How do most of us define a life purpose? Is there a common definition? For most people it’s having something that gives their life direction, something meaningful, something that makes them feel “This is what I’m here to do.”Must having a purpose in life be a weighty thing? Can it be light and even frivolous? I think it can. Some people love sports or cooking or decorating–things that other people might not find “weighty” enough. I don’t think it’s an issue of what you do, but of how important something is in your life.So making money could be a life purpose?Some people are very committed to making money and really do seem to see it as their life purpose. I don’t know that it’s a life purpose that necessarily holds up well over time. When someone becomes ill or goes through a painful divorce or experiences some other serious crisis in their life, they often come to realize that other things, like close relationships, are really what sustain them.If a person believes they don’t have a life purpose is it a sign of a bigger and deeper problem? It can be. Certainly depression can cause someone to feel that she has no purpose in life. People I see in my practice who are seriously depressed often say that they feel that their lives are worthless. But people who aren’t depressed can also feel that their lives have no purpose, that they’re missing something important in their lives. How would you begin with a client who presents with this issue? It really depends upon how they experience the issue. For example, people often feel that it’s okay for other people to do what they’re passionate about, but that they can’t do it themselves because doing it would mean they’re “selfish.” If that’s the case, we talk about what being “selfish” means to them. Do they feel that pursuing their own life path is going to hurt someone else? Do they feel that it’s going to make them arrogant? Once we know what “selfish” means, we can start to explore where that feeling came from. Almost always, it’s related to how people experienced themselves in their families growing up. The more we can see how the experience of being selfish developed for that person, the more they can see that they’re not actually selfish, but that they came to feel that they were because it made sense of their experience.Is the outcome from therapy for this problem hopeful?I’m always hopeful. People who come in with this problem are suffering because they believe that there’s something wrong with them, not because there actually is. I’m always confident that, over time, we’ll be able to understand how the person came to have this belief and that, once they see that it’s a belief about themselves and not a fact about themselves, they’ll be able to find their life purpose.Is the goal in therapy helping people realize that they do have a purpose that they just haven’t recognized? Or, is the goal helping them define and pursue a purpose that didn’t exist? Some people have a very strong sense of what they would like to be doing, but they sabotage themselves whenever they start to become successful at it. Other people are much less clear about what they want and my job is to help them figure it out.Must a purpose in life be positive? Could it be gambling or drinking to excess or cheating on a spouse? The problem with things like that is they are self-destructive and destructive to other people. They also are very compulsive. I don’t think they can be the basis of anyone’s life purpose, although for many people, they become replacements for the life purpose they’re lacking. My goal with people who are doing these things is to help them understand what’s missing from their lives so they can replace destructive habits with things that are positive for themselves and other people. Click to learn more about finding your life path with Jane Rubin, Ph.D.