Finding your purpose is more important than ever now. More so because we all need something to strive for and there’s a call for something that is better. I was becoming a young adult in the 1990s when Oprah was letting us know the key to happiness is finding your purpose, which for many, subsequently translated to following your passion. By the time I reached my 30th birthday, I was depressed and unfilled. I did own a clothing manufacturing company in Vancouver, Canada, that I had built it from 0 to 60 employees over the course of 10-years,  but I was miserable. 

Is There a Larger Purpose to All This?

I felt I had a larger purpose in this life and needed to go out and find it. I sold everything I had and moved to New York. Had I stayed on course in Vancouver and kept doing what I was doing, 25-years later I would be very wealthy financially! Would that have made me happy? Possibly but then maybe not. Was that my purpose? I wasn’t any closer to finding it.

Some Decisions Are Hard But Necessary

I believe there is a difference between pursuing your purpose and your passion. The ‘follow your passion’ dialogue that was hot a while back set a couple of generations up for failure. For example, my passion is horses, dogs and basically most animals I can ride or cuddle. It is where I am happy, in the moment, and experiencing sheer joy but I am hopeless at horseback riding! And I didn’t excel in science so the thought of becoming a veterinarian never entered my mind. I gravitated toward fashion design, and after my schooling started a fashion design studio, which quickly became a factory producing more than 20,000 units a month.   

I was apparently very skilled at project management and supply chain. By the time I was 30, I didn’t feel the world needed me making thousands of anything anymore. Looking back, I short-changed myself and didn’t give my skill set the acknowledgement and kudos it deserved. Instead, I gave weight to the elusive passion and purpose project.

While In New York, I helped young designers launch their lines. Their collections graced the cover of WWD and were in the pages of Bazaar, Elle, and Marie Claire. And one designer was even featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show. My clients’ brands were sold in Bloomingdales, Saks, and Nordstroms. This is no small feat seeing as none of my clients had any fashion design background. I had a knack for helping people build their brands and launch them into viable businesses. Again, I didn’t appreciate that talent, therefore, I kept it as my side hustle while I tried to produce films. I am not joking. 

Foray in Film

I found out the hard way, and the hard way is by losing over $100K of your own money, that the film business is no different than the manufacturing business. Some people are good, some are bad, and does the world really need any more content let alone content made by me? I would like to say that I did end up producing a film with Daryl Hannah, so I do deserve a pat on the back for that. Producing proved to be harder than producing 20,000 units of anything!

In 2015, I moved back to Vancouver.  Still haunted by Oprah, I struggled with the dilemma, what is my purpose. As I started to review what I knew and what I’ve learned over the years, I discovered that I was interested in starting a post-secondary school for fashion design. I was 48-years old, and I’d be starting over again. Regardless of whether I followed my passion or found my purpose, I had to earn a living. 

From Film to Founder of a Fashion Academy

I started to found The Cut Fashion Design Academy on some basic principles that mattered to me:

• Learning with access. I wanted our students to learn. I wanted to make sure I could see their strengths and weaknesses quickly. It was important to me that students learn the skills thoroughly so that they could add value to a fashion company/brand or to their own company. I believe the best way to do this is to keep our class sizes small (no more than six students in each class, with a 6:1 student-teacher ratio), plus access to me. For a student to know that the owner is guiding them gives them the confidence they need from the start. This mattered to me.

• Active focus. Over the last 30 years, the attention span of everyone has decreased, and the younger generation has been raised on digital nowness. This is great for some things and horrible for staying focused. Therefore, I created the school as a work/learn space, so students are learning in a real design studio. This isn’t a space where they don’t want to show up. On the other side of the school, space is dedicated to recognized brands, as well as up-and-coming labels. If the students ever want to see their work produced, they have to stay committed to learning (and their own desire helps to combat attention distraction).

• Global understanding of fashion and the world. Each year we bring in a speaker from another city to workshop our students. I want our students to be exposed to trends, marketing and ways that geopolitics plays into art and fashion. It’s important to me that students (and all people, really) are exposed to opportunities outside of their own backyard.

Finding Your Passion, 30-years Later!

Three years into starting this school, I realized that I have found my purpose. I am able to use my skills to guide the next generation and it feels good. I am passionate about mentoring my students, and they are hungry for my advice and guidance. It took me 30 years to figure this out and in the end, I didn’t figure anything out, it just took shape.

A friend of mine has done temp work all of her life. Her passions are her kids, her family, her summers in Europe. She is always happy, she is always positive, and she makes you feel better when you are around her. Her purpose is to enjoy her life, and that is amazing. Her joy reverberates and makes the people around her feel good. For me the difference between passion and purpose is that passion is something that drives you, that excites you, that you lose yourself in; and purpose is what you were born to do, it feels right when it is happening. How you do it is your choice.

Here are three tips to help you find your purpose:

• If you want to change the world, start with yourself. To me, this means to start small. Be realistic with what you can manage. It is not rational to want to solve all of the world's issues in one lifetime. We’re often told to dream big, but starting small can be a powerful first step. What can you do in your universe to better things?  It will have a ripple effect.

• Everyone has a purpose in life, no matter what it is. Finding yours may take a year or it may take decades. During the journey, you are honing your skills. Be patient.

• Donate some time to injustices that bother you. Volunteering and being a ‘giver’ for a day or a month (or whatever time you can afford), is meaningful and helps to create purpose.

• Are you living your purpose? How have you identified purpose in your own life?

Read more about Liza D. in her official bio here!