Finding and living your life purpose using simple frameworks

Executive overview

Most people struggle to act on self-knowledge not because they lack information but because they have lost touch with who they actually are at their core. Purpose coach Joey Chandler argues that every person has a consistent, observable theme running through their life — identifiable through what others consistently appreciate about them — and that naming it unlocks motivation in a way no outside coaching can. He developed a two-question method to surface that theme quickly, then helps clients build personal and business systems that feed and express it daily. In 2020 he added a "purpose ladder" tool after realising purpose is not an on/off state but a spectrum requiring active support.

Clarity about your core purpose is not a branding exercise — it is the foundation for designing every system in your life and business.

How purpose is discovered

• Joey filmed life-tribute videos for hundreds of people, asking 30–50 contacts what they loved about the subject; a consistent emotional theme always emerged.
• After roughly 100 videos he recognised that theme as the person's purpose — not intentional, not overt, but always present.
• He distilled the insight into two questions: "How do you want people to feel when they interact with you?" and "How would you describe that feeling in language you used as a child?"
• Across thousands of conversations he found five core purpose words: love, joy, happiness, excitement, and freedom.
• Purpose is not invented; it is already active in your life — the exercise simply makes the invisible visible.
• Even a 15-minute conversation can surface the core, but people need time and repetition to own and internalise it.

What purpose actually means

• Purpose is something at your core — a spirit, energy, or wiring — whose expression is the reason you are here.
• Your purpose is always dual: it applies to yourself and to others; neglecting the self-directed side leads to burnout.
• You are always bumping up against limits that contradict your purpose; that friction is normal growth, not failure.
• Trying to eliminate all limiting beliefs is less useful than accepting them, naming them, and returning to purpose anyway.
• The goal of purpose coaching is not to teach new information but to help people become more fully themselves so they use the knowledge they already have.

Purpose and business systems

• A company's purpose is some combination of its founders' individual purposes — you cannot build a business that is truly disconnected from who you are.
• Once a team's purpose is clear, every operational question can be tested against it: does this onboarding flow create ease and excitement? Does this scaling decision keep us present to our purpose?
• A shopping platform whose founders surfaced "ease and excitement" used those words to audit copy, processes, and internal culture — without a full rebrand.
• A staffing company landed on "keeping the world working," which reframed their daily work as providing dignity and livelihood, not just filling roles.
• Founders can do a combined purpose-to-values exercise in about 90 minutes, producing authentic company values rather than marketing slogans.
• The exercise pairs founders to interview each other, listening for emotional resonance rather than intellectual positioning.

Coaching case study: from lost to a million-dollar year

• A woman was unexpectedly handed her husband's insurance brokerage when he took a new job; she had no background in insurance and felt lost.
• Working with Joey she identified her purpose as "people being happy" and a bigger vision of elevating women out of poverty.
• Connecting those two anchors let her ask whether the insurance business was a vehicle for both — it was.
• Clarity gave her the confidence to tell her team exactly what she needed to succeed, which she had never done before.
• Within months she achieved an unprecedented revenue result (described as "a bajillion") by operating from a clear internal framework rather than technical expertise.
• The story illustrates how purpose works: it connects existing threads in your history into a foundation, rather than requiring you to start over.

The purpose ladder: navigating 2020 and beyond

• Before 2020 Joey believed purpose was essentially an on/off switch — you were present to it or you weren't.
• The compound stresses of COVID, social justice upheaval, fires, and environmental anxiety showed him that nobody can maintain purpose continuously without structural support.
• The purpose ladder places your purpose at the top and your worst emotional state (e.g., anger, despair) at the bottom, with four intermediate rungs in between.
• Each rung has a specific, small action that moves you one step up — for Joey that means telling the truth and taking a breath at the lowest point.
• The ladder means you can locate yourself each morning regardless of circumstances and take one concrete step forward rather than trying to leap from rock-bottom to full presence.
• This reframe made purpose coaching far more practical: purpose is not a destination but a direction you navigate toward daily.

Building a complete purpose framework

• Step 1 — surface the core: use the two questions to name your purpose in simple, felt language.
• Step 2 — articulate your vision: identify what you want to create (a business goal, a life milestone) as the purposeful direction.
• Step 3 — define your purpose process: find the four to six moves you naturally take to help yourself and others experience more of that purpose.
• Step 4 — install systems: build daily habits, structures, and routines that feed the purpose rather than compete with it.
• Step 5 — implement, evaluate, and celebrate: treat purpose like any other business metric — review it and mark progress.
• For organisations, layer individual purposes into shared company values during a single working session, then use those values to audit every system.

Key tensions and honest caveats

• Getting to your purpose quickly is possible; making it stick requires ongoing work because decades of "who I thought I had to be" habits do not dissolve instantly.
• Purpose does not erase shadow behaviour — it coexists with it; the point is awareness and return, not perfection.
• People who claim to be purely mercenary ("I'd sell guns, whatever — it's just money") almost always have an underlying purpose if you scratch the surface; pure nihilism about work is rare.
• Purpose statements that slide into marketing slogans lose their motivational power; the test is whether you feel something when you say it.
• Scaling a business that is misaligned with your purpose is possible, but you will end up somewhere you did not want to be.