Don't Know Your Purpose? Do These 3 Things to Find It | John R. Miles - EP 843

What do you do when you don't have a passion, special talent, or obvious calling? John R. Miles shares three practical clues to discovering what matters to you, identifying where you can contribute, and building a meaningful life through everyday actions.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck, we live in a culture obsessed with the prodigy, the founder with the billion-dollar valuation, the person who seemed to know from childhood exactly what they were put on this earth to accomplish. And a lot of thoughtful people with steady jobs and good hearts are left asking, if I don't have a burning passion, does my life still have meaning? I don't think meaning works the way we've been told it does. Meaning is not an Easter egg hidden in the woods waiting for you to find it. And you don't have to be spectacular to matter.

• 0:43John R. Miles?

  Today's episode is for anyone who's been asking that question and didn't want to say it out loud. Hey, it's your friend John, and welcome to Passion Struck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a longtime listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today. Maybe you've felt the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough. If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me.

• 1:27John R. Miles?

  Let's get into it. Welcome back to episode 843 of Passion Struck. We're currently in our new November series, The Art of a Life Well Lived, where we explore how we nourish ourselves, discover what matters, and build lives guided by purpose. Earlier this week, we launched this series by looking at how we fuel our bodies and our minds. First, with Lee Cotton, in a nourishing perspective, we explored the everyday choices that shape how we care for ourselves. Then Carly Bowdrug joined me, the creator behind Plant U and author of the new book Plant U Quickies.

• 2:10John R. Miles?

  Carly has helped millions of people discover accessible, realistic ways to bring plant-based food eating into daily life without guilt or perfectionism. Both of them were making a case I like. Caring for yourself doesn't have to be perfect or complicated. It starts with small, real choices. Today, I want to take that one step further. Food feeds the body, but there's another kind of hunger, the one that asks, does my life actually count? This episode started with a LinkedIn message from a listener named Phil, who didn't ask

• 2:51John R. Miles?

  me about productivity hacks, building wealth, or scaling a company. Instead, he wrote, "John, I would love to see you create an episode specifically for the average person who is searching for meaning. How does someone who does not have a clearly defined passion, a special talent, or an obvious calling, begin to discover what matters to them? How do we identify the ways we can contribute, find our place in the world, and develop that sense of mattering that you so often discuss?" Then he added a line that stayed with me. Perhaps there are many other people asking themselves the same question.

• 3:35John R. Miles?

  Phil, I suspect there are. This episode is dedicated to you and to everyone walking that road. Here is what I want to offer today. Maybe the problem isn't that you haven't found your calling. Maybe you've been looking for meaning in the wrong place. And before you even have to say it, yes, I know my resume. Navy officer, Fortune 50 CIO, CEO several times over, bestselling author. A guy who has held those titles telling you that you don't have to be extraordinary can sound like someone at the top of the ladder waving down. And that's a fair criticism.

• 4:17John R. Miles?

  Stay with me because later in this episode, I'm going to tell you about the moment the ladder fell away and where I had to confront this exact question myself. Before the end of this conversation, you'll have a practical tool I call the three clues. It takes a week of paying attention and one small action within 48 hours. Before we dive in, if this conversation has you reflecting on what gives your life meaning and helps you feel that your presence matters, that is the central theme of my new book, The Mattering Effect. You can learn more in the show notes or at matteringeffect.com. Now, let's get into it. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your

• 5:02John R. Miles?

  journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin. One of the most damaging messages our culture sends us is that meaning belongs exclusively to exceptional people. We celebrate the tech founder, the record-breaking athlete, and the industry disruptor. There's nothing wrong with celebrating achievement. But somewhere along the way, we began confusing an exceptional resume with a meaningful life. If you listened to episode 837, The Scorecard Isn't You, you recognize the machinery.

• 5:47John R. Miles?

  The moment you hand people a ranking or a metric, they start wondering if they count. In The Mattering Effect, I call this the marketplace of mattering. The idea that your worth is always on loan, and you have to keep earning it through visible output. In that marketplace, if you aren't standing at the top, you start to feel secondary. And here's the underlying trap, which I explored in episode 723 back in January. Meaning tends to organize itself around contribution and action. Mattering sits underneath it. Mattering is the recognition that your existence counts, independent of your output.

• 6:31John R. Miles?

