Finding your purpose: a different flavor of career advice (Patreon)

I’ve been so lucky to have found my purpose in The Science Femme. It combines all my talents and passions and values into one, and you all help me make it a living. I want to pass on what I’ve learned about finding your purpose. How to best monetize that purpose I leave up to you, but we can at least start with the fire that lights you up inside before we think about money: to figure out what really makes you “tick.”

This advice combines two concepts I learned in my past career life working in business education, when I made courses for Niloufer Merchant (Onlyness) & Sanyin Siang (Superpowers). Two bad-ass professional ladies!

SO.

My advice is to take the thing you can’t HELP yourself but do in every daily situation—

like, what THING or ROLE do you find yourself doing in problem solving scenarios?

And how do your life experiences color the way you approach it?

Combine those two and that is your unique talent and purpose that you bring to the world.

Me as a case example: 

For me, the THING I can’t help but do is, doing deep research to answer questions, then breaking it down into simple language to educate people. I am also always forcing feminism down people’s throats in every scenario lol 

My personal life experiences include growing up in Miami where bodies are normalized instead of taboo, and also the way I was abused by my parents meant nobody ever cared what I had to say so I got really good at capturing people’s attention to get my point across before they lost interest. After teaching in-person at a university, I added in the experience of designing online courses, and now we have Dr. M the Science Femme. 

For other people, the “thing they can’t help themselves from doing in any room they walk into” can vary wildly. It could be looking for ways to improve efficiency; it could be organization or planning or making sure all aspects of a task get done; it could be soft skills like making people feel safe or mediating arguments; it could be connecting tasks to the right people to handle them; it could be finding the core need of someone in distress and responding to it. 

In every room you walk into, in every conversation, in every problem-solving scenario:

What do you find yourself doing? Where does your mind go first? What aspect of the scenario attracts you the most? 

Try this with a few other problems and situations you find yourself in over the next week and take note of what you can’t help yourself but do. 

Write that down. 

Later, think about how your unique life story brings a special twist or makes you extra passionate in that skill. 

All of this, tied together, is your unique purpose.