HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose

CHAPTER 6

Embracing Shifts in Purpose

Jeff Heck is the cool guy many of us want to be. Jeff is a former rock musician who often wears his wispy blond hair pulled back in a bun and runs one of the trendiest craft breweries in Atlanta. I’d guess Jeff has always been cool, but his life and purpose have emerged in stages.

As a kid he was a sponge, and his purposes were learning, exploration, fun, and adventure. His dad was a doctor in Hicksville, Ohio, who took the family on a one-year medical mission to Kenya before returning to another small town in the Cincinnati suburbs. In his childhood Jeff learned the lessons that would become the scaffolding of his own unfolding life: family, faith, hospitality, curiosity, and commitment.

In college, things ...