  When your worth feels conditional, meaning demands constant performance. You become convinced that unless your contribution is massive, historical, or famous, it doesn't count. And the harder we chase being exceptional, the less we notice the ordinary things we already do for people. The kindness we offer, the relationships we steady, the chaos we calm, the people who rely on our consistency. In episode 835, Dr. Nir Halliwell, a professor at Stanford, and I talked about how healthy cultures give

• 7:15John R. Miles?

  people more than one way to matter. And he brought up Steve Kerr, a bench player and sharpshooter on the championship Chicago Bulls teams with Michael Jordan as the star. Nir told me that hearing Kerr talk about the role helped him understand how people who aren't at the top of the hierarchy also find meaning and know they matter. You don't have to be the star. You have to find a way in. Now, I want you to picture an old growth forest. Your eyes naturally look up toward the canopy, the towering redwoods, the massive centuries-old oaks.

• 8:00John R. Miles?

  They're magnificent, but beneath your feet is a web of fungal threads wrapped around the roots of most of what grows there. They help the trees take in water and nutrients, and nobody photographs them. The redwoods get the landscape shots. The forest, though, depends on what's underneath. What if we spent our whole lives trying to be like the redwoods and missed how much we already hold up for the people around us? Think about the neighbor who quietly checks on someone living alone, the colleague who

• 8:42John R. Miles?

  makes a stressful office feel safer, the parent who makes a child feel safe after a brutal day at school, the friend who remembers to reach out when everyone else has moved on. These people don't get plaques. They don't give keynote speeches, but without them, the whole place falls apart. Your life doesn't gain meaning because of how high you climb. It gains meaning because of how deeply you connect. So far, we've been exploring how modern culture confuses extraordinary achievement with a meaningful existence, and why focusing only on the visible redwoods blinds us to

• 9:25John R. Miles?

  the people who actually hold things together. Before we continue, I have a quick favor to ask. If you're enjoying Passion Struck, take a moment to follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you watch or listen. That simple step ensures that you never miss an episode, and it helps more people find the show. And if something in this episode makes you think of a friend, a family member, or a colleague who feels stuck or overlooked, share it with them. You never know when one conversation might offer someone the permission they've been waiting for. Thank you for listening, for sharing, and for being part of this community.

• 10:08John R. Miles?

  When we return, we're going to look at what this kind of ordinary significance looks like in real life through the story of a young clerk who never thought he had a calling. And then we'll dive into Phil's actual question, how you can begin discovering what matters to you right where your feet are planted. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. We'll be right back.

• 10:35John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck. Welcome back. If the forest teaches us that connection matters more than canopy, what does that look like in an ordinary human life? It looks like a man history almost forgot.

• 10:53John R. Miles?

  In December of 1938, a 29-year-old British stockbroker clerk named Nicholas Winton was packing his bags for a ski holiday in Switzerland. He wasn't a diplomat, a politician, or a soldier. He had a standard desk job. Then, a friend called and asked him to come to Prague instead. When Winton arrived, he walked into refugee camps filled with families who had fled the Nazi takeover of the Sudetenland. He saw children sleeping in freezing mud, stripped of everything. He didn't launch an international foundation. He didn't petition governments to change foreign policy.

• 11:36John R. Miles?

  He set up a makeshift desk in a hotel room and began taking down names. When he returned to London, he worked his regular brokerage job by day and spent his evenings typing letters on a manual typewriter, pushing through the bureaucracy, raising funds, and finding foster families willing to open their doors. Night after night of that, and eight trains carried 669 children to safety.

• 12:06John R. Miles?

  Then Nicholas Winton went back to his life. For 50 years, he rarely spoke of it. Even his wife Greta didn't know the details until 1988, when she found a dusty scrapbook in their attic filled with lists of children's names and transit records. The BBC invited Winton to sit in the studio audience of a television program called "That's Life." The host, Esther Ranssen, shared his story, opened the notebook, and then asked whether anyone in the audience owed their life to Nicholas Winton. If so, would they please stand up?

• 12:51John R. Miles?

  Dozens of men and women rose to their feet around him. Some had been sitting beside him the entire evening. Winton stood up, looked around in disbelief, and wiped away a tear.

• 13:09John R. Miles?

  Now, if you're listening and thinking, "John, rescuing 669 children from a war zone is not an average life." I hear you. But look at what Nicholas Winton actually used: a desk, a typewriter, letters, and lots of follow-up. His gift was not military heroism. It was follow-through and the willingness to keep typing after the workday was over. And look at how it began. He didn't start with a grand calling. A friend asked him to come to Prague.

• 13:51John R. Miles?

  He saw a real human need right in front of him, and he stayed. Very, very few of us will ever face a crisis on that scale. But the pattern fits our everyday lives. Picture someone who agrees to drive an elderly coworker to chemotherapy during a rough season. No newspaper will ever write about it, but that coworker will remember it for the rest of their life.

• 14:21John R. Miles?

