It’s better than coffee. And I like my coffee.
This process is crucial for discovering what I call authentic purpose — the formation of your sense of calling and reason for being that brings together the values of the kingdom, service of others, and how you creatively and uniquely bear God’s image.
So I’d love to encourage you to make some space for the practice of reflecting on your own peak experience(s). And here’s how I would recommend doing it. It doesn’t have to be long and drawn out. I usually run groups through this process in 30 minutes or less.
5-Step Process to Reflect on a Peak Experience
Recall a time when you did something that came to you pretty naturally (ease), you did it well (excellence), and you found it life-giving (enjoyment). Don’t overthink it too much. Choose the thing that comes to mind. You can always go back and choose a different experience later.
Try to remember as much detail as possible. Where were you? Who were you with? What were you thinking about? How did it feel? What part of the experience did you enjoy the most and why? (For a bunch more questions to help you fill this out, check out my free PDF below.)
Next, try to interpret your experience to learn how you work. This is where I like having the added layer of a tool like StrengthsFinder (aka CliftonStrengths) to filter, give language to, and reinforce what you’re seeing. If I was coaching you, I would have you compare your experience to your top 5 strengths and notice how you saw your strengths coming out. This part is super important because you’re engaging in a higher level of thinking called metacognition which is the ability to think about one’s own thought process. If you haven’t done StrengthsFinder, that’s okay too. You can do your own sorting and categorization but try to make your interpretation as concrete as possible.
Now summarize your thoughts. What did you learn about yourself? And maybe most importantly, what steps could you take to continue to recreate those conditions for more peak experiences to happen?
Finally, if possible, share your reflection with someone else. I really believe that growth and development happen best in the context of supportive relationships. I think this is why deep friendship, coaching, and teams make some of the best places to grow. Yes, you can think on your own and that’s great. But the relational context and connection is the best catalyst I know of. I just don’t think we were meant to go it alone.
Doing this kind of work has been hugely helpful to me in designing a life that helps me live more and more into what I feel made to do. It’s brought greater clarity and focus of not only my big picture calling but also how to live that out day to day.
I dislike repetition. (Maybe because Consistency is #34 for me?) I hardly ever reread books or rewatch movies, but I never get sick of helping others work through this process. Don’t let its simplicity fool you. It’s good stuff.
If you like this, stay tuned because there are a few more ways that I like to take this a couple steps further.
What do you think? Have you done this before?
Also, I compiled a list of my favorite questions to help you really dig into the juicy details of your peak experience to really get the most out of it. Sign up here and get started.
