You might be living someone else's purpose

Last week, a reader pushed back on my newsletter about purpose. His point was sharp:

"There are plenty of charlatans out there abusing their power and calling it purpose. Clarifying the 'purpose' of wrongdoing doesn't wash the blood off their hands."

He's right. And it deserves a whole issue.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the more useful a concept is, the easier it is to weaponize. Purpose. Vision. Mission. Values. These words were built to anchor hard decisions in something bigger than self-interest. Now they're the most common rhetorical cover for decisions that serve nothing but self-interest. Layoffs dressed up as "strategic alignment." Power grabs sold as "living our values." Cruelty framed as "courage."

You've seen it. You've probably felt the damage — not just on the people on the receiving end, but on the language itself. Every time "purpose" is used to justify something indefensible, the word gets hollower. And honest leadership gets harder.

But the real question this issue is about is quieter and more personal: how do you protect yourself from being co-opted by someone else's weaponized purpose?

Let's get into it 👇

Travis Kalanick, Uber's CEO, was brilliant at selling people a bigger story. He wasn't just running a ride-sharing company — he was leading a movement to "liberate transportation" from corrupt taxi monopolies and outdated regulations. Engineers worked punishing hours believing they were changing the world. Drivers were called "partners." Every aggressive move — ignoring local laws, evading regulators, running unlicensed in city after city — was framed as necessary for the larger cause.

But the mission wasn't really the mission.

What Kalanick was actually building was much smaller: a vehicle for his own ambition, wearing a movement's clothes. And when the costs started landing — on drivers systematically underpaid, on women inside the company being harassed while HR looked away, on a rape victim whose medical records a senior executive obtained to discredit her — the purpose language didn't slow any of it down. It accelerated it. We're changing the world. These are growing pains. The mission is bigger than one person's experience.

That's how purpose gets weaponized. Not by people who abandon it — by people who disguise personal goals in collective purpose.

Counterfeit purpose doesn't just corrupt the person wielding it. It recruits everyone around them. The engineers at Uber weren't villains. They were talented people pulled into someone else's story because the story was compelling, the mission sounded worthy, and the person selling it was charismatic.

If you don't know your own purpose, you will be co-opted by someone else's. When you don't have a clear sense of where you're going, someone else's direction fills the vacuum.

And this goes far beyond work. The purpose you've been living may not even be yours. It might belong to your parents — the career they wanted for you, the life they imagined. It might belong to a partner, a mentor, a community, a culture. Many people spend decades chasing someone else's vision of a meaningful life and never notice that they never chose it themselves.

Every tool in leadership can be used well or used badly. Purpose can liberate or manipulate. Strategy can build or exploit. Influence can inspire or control. The tools are neutral. What decides how they get used is who you are when you pick them up.

That is the work of your identity and your moral compass. Your identity & moral compass are the answers to that deeper question: what kind of person do I want to be — in good times, and especially in the hard ones?

It's the quiet internal standard that says: this is who I am. These are lines I won't cross. This is how I treat people — even when no one's watching, even when it costs me.

When your compass is clear, purpose becomes a force for good. You still chase ambitious things. You still make hard calls. You still disappoint people when you have to. But you do all of it inside limits you've set for yourself — I won't betray people who trusted me. I won't lie my way to the outcome. I won't step on anyone to get there.

When your compass is missing, purpose becomes dangerous. Not because purpose is bad, but because there's nothing holding it accountable to anything bigger than itself and yourself.

Reflect on these questions honestly:

1. Whose purpose am I actually serving? Strip away the mission language, the family expectations, the cultural scripts. If the honest answer is someone else — a boss, a parent, a partner, an institution — you have your answer.

2. What happens when I raise concerns or push back? Real purpose welcomes dissent. Counterfeit purpose punishes it — by questioning your loyalty, your commitment, or your love.

3. Am I becoming someone I recognize? Co-option happens slowly. If you don't like who you're becoming, the purpose you're serving has been borrowed from someone whose interests aren't yours.

Sit with what comes up. Catching co-option isn't failure. It's the beginning of taking your agency back.

Know where you're going. Know what you won't do to get there. Hold both with courage — even when the crowd is moving in a different direction.

That's how you stay free. That's how you lead without becoming what you once stood against. That's how you leave the world a little better than you found it.

Nikola