Update: Ian Boreham - 26 Aug 2026

How do we build a life that remains purposeful as the shape of our lives changes?

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Purpose is something we all experience, but rarely stop to examine. We know when we have it. We notice when we lose it. Yet what purpose actually is — and how it develops, changes and survives across a lifetime — is far more complicated than the familiar language of goals, ambition and finding your passion suggests.

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Purpose explores this question through the lives of people who have pursued extraordinary directions, the sixty-year history of psychological research into purpose, and practical ideas for building and sustaining purpose through the different stages of life.

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The book brings together three ways of understanding purpose.

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Stories introduce the people whose lives make the ideas tangible — individuals who found direction, pursued it, lost it, shared it, adapted it or discovered it again.

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Science traces what psychology has learned about purpose over the past six decades, from its early foundations through to contemporary research on motivation, identity, ageing, meaning and wellbeing.

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Practice asks the question that research alone cannot answer: what do we do with all of this? The book translates the ideas and evidence into practical ways of thinking about purpose across the changing phases of a life.

Purpose is not something we find once.

A purposeful life is not necessarily a life with one grand mission. Our directions change. Circumstances change. We change.

The challenge is learning how to build, sustain and reconstruct a sense of direction as we move through life.

Purpose is currently being developed for publication.

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