Purpose is not a reward for people who already have resources. It is the thing you build with while you have almost nothing.
By Dr. Abiodun Mustapha, 2026-07-14
People write to me almost every week with the same sentence, arranged in different ways. They say they know they were made for something, but they have no money, no connections, and nobody in their family has ever done what they are dreaming about. Then they ask me how to find their purpose.
I understand the question because I lived inside it. I grew up in Oshodi. There was no plan waiting for me and no one to open a door. So I want to answer honestly, without the polish.
We talk about purpose like it is a wallet somebody dropped and you have to find it. That framing keeps people waiting. They sit still, praying for a moment of clarity that will arrive fully formed and remove all doubt.
That is not how it worked for me and it is not how it has worked for any of the professionals I have coached. Purpose gets built out of what you already have in your hand. You start moving, and the direction sharpens while you move.
Where you are today does not define where you will end.
When someone sits in front of me with no resources and no map, I do not ask them what they are passionate about. Passion is a poor compass when you are hungry. I ask three questions instead.
Write the answers down. Where those three overlap is not your purpose yet. It is your starting direction, which is the only thing you actually need to begin.
I hear this often: I will start when I have capital. But look closely at what the first version of almost anything costs. A conversation. A phone. Your time in the evening after work. The first version of what I now do professionally was me teaching people for free in a small room because I wanted to see whether what I had actually helped anybody.
Money follows evidence. Build the evidence first, in public, at small scale. Twenty people who will vouch for you are worth more at the start than a loan you cannot service.
I did not have connections. What I had was consistency in places where people could see me. I showed up, I did the work well, and I did it in the open long enough that people started introducing me to other people.
That is the whole method. Do useful work where it can be seen, keep doing it past the point where it feels unrewarded, and the network builds itself around you. It is slower than knowing someone. It is also more durable, because nobody can take it back.
Answer the three questions on paper, then find one person this week who has the problem you named, and help them with it for free. Not as charity. As research. You are testing whether the thing you think you carry actually lands when it meets a real person.
Do that ten times and you will know more about your purpose than a year of waiting could ever tell you.
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