purpose

How to Determine If Your Life Purpose Is a Noun or a Verb

Coaching
March 25, 2025•2 min read

When navigating transitions, it is important to identify and gain clarity of your purpose. Purpose can be expressed as both a noun and a verb. As a noun, purpose is something you possess (an asset you can show others). However, as a verb or a practice, purpose is a deliberate and conscious way of being and is the soul of your purpose. Chip Conley remarks in Living & Working on Purpose, “You can’t be the noun if you don’t do the verb.”

Here are some important facts to consider about your life purpose:

  • Embracing your purpose can extend your life by up to 7-8 years.

  • You are likely over or under purposed if you are experiencing stress, overwhelm, bored, uninspired, unmotivated, stuck, out of balance, indecisive, or not doing any one thing well.

  • An outer purpose without an inner compass will leave you lost.

  • You may be experiencing purpose anxiety if you are living with another’s expectations or purpose or thinking you are the one experiencing an unpurposeful life.

  • Purpose can evolve over time and throughout different seasons of your life.

  • Ikigai (that which makes life worth living) is at the intersection of living life doing what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Living in Ikigai is the difference between a career and a calling.

  • Living with purpose (as both a verb and a noun), is a life in “flow.”

  • The most holistic expression of living life in/with purpose is when it combines passion, mission, profession, and vocation.

Let’s circle back to the Viscott quote from the first blog in this series to remind us about purpose and its connection to the work of life and meaning:

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. 

The work of life is to develop it. 

The meaning of life is to give your gift away.”  

David Viscott

Are you struggling to identify your purpose? Is it difficult to identify the fruits of your purpose? Are you currently in the midst of a life transition causing you to examine your life’s purpose and meaning?  Having a coach journey alongside a person in transition helps illuminate the pathway forward. Coaching during a transition can provide you with a deeper connection or articulation of your purpose, clarity, confidence, and perspective. Click here to explore the current transition coaching packages available.


life purposenavigating transitionstransition coachingikigai
blog author image

Kay Kotan

Kay’s purpose is to Equip and Empower Leaders of Faith Communities How to Engage in More Effective Ministry. Kay Kotan is the founder of You Unlimited (coaching, consulting and training company) and The Greatest Expedition – a collaboration of more than twenty thought leaders providing resources and insights for a congregational journey to develop new MAPS (ministry action plans) to reach new people in your community.  Kay also launched Multipliers’ Movement – a gathering of kingdom multipliers for sharing, equipping, and encouraging. She is a CoachU and Advanced CoachU Graduate, an accredited coach (PCC: Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF, International Coaching Federation, a Certified Path 1 Coach, a TQ (Transitional Intelligence) Certified Coach, and once served on the faculty at Coaching4Clergy. As a passionate lay person, she has a banking background and has been a business owner for more than 25 years. Kotan has served as a church developer for conferences and worked with churches, pastors, conferences, and judicatory leaders across the country for more than a decade. She is most proud to be the wife of Bob for over 30 years and the mother of their adult son, Cameron. Kay is the author of multiple books, workbooks, and resources including Gear Up: Nine Essential Processes for the Optimized Church, Cry From the Pew, Full Schedules, Barren Souls, Being the Church in the Post Pandemic World, and Journey Preparation: Surveying Your Church’s Landscape, as well as the co-author of the books titled: IMPACT!: Reclaiming the Call of Lay Ministry, Small Church Check-Up, Insights on Productivity, Renovate or Die – Ten Ways to Focus Your Church on Mission, Ministry 3.0 and Get Their Name , Ten Prescriptions for a Healthy Church, Necessary Nine – Nine Things Effective Pastors Do Differently, Launching Leaders: Taking Leadership Development to New Heights, Strategy Matters: Your Roadmap to Planning a Strategic Ministry Planning Retreat, Voices of Christmas: A Daily Devotional for Advent and Expanding the Expedition Reach Through Marketplace Multipliers. Mission Possible for the Small Church. Inside Out: Everting Ministry Models for the Postmodern Church, and more. Kotan and her co-author Bradford published their third version of the best-seller, Mission Possible: Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness. Mrs. Kotan spends her time investing in pastors, laity leaders, congregations, and judicatory leaders through equipping, coaching, and creating resources to help them discover and live into their fullest missional potential of effectiveness and fruitfulness to reach people for Jesus Christ. Through her enthusiasm, truth-telling, and passion, she challenges those who encounter her in both their thinking and their doing.

Back to Blog