What feeds your soul

There’s a great NatGeo documentary currently on Disney+ called Torn.

It’s about a family of three boys whose father died in a climbing accident when they’re young. Their dad’s climbing partner, who was on the mountain that day, goes on to marry their mom and help raise them. The mom is asked how she feels about Conrad, her husband, continuing high-risk mountaineering expeditions. She says that it makes her nervous but that she’d never stop him because “It’s what feeds his soul.”

Our priorities reveal themselves as we sweat through a few laps around the track. Sometimes we choose them; I think, more often, they’re an embrace of what life offers us.

Mine have become extra clear over the past few years and last week reminded me of that. On Friday, a friend and colleague had a baby. That day, May 13th, was the same date on which another friend’s son was born nine years ago. That day began such a rich, rewarding time in my life — being an uncle.

My time in New York brought back my love of surfing. The pursuit of wave riding is full of endless challenges that lead to sublime highs. It forces you to pay attention to all the little things, equipment and fitness and wind and tide, to put yourself in position to take advantage of the turbulent end of a wave’s journey across an ocean.

And while I’ve worked to extricate my personal and professional identities, the reality is that I still get a lot of energy from doing strategy. Every company has something impeding their growth potential — organizational structure, brand unfocus, creative blocks, product-market misalignment — that can benefit from an outside perspective to unwind.

Doing each of these things makes me feel more like who I am.

There’s been a lot written about brand purpose. A few years ago it was a given that a brand should have a worldly purpose — we exist to impact X in the world. In recent years the narrative has shifted to purpose’s lack of effectiveness. I think each pole has sort of missed the point. (The former is more of a message, so the latter is a reaction to the message being oversaturated).

Durable purpose isn’t a performative or extrinsic motivator, but an intrinsic one. It’s a thing that makes you feel alive. There’s a Hawaiian word, mana, that captures this. It represents a supernatural life force or divine power (“vibes” as The Kids might say).

So while our priorities make themselves clear over time, it’s useful to take stock of them too. Write them down, realize that doesn’t quite sound right and tap the delete button a few times (as I did a few times above), and explore what it means to feed your soul.