Find Your Purpose

I have always worked hard. No matter what position I held, I prided myself on being the hardest worker in the room. At times, those endless hours and constant exhaustion took a real toll on me.

I remember working on a project to rewrite and reorganize the policy manual for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Every day I came into work and reviewed policy. It was grueling. I knew the work mattered to the organization, but I found myself exhausted and deeply burned out.

That experience stood in stark contrast to another project I oversaw: bringing the first crime cameras to the Chinatown area of Las Vegas. The area was plagued by property crime, and I truly believed in what we were trying to accomplish. Even though I was putting in more hours than I had while working on policy, the work felt energizing instead of draining.

I have reflected on that difference a lot lately. The main factor for me was purpose.

Finding your purpose changes how effort feels on the inside. The amount of work may be the same, but it carries far less emotional weight when you believe in the why behind it. One of my favorite books, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, speaks directly to this idea. Frankl survived a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust and wrote about how a sense of purpose carried him through the darkest period of his life.

One of my favorite quotes from the book says it best:

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how.’”

That quote has followed me through every phase of my career. It explains why some seasons nearly broke me, while others, just as demanding, felt sustainable. Purpose made the work more meaningful.

Without purpose, hard work turns into survival. You grind, you push, and you tell yourself this is just what commitment looks like. Over time, though, that kind of effort starts to take its toll. The fatigue is physical, emotional, and mental, and it builds until you realize you are running on fumes.

With purpose, the work still costs you something, but it gives something back. You can feel tired and still feel fulfilled. You can be stressed without feeling crushed. Purpose dramatically changes how long you can endure and how well you recover.

Finding your purpose helps, especially in professions like policing, leadership, and service, where hard work is expected and often glorified. We tell people to work harder, dig deeper, and push through. What we do not always ask is whether they still believe in what they are pushing toward.

If you are feeling exhausted right now, it isn’t because you are lazy or weak. It may be because you have lost connection to your why.

Sometimes the answer is reconnecting with purpose or finding a new one. When the why is clear, the how becomes something you can endure.