Misaligned With Purpose: When Your Body Knows [Purpose Series #2]

Could being Misaligned with Purpose cause exhaustion that feels bone-deep?

Misaligned with Purpose.  It is a feeling like your body has run out of energy, so acute that it takes effort to talk, and there is no respite from mere relation.  Everything is harder than it needs to be; you feel sluggish and finish the day completely exhausted and drained.

I felt this acutely in the fall of 2023. We had recently purchased a small bolt-on acquisition, and the integration, developing longer-term plans for the combined businesses, and covering a few management positions were our immediate work. It was an exciting intellectual project and a chance to learn integration from a long-standing group that had been involved in many acquisitions. The work was challenging and required high collaboration among our employees.  

I was head down working with our managers on issues that felt weighty and urgent – but I wasn’t at my peak, and my body felt it. It wasn’t aches and pains but a deep, physical sensation that something was off.  Exhaustion not borne from strenuous physical exercise, but rather a mental fatigue that was just as debilitating.  I remember vividly returning home after a long day’s work and looking for rest with no luck.  There was no relief in naps, my close relationships, play, or introspection.  That daily feeling persisted over months, and it disrupted my sleep, led to rapid weight loss, created uncertainty, made me short with the people I love, and diminished my resilience.

Why the physical manifestations without physical toil?

Research shows that our bodies can sense and respond to stress long before we consciously identify them, often showing up as fatigue, weight changes, or emotional reactivity.  My body was talking to me, but I didn’t know how to listen.  It was reacting to a fundamental shift in my work and my growing inability to find the purpose and meaning I craved.  

I’d compare this cycle to a similar process we see in healthy and unhealthy sleep. In many ways, the sensation of working hard, enjoying the challenges, and finding camaraderie—yet feeling the work lacked depth and the ability to refill my reservoir of purpose—was akin to sleep without deep or REM phases. Technically, you’re resting, but it’s not restorative. Over time, the absence of true rejuvenation isn’t just draining; it becomes detrimental. Without a clear sense of purpose and a superficial feeling to my work, I was not refilling the deep reservoir of my soul and was missing the meaning and fulfillment that comes from true alignment.

This was troubling for two main reasons:

1. My work defined me. After 34 years, my identity was intertwined with the business. It was where I sought validation and applause.
2. My work was no longer aligned with my purpose. It didn’t fit the framework I had built for my life.

My Purpose-Driven Life Guide

For years, I’ve relied on a guide I’ve developed, my own self-styled Purpose-Driven Life Guide to navigate my decisions and actions. Inspired by Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I wrote my first mission statement in 2017.

“To serve as a leader, to live a balanced life that includes challenge and growth, to be connected to higher purpose, to impact others in a positive manner, and to use ethical principles and hard work to make a significant difference in our world”

Over time, that one sentence grew into a set of operating principles and beliefs. One part of that guide reads:

“I am at my best when my life and work have meaning, I deliver on my commitments, people respect me, I can influence outcomes, my work feeds me, aligns with my moral compass, I am a key player on a high-performing team, and I am continually growing. Additionally, I seek appropriate challenges and find situations that keep me highly engaged and energized. This is my purpose.”

So, what was going on? My body was signaling that I was misaligned with purpose. My work didn’t violate my values, and I still cared for the people I worked with, but the work itself lacked meaning for me. I would discover later that two of my core pillars had eroded (Purpose & Efficacy), and I was teetering.

You ever go out to eat and sit at a table with one leg that is slightly shorter than the others?  It can be a challenge to accept that feeling of obvious imbalance.  How would it feel it that leg was completely missing?  Maybe the table would stay up, but that would be a tenuous situation and require your constant vigilance not to lose the sustenance you worked so hard for.  What if that same table was missing two legs?  You could keep that table up, but it would require your full attention, take an inordinate amount of your capacity, and that meal/experience would leave you unfulfilled.  This is like what I was experiencing, and the situation was unsustainable.

So, how do we explain and reframe the situation?

Working Genius

Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius framework offers a powerful lens for understanding why some aspects of work leave us energized while others drain us. According to Lencioni, each person has two areas of genius—tasks that come naturally and bring joy—two areas they are ambivalent about and two that exhaust them.  The geniuses, as defined by Lencioni:

• Wonder: Pondering possibilities and identifying areas for improvement.
• Invention: Creating new ideas or solutions to solve problems.
• Discernment: Evaluating ideas and making sound judgments.
• Galvanizing: Rallying and inspiring others to take action.
• Enablement: Providing support and assistance to move ideas forward.
• Tenacity: Ensuring tasks are completed and goals are achieved.

The Lencioni Working Genius assessment wouldDiscernment and Galvanizing as my working genius and Enablement and Tenacity as my two working frustrations.  My time in areas that weren’t my genius was certainly a contributing factor.  While I thrive in roles requiring ideation and strategy, the operational details of integration and managing day-to-day execution drained my energy. Lencioni’s model helped me see that this wasn’t a personal failure but a misalignment between my strengths and the demands of the work.  However, none of us spend all our time doing use the work we love, and the learning and long-term planning was work I enjoyed. So – what is the amount of work we feel we need to do that will satisfy our need to engage and be happy with the work we don’t love?

