Where Does Our Purpose Come From?

In a recent New York Times interview with cookbook author and Food Network star Ina Garten, Lulu Garcia-Navarro asks two questions that offer great insight into what motivates Garten, the difference she is determined to make, her vision for the world- her purpose.

Garcia-Navarro: You had a mother who was very ——
Garten: – Disconnected. And my father was always mad at me. I don’t know why. He tried to control me. What goes in early goes in deep, and I’m always trying to recreate what I craved when I was a kid.

Garcia-Navarro: I’m thinking of your mother’s relationship to food. She was a nutritionist who saw food as a method of control and not of joy, right?
Garten: There was no joy in it. I don’t think she really understood joy. And I absolutely, deliberately decided to do it differently. I just love having a good time, and I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t, so I always go toward that.

Purpose can come from a negative or positive experience, one that you had that was so amazing you want others to experience it or one that you had that you never want anyone to experience again because it is so painful.

Either way, they come from personal experience, which is why we are so passionate and motivated by our purpose: we are emotionally connected to it. In Garten’s case, her tough childhood created her vision of a better world, one filled with joy.