  Most of the time, meaning doesn't show up as a destiny. It shows up as a person who needs something you can do.

• 14:32John R. Miles?

  Phil, I think I know what you might be saying right now. "John, I understand I don't need to be extraordinary to matter, but I still don't know what matters to me. I don't have a burning passion. I don't have a standout talent. I don't have a calling. How do I actually begin?"

• 14:55John R. Miles?

  Almost all modern advice about purpose tells you to turn inward. Take a personality quiz, list your strengths, find your authentic passion. And then, when you look inside and you don't find anything cinematic, you end up feeling more defective than when you started. So try a different direction. Instead of staring inward at an empty screen, look at how you respond to the world. Here are three clues. Clue one: What do you find hard to ignore?

• 15:32John R. Miles?

  Not what you're good at, not what you could turn into a business. What do you find hard to look away from? An older neighbor becoming isolated. A kid being told they aren't smart enough. The way people treat service workers when they think nobody is paying attention. Someone at work quietly feeling like they don't belong. That question doesn't ask for a passion. It asks where you can't stay indifferent. Caring doesn't always feel like excitement. Often, it feels like discomfort, a persistent conviction that this shouldn't be this way. And your history has left clues too. Think about the moments that stayed with you.

• 16:17John R. Miles?

  The person who believed in you when you were terrified, or the time you were talked over and treated as invisible. Those aren't just memories. They shaped what you notice. Someone who grew up overlooked tends to spot the person standing alone at the edge of the room. Your history doesn't decide your future, but it does shape what you notice.

• 16:43John R. Miles?

  That brings us to clue two. Where does your presence help?

• 16:49John R. Miles?

  Think about the people who left the deepest mark on your life. Were they the ones with the most degrees, the highest titles, the shiniest resumes? Or were they the ones who stayed? The people who listened without checking their watch? The ones who noticed you were hurting when everyone else walked past? The ones who gave you permission to fail and try again?

• 17:15John R. Miles?

  So stop asking, "What am I exceptionally talented at?" Ask, "What kind of difference can I make in the life right now in front of me?" Maybe you bring order to chaos. Maybe you make outsiders feel welcome. Maybe you stay steady when everyone else in the room is panicking. Maybe you're simply willing to do the thankless and glamorous work that keeps a team or a family running. None of that will make you famous. All of it is a contribution.

• 17:50John R. Miles?

  Now, let's look at clue three. What are you willing to take responsibility for? Here's what I tell you. You don't have to know what matters most. Before you start caring, you find out by caring. Picture someone who's never felt a burning calling. One day, they volunteer to tutor kids or pack boxes at a local pantry. They meet someone dealing with real hardship. They show up the next week. They start learning names. People start counting on them. And slowly, without ever digging up a hidden passion, they start caring about whether that program survives.

• 18:34John R. Miles?

  They never dug up a purpose. They kept showing up, and it became something they cared about.

• 18:43John R. Miles?

  Andreas Widmer, who I interviewed in 2022 in episode 198, joined the Swiss Guard to protect Pope John Paul II. He told me that underneath, he felt like he was wearing a mask, pretending he knew what he was doing. The idea that he took from his discussions with John Paul II was that there has never been anyone like him, and there never would be. So if he didn't become himself, that chance wouldn't come around again. Later, as a CEO and a professor, Andreas created the Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at Catholic University.

• 19:26John R. Miles?

  And he told me, "We shrink the idea of entrepreneur when we reduce it to starting a company." An entrepreneur, he said, is someone who keeps asking one question: "How may I help you?" I love that as a starting point for you, Phil. I'm not saying you're extraordinary. I'm saying nobody else is standing in your exact spot with your exact people. A lot of us hunt for some big, meaningful why. Start with the smaller question instead. Who can I help and with what?

• 20:06John R. Miles?

  In episode 839, John Acuff gave us a simple way to try it. He calls it "auditioning a goal." Pick one new thing. Give it 15 minutes a day for seven days and see if it lights you up. If it doesn't, you have permission to try a different one. So here are the three clues. For the next seven days, I want you to pay attention to these questions. What do I find hard to ignore?

• 20:37John R. Miles?

  Where does my presence help? And lastly, what am I willing to take responsibility for? Then, take one action within 48 hours. Call the isolated relative for 20 minutes. Sit down with an overwhelmed colleague and help them map the project. Show up Saturday and pick up a sponge at the shelter. You don't have to announce it to anyone. Choosing to show up and care is often how purpose catches up with you.

• 21:11John R. Miles?

