The week I got fired from a job I loved, I kept opening my laptop and staring at a blank screen.

I didn’t know what to update. I wasn’t sure who I was updating it for. My job title had been the answer to so many questions, including, it turned out, the question of who I was.

That’s the thing nobody warns you about: career disappointment. The professional loss is real. But the identity loss is the one that knocks you sideways.

And somewhere in that fog, a question surfaces. Usually in the middle of the night. Usually, when you’re too tired to push it away.

What is my purpose?

Here’s what I’ve learned — both from living through it and from walking dozens of clients through the same fire: that question isn’t a crisis. It’s an invitation. And career disappointment, as brutal as it is, might be the most direct route to your answer.

Why Career Disappointment Hits So Deep

Most of us have been quietly, unconsciously answering the purpose question with our job title for years.

I’m a producer. I’m an analyst. I’m a director of marketing.

When work is going well, that answer feels sufficient. But it was never really the answer. Your job is not your purpose — it’s a manifestation of it. And when the job disappears, what’s left is the real question you should have been sitting with all along.

That’s not a failure. That’s a reckoning. And reckonings, handled right, can change everything.

The Three Questions That Find Your Purpose

I use a three-question framework with my clients, and I’ve come back to it myself more times than I can count.

The questions are simple. They’re not easy. There’s a difference.

Question 1: What brings you joy or flow?

Not what you’re supposed to love. Not what looks impressive on a LinkedIn summary. What actually lights you up — where do you lose track of time? Learning something new? Creating something from scratch? Solving a puzzle no one else could crack? Supporting someone through something hard?

Don’t overthink it. Write whatever comes up first.

Question 2: What are you good at?

Here’s a pro tip: don’t answer this one alone. Ask three people who know you well. We are chronically blind to our own gifts, especially the ones that come naturally. They don’t feel like gifts — they just feel like us.

When I did this exercise, I was surprised to learn that people experienced me as a strategic organizer and planner. Those things came so easily to me I’d never counted them as skills. I thought everyone did that.

They don’t.

Question 3: What breaks your heart?

This is the one people rush past. Don’t.

What feels intolerable to you in the world? What injustice makes you angry? What gap keeps pulling your attention? What do you find yourself saying someone should do something about this — because, yes, that someone might be you.

Purpose lives in the overlap of these three things. And career disappointment has a way of stripping away the noise so you can finally hear them.

Gigi’s Story

When Gigi came to me, she had just been laid off after 18 years as an analyst at Boeing — a job she’d landed right out of college. She was devastated. Her career had been a source of real pride, and her goals had always centered on stability: building a family, saving for retirement.

But when we started working through the three questions, something shifted.

What brought her joy was solving unsolvable problems. What she was good at was long-term data analysis and pattern recognition. And what broke her heart? The idea of leaving the world worse than she found it for her kids.

Those three things pointed somewhere she hadn’t been looking: sustainability. Helping companies reduce their carbon footprint. Using her skills to address something that mattered to her at a gut level.

Job security, she realized, had never been her purpose. It had been her strategy. Once she could see that, she stopped grieving the job and started building toward something real. Last I heard, she was interviewing for sustainability analyst roles and interviewing like someone who knew exactly why she was in the room.

The disappointment didn’t take her purpose. It introduced her to it.

How to Write Your Purpose Statement

Once you’ve sat with the three questions, the next step is to put it into words. This is where a lot of people stall, so I want to make it as simple as possible.

A purpose statement has three parts: what you love, what you’re good at, and what you’re called to change or contribute. You’re looking for the thread that ties all three together.

One essential instruction: write it in the present tense. Not I want to, or I hope to. Declare it as if it’s already happening — because at the level of purpose, it is.

The difference matters more than it sounds. “I want to help people tell their stories” keeps you in aspiration. “I help people tell their stories” puts you in motion.

Here’s one of my favorite examples from a client:

I am a warrior of freedom, nourishing and protecting my community through my talent as a chef and futurist, emboldening people to trust their gut.

Read that, and you can feel the person behind it. That’s the goal. Not a job description — a declaration.

Your first draft will be imperfect. Mine has been rewritten more times than I can count. The essence stays constant. The words get sharper over time. What matters is that you start.

The Hardest Part

The real barrier to writing a purpose statement isn’t the framework. It’s the fear of owning what you find.

Owning your gifts means being responsible for them. Claiming your purpose means you can’t keep playing small and pretending you don’t know what you’re here for.

That’s terrifying. It’s also the whole point.

Bottom Line

Career disappointment is not the end of your purpose story. For a lot of people, it’s the beginning of it.

When the job goes away, so does the easy answer. What’s left, if you’re willing to look, is something more durable and more yours: the overlap of what you love, what you’re good at, and what you can’t stop caring about.

That’s your purpose. It was there the whole time. The disruption just made it visible.

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