For me, I found my core principles through art (specifically music) and introspection. And then I waited my entire career to realize those principles had also b

For me, I found my core principles through art (specifically music) and introspection. And then I waited my entire career to realize those principles had also been my calling / purpose. I have always listened to a LOT of music. One lyric caught my attention when I was in college... "I crucified my hate and held the world within my hand." I thought about that lyric deeply and why it was there. That led to an experiment where I decided not to use the word "hate" for a year. It was hard at first, but as time went by I found that looking for other ways to express issues was transforming my thinking - language can be quite powerful that way. After that year, I decided to continue not to use that word towards living beings. I might use it towards their actions, but not towards them. With reflection, I realized that a corollary was to use love as a motivation in everything I do - to try hard to find some amount of love for everyone I interact with. It made a lot of my life, especially in hard times, make more sense. Now it's ~35 years since the initial experiment and I'm retired. I continue to mentor a number of people that I worked with, and others that they now work with (for pleasure, I don't take money). And when things like the current tech layoffs happen, many of them and others come to me for support and contextualization. Only now do I realize that this focus on love has been my purpose for nearly my entire adult life. These people see it (probably intuitively rather than explicitly) and come to me when they struggle to find productive ways to think about hard things in life. Looking back, it defined me as a leader toward the end of my career. As I was retiring, a manager that I had advocated for thanked me for "leading the org from a place of love". I had avoided using the word "love" in that context for fear of misunderstanding, replacing it with components of love like caring / compassion / supporting / understanding / nurturing etc., but it was always an underlying motivation. It was wonderful that she could see the root of it all. And it was funny that I didn't realize it was my calling until later.