If you remember from my “Word of the Year” post last June, I have started a habit of selecting a word each year that represents what I am working on. A theme for the year, if you will. This word or the idea behind it becomes a focus throughout the year. I post the word on my bathroom mirror and other places where I would have a constant reminder. My previous words were Surrender, Restore, and Thrive. The word for this year is Purpose.
To me, the word should be weighty enough to merit being a focus, in addition to being aspirational, to give me something towards which I should work. I’ll be honest: last year I did thrive for most of it, but our big European trip and the fatigue I mentioned in “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” left me trying to survive more than thrive. This is what I mean by aspirational. Maybe my impatience got the better of me, and I thought I would be thriving more than I was prepared to, but I would rather aspire to something seemingly beyond my reach and fail than to become complacent with my current status and expect no progress.
This brings me back to purpose. This is entirely aspirational in nature. To discover my purpose has been (and will continue to be) a lifelong journey. These are some of the bigger existential questions, like, Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? How do I know if I am on the right path?
Over the course of my life, I have spent periods of time wrestling with those questions and others like them, but they were an episode in time, not a focus for a year. Joan and I spent a weekend retreat before we got married, asking questions like these. We had great discussions, and some of the answers were revealed. When I started my career, I discerned more answers. Financial services would be an area where I could apply my mathematical and planning skills, along with my deep desire to help others.
Each occasion where answers came, I had a clearer vision of the path ahead and my role in the world. However, in my 20s and 30s, this represented more of a pencil sketch, with some color but nothing explicitly defined. When I left a major wirehouse to start my own business, I knew it would be the culmination of everything I had learned up to that point and a way to manifest the type of financial services I felt the industry was lacking. This was partially inspired by my father’s dental practice, where his patients were his friends and his friends were his patients. He created a familial vibe to the practice of dentistry and removed the stigma from a trip to the dentist.
So, when I started my business, I hired a coach. That coach took me through an intense fact-finding and blueprinting exercise, which would reorient me and propel me further down the path, while illuminating it with more colors and details, so the image of my path now looked more like an oil painting. This blueprinting, frankly, has been the most impactful and profound exercise of my life. Not only did it flesh out my values and the “why” of what I was doing, but it also forced me to project into the future one, three, five, seven, and ten years. This was not a one-time exercise. I probably did it four or five times over the next 17 years.
Fast forward to when that dream and that version of myself were utterly blindsided by illness, forcing me to quickly abandon the path that was so clearly marked for me and put me on a completely foreign path for which I had not planned. Talk about being disoriented. It was as if you were content going through the familiar streets of your life, perhaps whistling a happy tune, oblivious to the changes that are coming. All of a sudden, you are plucked from the familiar, blindfolded, spun around, and dropped onto a rural road in the Far East.
That is how I felt. At first, I was struggling to get back to the familiar path I knew and loved, but the harder I tried, the more hopeless it became, until I resigned myself to “surrender” (the word in 2022). Once I made that decision, I desperately attempted to find my new purpose. Within short order, I learned my new path was one of healing, and I had to “restore” (2023) my health before I could even consider finding the path.
My new journey of discovery of health and wellness has brought me here. And as I feel like I am at the tail end of that path, it is time to focus once again and figure out what’s next. I am too young and have too much to offer to do nothing. I don’t enjoy golf enough to do it every day. I firmly believe God has intentionally course-corrected my life and plucked me from the familiar to something new.
My strongest hope is that on the Camino de Santiago, this new path will be revealed to me. The question or intent with which I bring to Spain is, Now What? Indeed, what is my purpose? I have shifted from a career of 37 years focused on the needs of others, to this very short episode when I have had to focus entirely on me, which by definition is selfish, to the next iteration of my life where I once again shift my focus outwards.
I doubt that his endeavor (Brian on Purpose) is the answer, but it has been therapeutic for me and inspirational for others. I am not just saying that, as many of you have reached out to me privately and shared your stories. I am enjoying this part of the journey immensely, but my hope for 2026 is to more definitively define my Purpose for Act III in the life of Brian. Rather than a pencil sketch or oil painting depiction of my path, I am after a photographic vision, with clarity, rich colors, and depth of field. That is a tall order, I know, but as I mentioned, I would rather aspire to something seemingly beyond my reach and fail than to become complacent and string together endless days of self-indulgence and navel-gazing.
I am very excited and not the least bit nervous about pursuing my new path. Thank you, as always, for joining me on this journey.