Purpose, passion and meaning are all important - and different

Are passion and purpose the same thing? In our latest guest blog post, William Wragg reminds us they are not -- nor are they the same as meaning in the context of people's lives and careers. 

William Wragg is Manager of Career Education, Student Development, and Student Partnerships at the University of Southern Queensland. An education leader and developmental career practitioner, he is dedicated to helping people build purposeful lives, with equity and inclusion at the core of his work.

Seeking purpose during adolescence and emerging adulthood

Adolescence and our twenties are often seen as carefree, but Dr. Meg Jay, a clinical Psychologist who researches the psychology of the twenties and emerging adulthood, highlights a different reality in The Defining Decade. She describes the “J Curve of Mental Health,” where emotional well-being declines in our teens and twenties—due to stress, instability, and identity exploration—before rebounding in our 30s and improving with age.

At the lowest point of the J-curve, we often face deep uncertainty around identity, careers, and relationships—challenges that can lead to mental health struggles, as I experienced.

Dr. Meg Jay stresses the importance of supporting clients to build identity capital (Côté, 1996) through growth-oriented experiences that develop self-awareness, skills, and direction. These experiences help shape how we understand ourselves and how we present to the world, fostering a stronger sense of purpose and personal agency. Additionally, supporting clients to strengthen a sense of purpose can mitigate anxieties and buffer mental health struggles, whilst enabling direction, building resilience, and strengthening motivation, leading to more fulfilling life trajectories. As career professionals, we’re privileged to guide others through these formative years—support I once needed and now strive to provide.

My early life crisis

At 16, a sports injury ended my dream of becoming a professional footballer. My identity and self-worth were tied to the sport, and its loss triggered what I now call an “early life crisis”—and a deep search for purpose and meaning. The uncertainty that followed led to long-term struggles and mental health challenges.

Through personal reflection and working with others, I’ve come to see this early quest for identity and meaning as a common (yet highly individual) and formative part of development. These experiences also laid the foundation for the motivations that continue to drive my professional commitment to supporting others in their journey toward self-actualisation.

Understanding the differences – purpose vs. passion vs. meaning

Upon becoming a Career Development Practitioner, I grounded my practice in supporting individuals in building lives of purpose, passion, and meaning.

Yet I noticed these terms were often used interchangeably by clients and professionals alike. To support others effectively to achieve the best possible outcomes, we must first understand 1) each term’s unique value, 2) the differences between them, and 3) how to help individuals cultivate all three for more meaningful and fulfilling outcomes.

The table below gives an overview of aligning terms and descriptors that help highlight the differences:

Purpose

Dr Christine Whelan describes purpose as “Using your gifts, in keeping with your values, to make a positive impact in the lives of others.”

Purpose is not a destination. You don’t either possess or lack purpose. Purpose is a verb; it’s action-oriented, often future-focused, and in many ways, it’s a mindset. If connecting with a client or student, you can help others to:

• Identify WHAT matters to them (e.g., values, interests, things we care about).
• Understand WHY it matters to them (e.g., feelings felt, how it serves others, and how it creates an inner motivation).
• Discuss HOW to make it happen in a way that benefits others (e.g., career and work strategies, behaviours, skills, mindsets, social connections),

A range of strategies can help individuals strengthen their sense of purpose. These include engaging in activities that foster self-discovery, linking personal insights to broader impact, encouraging growth-oriented experiences, setting direction with a sense of purpose, normalising exploration as a natural and evolving process, and embedding practices that cultivate work hope.

Passion

Whereas purpose reflects an action-oriented mindset informed by self-knowledge, passion relates to the emotions, feelings, and motivations that drive sustained engagement in meaningful self-directed activities. Vallerand (2003) describes passion as "a strong inclination toward an activity that people like, find important, and in which they invest time and energy."

Helping someone to identify activities or pursuits that invoke feelings of passion requires exploration, reflection, and experimentation.

• Exploration – engaging in new activities or environments helps to expose individuals to new experiences that invoke different feelings and emotions and can spark interest in areas the individual may not have previously considered.
• Reflection - to make sense of experiences, by thinking about which activities felt energising (or invoked flow), rewarding, or meaningful, helps individuals to identify patterns or preferences, and supports self-awareness.
• Experimentation – involves actively exploring potential ideas through low-stakes activities and environments. Through trial and error, individuals can better identify opportunities that intrinsically motivate them.

Meaning

Martela and Steger (2016) developed a multidimensional construct of meaning in life, consisting of three core components. Each corresponds to a distinct area that can help deepen an individual’s sense of meaning:

• Purpose (having goals and direction) – as described above, when a person feels as though their life is moving in a meaningful direction.
• Coherence (life makes sense) – the ability to connect past experiences, current choices, and future aspirations into a coherent personal story, which helps individuals to see purpose and direction in their career and study paths. An understanding that strongly connects with an individual’s career narrative.
• Significance (feeling that life matters) – which relates to feeling valued, connected, or part of something meaningful. This can stem from relationships, service, faith, and importantly, contribution to something bigger than oneself (e.g., a community, an organisation, even the world at large).
  
  

Summary

We must prioritise supporting clients and students in developing a sense of purpose, passion, and meaning equally. In doing so, we empower them to set purposeful goals, build direction and agency, and cultivate intrinsic motivation. This leads to higher engagement, greater resilience, a coherent life story, and a deeper understanding of how their lives contribute to something larger than themselves. To achieve this goal, we must first acknowledge the differences between these terms, the value of each, and the strategies to help individuals cultivate all three and achieve meaningful outcomes.

References

Côté, J. E. (1996). Sociological perspectives on identity formation: The culture–identity link and identity capital. Journal of Adolescence, 19(5), 417–428. https://doi.org/10.1006/jado.1996.0040

Damon, W. (2008). The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life. Free Press.

Jay, M. (2012). The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now. Grand Central Publishing.

Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The Three Meanings of Meaning in Life: Distinguishing Coherence, Purpose, and Significance. Journal of Positive Psychology, 11, 531-545.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623

Vallerand, R. J., Blanchard, C., Mageau, G. A., Koestner, R., Ratelle, C., Léonard, M., Gagné, M., & Marsolais, J. (2003). Les passions de l'âme: On obsessive and harmonious passion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4), 756–767. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.756

Whelan, C. B. (2016). The Big Picture: A Guide to Finding Your Purpose in Life. Templeton Press.

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