  In his work on mattering, Isaac Prilantensky defined mattering as a two-way street: feeling valued and adding value. It isn't the same as being admired. It isn't fame, status, or an executive title. So the question you ask yourself matters. Instead of asking, "What have I accomplished that makes me feel important?" Try asking this instead: "Who experiences something better because I am in their life?"

• 21:43John R. Miles?

  Maybe it's a spouse who knows you are a steady harbor, a child who feels safe around you, a coworker who knows you won't take part in cynical office politics, a stranger whose day shifted because you looked them in the eye and treated them like a human being. Those aren't small things. They're most of what a good life is made of. We just don't hand out trophies for them. I know this experience because I had to learn it the hard way. For a long time, I defined my significance through institutions. I wore the uniform of a Navy officer. I climbed the corporate ladder.

• 22:26John R. Miles?

  I held C-suite titles and sat in boardrooms. I'm grateful for what those roles taught me. But when I initially left the military all those years ago, the transition knocked the wind out of me. I had accepted an appointment with the FBI at Quantico. Then Congress didn't pass the budget, my class got recycled. The plan I had built, my post-military identity around, evaporated overnight, and I ended up taking a job at Booz Allen, a world I had never planned to enter. On paper, plenty of people there had military backgrounds, so it looked familiar. But the ethos was different.

• 23:10John R. Miles?

  The loyalty and sense of purpose I had known in the military weren't what drove the place. Profit and deliverables were. My yardstick for what counted as good job performance had completely changed. I'm not saying that to criticize anyone. I'm telling you because the structure that had told me what mattered was gone, and a different one had taken its place. That was the first time I had to ask who I was without it. The question underneath was simple. What happens when the uniform comes off? When the title disappears from your email signature?

• 23:51John R. Miles?

  Who are you when the institution stops validating you? If your meaning is tied to a badge or an achievement, it can disappear the moment that structure does. You can't outsource meaning, and a promotion doesn't lock it in. It comes from your choices, the values you won't trade away, and how you show up for the people around you. And once you see that, the pressure comes off. You don't have to wait until you've done something historic to feel that your presence counts. You can start that today. Phil, I want to come back to where we began.

• 24:36John R. Miles?

  You asked how an ordinary person, without a rare talent or an obvious calling, can discover what matters to them. My answer is this: You don't have to become extraordinary to matter. You don't need a stage, an audience, or a title. You find out what matters by paying attention to what you can't stay indifferent to, noticing where your presence brings relief, and deciding what you're willing to take responsibility for. And then, by taking one small action right where your feet are planted. When I think back to the reason you asked me this question in the first place,

• 25:21John R. Miles?

  I think it's because we've made this way too complicated. We've turned purpose into a puzzle you have to solve before you're allowed to start living. It's usually found in people you love, the work you do carefully, the load you help someone carry, and showing up when it would be easier to walk away. You may never be a redwood everyone photographs from the road, but you are part of what keeps the whole forest alive. Your assignment is simple. For the next week, notice three clues,

• 26:03John R. Miles?

  and within 48 hours, take one small action on whatever you notice. Next time for a special Veterans Day episode, I'm joined by Major General Charles Bolden, former NASA Administrator, Marine Combat Pilot, and astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions. One of the most powerful stories that General Bolden shares is about initially resisting the idea of flying alongside a Russian cosmonaut, someone he had been trained to view as an adversary, and what happened when they finally sat down together. It's a conversation about service leadership perspective and what it means to recognize our common humanity. And on Veterans Day,

• 26:48John R. Miles?

  it's a reminder that service is about more than the uniform we wear.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  I trained all my life to kill those guys. And they trained all their lives to kill me. And I don't want to fly with no damn Russian cosmonaut. I went to dinner prepared to go hand-to-hand combat with these guys or something. Sergey Krikalev, who ended up flying with me, came to the door and let me in. Spoke fluent English, tall. He had been a flight controller, so he was a unique cosmonaut. He was not a military cosmonaut. First thing we started talking about was our kids. I talked about Shay and Kelly, my son and daughter. All we talked about that night was our families and our kids, and what kind of world we wanted to leave for them. And how could we take this gift that had been given us with the wall coming down and bring our people together and make the world a better place?

• 27:36John R. Miles?

  Before we close, I want to invite you to put these ideas into practice. If you're ready to clarify your purpose, develop your message, and turn what you've learned into a story that can make a difference for others, check out the Passion Struck Speakers School. You'll find the link in the show notes or at passionstruckspeakers.com. Phil, thank you so much for writing in and for asking the question. You matter, and your life is still becoming. Until next time, live intentionally, and let's make this life one worth living. I'm John Miles, and as always, stay curious, stay intentional, and stay passion-struck.