Conquer Your Purpose
Finding and Pursuing Your Purpose
Every story you grew up with lied to you about purpose.
Luke Skywalker discovers he’s destined to be a Jedi. Harry Potter gets his letter to Hogwarts. Naruto knows from age five he’ll become Hokage. The hero always receives their calling in crystal-clear HD.
We absorbed thousands of these stories through movies, books, manga, and games. They all sold us the same lie: that purpose arrives like a lightning bolt, that one day you’ll just know.
Then you grow up and no letter arrives. No wise mentor appears with your destiny. No dramatic moment of clarity.
So you look around, and it seems like everyone else got their letter. That entrepreneur who “always knew” they’d build companies. That artist who’s been drawing “since they could hold a pencil.” Every LinkedIn post, every success story, every interview gets edited to fit the hero’s narrative.
Meanwhile, you’re still waiting, checking the mail, wondering if you’re broken, feeling like you’re wasting your time and your life.
Here’s what took me too long to understand: we’ve been using the wrong map.
Real purpose doesn’t work like stories. For 99% of us, it’s not discovered forward but recognized backward. Not through prophecy but through pattern recognition. Not in a moment but across years of seemingly random experiences that only make sense in retrospect.
I spent most of my life feeling defective because my life didn’t follow the script. I changed careers four times, started and quit a dozen projects, read everything from ancient philosophy to modern psychology trying to find my “calling.”
The breakthrough came when I finally understood: I wasn’t broken. The script was.
This course isn’t another hero’s journey. I’m not here to sell you destiny. I’m here to show you how purpose actually works in the real world, which is messy, unclear, and discovered through action rather than revelation.
I’ve synthesized insights from the best minds on this topic. From Viktor Frankl’s meaning-making in concentration camps to Charlie Munger’s inverted thinking. From Paul Graham’s essays on ambition to Alex Hormozi’s brutal honesty about grinding through the suck. Jung, Csikszentmihalyi, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Tim Urban, René Girard. I’ve filtered it all through my own decade of trial and error and distilled it into something practical.
⚠️ IMPORTANT: This Is Not a Passive Read
This course requires your active participation. You’ll need a notebook or journal for exercises, 45-60 minutes of uninterrupted time, brutal honesty with yourself, and willingness to feel uncomfortable.
Warning: Some exercises will trigger existential questions. That’s the point. Growth lives outside comfort zones.
Lesson 1: The Two Types of Life Painters
There are two types of painters in this world.
The first type has a clear idea of what they’re creating. They work from an example or hold a vivid picture in their mind, and every brushstroke moves them closer to that predetermined image.
The second type discovers their painting as they paint. No clear picture, no predetermined path, just the canvas and the courage to begin.
Which type are you?
Most of us fall into the second category. We don’t have a clear picture or path to follow, and that’s okay because both types can create masterpieces.
But here’s what matters: if you’re the discovering type, you face a unique challenge. You must confront the blank canvas.
That means putting down the distractions like video games, endless scrolling, and all those high-dopamine loops engineered by the world’s best minds to hijack your brain. These aren’t harmless pastimes. Once your brain adapts to that constant flood of stimulation, regular life starts to feel dull by comparison.
When you finally sit with that blank canvas, discomfort will arise and you’ll want to run back to the distractions.
Don’t.
Pick up the brush and strike. You’ll make mistakes and your first attempts will be messy, but messy progress beats a perfect blank canvas every time.
The Path of Discovery
Here’s your strategy: Pick a path, follow it, learn everything, build skills, pivot if needed, then repeat.
Even when you find “the one,” you’ll probably jump to another path eventually because you’ll change and the world will change. That’s life.
But here’s an important detail: nothing is wasted. Every path teaches you how to walk faster. Every skill compounds. Every lesson learned makes you uniquely equipped for your eventual calling. By the time you find your true path, you won’t just walk, you’ll run.
Remember this: coming back to the same blank canvas night after night will destroy your soul.
The Jobs Validation
Steve Jobs dropped out of college but stayed on campus, sneaking into random classes. One was calligraphy. Completely useless, no career value, and his parents thought he’d lost it.
Ten years later, that “pointless” class became the foundation for the Mac’s typography. The first computer with beautiful fonts, the detail that made Apple different.
Jobs couldn’t connect these dots looking forward. Nobody can. But looking backward, the path was obvious.
Your scattered interests aren’t random. They’re dots waiting to connect. Trust the process.
Lesson 2: The Psychology of Purpose
“Nothing happens until the pain of remaining the same outweighs the pain of changing.” - Arthur Burt
Knowing this, we can combine a few ideas:
1. Skinner’s Law
Make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it
Make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it
2. The Rat, The Cheese, and The Cat
Put a rat in a tube with cheese smell ahead. It pulls forward with decent force.
Add a cat smell behind it. The rat pulls with every ounce of strength it has.
The cheese is your purpose, your goals, your vision of success. The cat is your anti-vision, the life you’ll have if you don’t move forward, the miserable existence you dread, the deathbed regrets waiting to consume you.
3. Developing the “why”
What allows your “why” to thrive:
Sustained attention on the thing
Environment that supports it (people/content aligned with the goal)
What kills your “why”:
Comfort that makes change feel unnecessary
Easy dopamine that satisfies without effort
Endless distractions that numb the urgency
Depression or poor mental health
Your task becomes: Remove what kills your why and make it thrive by sustained attention and environment curation.
Take those 3 together, and this now turns Skinner’s Law into:
Make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it by imagining what will happen if you don’t take action (the cat, the anti-vision, a life filled with regrets and misery)
Make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it by making action pleasurable and eliminating what causes you to hate the work (what kills your “why”: cheap distractions, easy dopamine, etc.)
Cheap distractions and easy dopamine are probably a major reason of why you’re stuck. This was the case for me. When I eliminated it from my life, I started to enjoy simpler things again.
Next comes an exercise using the famous Charlie Munger mental model of inverting. We’re going to us it to help find your anti-vision:
📝 EXERCISE: The Munger Method (Finding Your Anti-Vision)
What you’ll need: A piece of paper or new document, 15 minutes of honest reflection, and no distractions.
Instructions:
Ask yourself: “How can I make the next few years of my life absolutely miserable?”
Write down everything. For example:
Stay in a job that drains my soul for “security”
Keep scrolling social media 4+ hours daily
Avoid all uncomfortable conversations
Never finish projects I start
Surround myself with people who gave up on their dreams
Keep promising I’ll start “tomorrow”
Stay in relationships that make me feel small
Never exercise or care for my body
Keep numbing myself with substances or distractions
This list is your cat. That’s what’s chasing you.
Now do the opposite of everything on that list. That’s your escape route.
There’s good news: You’re not trapped in a tube. There’s cheese everywhere ahead of you. Move forward without quitting, and you’ll find it.
But the cat behind you? That’s guaranteed. Do nothing, and it will catch you.
Which do you choose?
Continue Reading
The first two lessons show you why you’re stuck and what’s actually driving your behavior. The remaining five lessons show you how to fix it.
What comes in the next 5 lessons:
A framework for separating your authentic desires from programmed ones.
Multiple reflection exercises that force clarity on what you actually want.
The execution blueprint that connects your life vision to what you do tomorrow morning.
You can either get the full course:
Or, subscribe (8$/month) and get everything:
This course
Weekly deep dive essays (+ acces to various already published essays)
3 shorter courses (about Productivity, Time, and Freedom) + Future courses