Diversify your Purpose Portfolio to Live a Happier Life
Like every overeager iPhone user, I was excited to be invited to Clubhouse via text and spent the night traversing through the different rooms on Clubhouse.
I stumbled upon one called Leadership Lab and stayed. It was being moderated by Kat Cole, the Ex COO & President of Focus Labs. She was articulate and mentioned the importance of diversifying your purpose portfolio, which included finding different hobbies, passions, or ways to give back so your purpose was not solely defined by work.
This deeply resonated with me, as I’ve been there before and made my identity my work. She spoke of someone who had been miserable at her job and worked in a constant toxic environment with her egotistical male manager, and it consumed her. She was incredibly unhappy and avoided him at all costs. She only knew of work, and this profound unhappiness transcended to all parts of her life, almost leading her to depression.
Later on, she began to volunteer at a soup kitchen and she found meaning of life through that channel. It made her happy to give back to a cause, and she created a community from her volunteering. She felt lighter when she went to work, which got her through her day to day. She had something anchoring her, something to look forward to on the weekends. Fast forward a couple of months, her manager was fired and she continued to successfully climb the corporate ladder.
In the clubhouse chat, Kat said something along the lines of, “What are you optimizing your life for? What will truly make you happy? If you’re not clear on what your goals and what you want, you’ll always be left wondering.”
As I watch my friends and my own sister begin to create their own families, I can’t help but feel like I want that part of meaning in my life too. They were diversifying their purpose portfolio, finding meaning in becoming more than just a career woman, and turning into a wife and a mother. They were bringing life into this world and that was beautiful.
I won’t speak on behalf of every woman because everyone has their own meaning of purpose. At the moment, I do envision myself being a wife and mother in the future (within 4–5 years). But in this moment, what brings me fulfillment is the innovative side projects I get to flex my creativity, from my YouTube channel, writings, and podcast.
Diversification means a risk management strategy that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. In the same vein, I can see it correlate heavily to your own personal life. What is guaranteed in life is that there is no constant. Parts of your life will be volatile, whether it’s a breakup, an illness in the family, the losing of a job, or your feeling of purpose going out like a flickering fire. The purpose of diversification is to ensure a somewhat balanced outcome, regardless of what tips the scale in a bucket.
Tying your purpose to one thing is death by default. Just kidding, but it does shatter your world when things don’t go wrong. Just like in a portfolio, you’d want bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, options, CDs, money markets, etc in case. And just in life, you’d want to find different channels that serve and give you purpose.
I see diversification happening in a multitude of ways:
- building a family
- climbing a career trajectory on the executive track
- giving back to the community
- working on creative, innovative side projects
- taking on a religion or study
- building a strong community
- working on personal growth
Work is not life. Work is part of your life, but it should not be your identity.
Emily is a US expat currently living in Singapore to learn about the tech communities growing in Asia. She has worked 4+ years in dev relations, community management, and event marketing within the tech and travel industry. Her time at OmniSci, Google and Booking.com gave her cross-functional expertise. In her free time, she is the host for the Asian Female Lead podcast and documents her life journey in digital at The Fang Girl. You can watch her YouTube vlogs.