Marcus Buckingham – Love and Work.

Marcus Buckingham is a renowned researcher, speaker, and author known for his work on strengths-based leadership and employee engagement, including some work at Gallup developing the Q12 engagement survey.  His book Love + Work explores how discovering and integrating what we love into our work leads to greater fulfillment and success.  Marcus Buckingham introduces a concept of “red threads” that offers a compelling perspective on what makes work fulfilling – and could hopefully provide an answer on just how much of the work we love needs to be present and how much work we don’t love can we tolerate.  Red threads are the specific tasks or activities we love doing in our jobs—those moments that energize us, make time fly, and bring a sense of purpose to our work. According to Buckingham, you don’t need to love every part of your job to find it satisfying; in fact, he suggests that if at least 20% of your work consists of red threads, you are likely to feel engaged and happy in your role. The key is to identify these red threads and intentionally weave more of them into your daily work. By focusing on the tasks that align with your strengths and passions, you can create a career that not only sustains you but also helps you thrive.  Certainly, 20% of the work that I was doing was work that I enjoyed and brought challenge.  So – this didn’t provide the clarity that I was seeking.  Enter the Meaning Maintenance Model as possible insight into being Misaligned with Purpose. 

The Meaning Maintenance Model

To make sense of this discomfort, I found clarity in the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM), a psychological theory developed by Steven Heine, Travis Proulx, and Kathleen Vohs in 2006. The MMM suggests that people have a fundamental need for meaning, and when that sense of meaning is disrupted, we are driven to restore it.

The model identifies four pillars of meaning:

1. Value – Knowing what is right, wrong, or important in life.
2. Purpose – Having goals or a direction to work toward.
3. Belonging – Building meaningful social connections and relationships.
4. Efficacy – Believing that your actions have an impact

When one of these pillars is threatened, we instinctively try to reinforce the others to regain balance. This might mean finding comfort in routines, seeking support from relationships, reaffirming beliefs, or engaging in meaningful work.  Remember the chair analogy from before?  We seek to find balance – but we cannot find permanent relief by strengthening only two pillars.  While Lencioni’s Working Genius framework helped me pinpoint the specific tasks that drained my energy, the MMM provided a deeper understanding of why I felt so unbalanced. It wasn’t just about spending time on tasks outside my genius; the erosion of my Purpose and Efficacy pillars left me feeling disconnected and drained. Together, these frameworks offered a powerful lens to diagnose the misalignment and chart a path forward

Listening to My Body and Realigning

In times of crisis, it’s hard to think clearly. The daily grind, urgent tasks, and swirling emotions make it difficult to identify the root of the issue. But deep down, I knew—I felt—that my miind and body were Misaligned with Purpose.  My body wouldn’t let me ignore it.

Ultimately, this realization, combined with the principles in my guide, led me to make a change. And that change was a gift. It gave me the freedom I craved and brought my life back into alignment with my values, beliefs, and purpose.

A Path to Flourishing

This experience sparked a deeper exploration of purpose: What makes purpose special? How does it exist in our lives? What factors help us flourish? What intrinsic elements create a good life, and how can we prioritize these paths?

While the authors of the MMM didn’t prescribe a specific order for the pillars, I believe the following sequence matters:

1. Value: Know yourself first. What do you stand for at a fundamental level?
2. Purpose: Identify what drives you, centers you, and makes your work meaningful.
3. Belonging: Cultivate deep relationships. Research shows that even one meaningful connection can make us happier and live longer.
4. Efficacy: Engage in meaningful work, using your unique gifts to make an impact.

Are You Out of Alignment?

Do you feel misaligned with any of these four pillars? My advice: start at the top and work your way through them over time in pursuit of being your best self. A life—personal and professional—steeped in purpose is a recipe for a good life.

Throughout the next series of posts, we will explore these four pillars at length, starting with Value.  We will dive into core values, personal mission statements, life guides, and even a look-back exercise designed to provide clarity on what is important to our self.  These are the exact steps that I pursued after leaving my leadership role at a company after 34 years.  This process gave me an unparalleled understanding of who I was, what I stood for, and my purpose.

Path Towards Understanding:

To identify your own misalignment, try these four exercises:

1. Self-discovery. Ask: When do I feel most energized at work? What drains me the most? Which of the four MMM pillars feels unstable, and how can I reinforce it?
2. Assessments: If you are fairly self-aware, you can likely determine what your genius and your frustrations are by reviewing the material on the working genius model here.  For a more comprehensive effort, take the Lencioni Working Genius assessment.  The cost is $25, and The Table Group will provide detailed information about the assessment, each genius, and how ours manifests into everyday situations
3. Love and Work, by Marcus Buckingham. Read the book here:  or check out this podcast from HBR Idea Cast.
4. Meaning Maintenance Model. Subscribe to In Pursuit of Purpose as we go deeper into each of the four pillars of MMM with future posts and real examples that I’ve used to discern true understanding and practical understanding of each.  Subscribe here.

Finally – I thrive off comments and (constructive) feedback.  Drop your thoughts, comments, challenges into the comment section, or email me at derek@derekfigueroa.com.

See you soon, thanks for reading!