Sandbox: Fulfilling your Life Purpose (Start-Up K-Drama Analysis)

How the popular K-Drama ‘Start-Up’ shows the pursuit of life purpose within SandBox: “Korea’s Silicon Valley”.

Following your life purpose is what gives life meaning. It energizes you to face life’s challenges, to solve the world’s problems, to grow and evolve you into someone better, and gives you ultimate clarity into who you are.

The characters within Sandbox, an interrelated community of investors and start-up companies, within the K-Drama ‘Start-Up’, are a clear manifestation of driven individuals pursuing their life purpose.

What is it about the atmosphere of Sandbox and the other supporting and surrounding characters within the ‘Start-Up’ series that pushes the main characters to reach their ultimate potentials and relentlessly pursue their life purpose? What does one need in order to pursue their purpose, and make the odds of them more likely to fulfil it in the most effective way?

Clarity and Vision

Each young visionary within the world of SandBox has a clear goal and vision of what they want to become. Seo Dal-Mi has a clear vision of running a business and becoming ‘the next Steve Jobs’. Nam Do-San is clear on wanting to revolutionize the technology industry. Han Ji-Pyeong wants to be the best angel investor in the business. Won In-Jae wants to start a business to fulfil an unresolved emotional need: the need to feel recognized without her family’s wealth.

Sandbox helps each individual clarify further their vision of what their future and ideal self could look like, and the pursuit of this is what gives our lives purpose. Having a clear vision of the future gives potency to your pursuit of your goals, and makes even more clear what one’s life purpose is.

A Challenging Environment

Sandbox hosts the best of the best young entrepreneurs and growing talent in Korea, each filled with purposeful energy. Within this environment, the characters are pushed to be their best selves in order for their start-up to grow.

The challenges presented in Sandbox is hard enough to present a stimulating challenge, but not too hard so as to demoralize those who fail. Each character sets out challenges for themselves, and does the work necessary to overcome them.

Part of fulfilling your purpose is overcoming challenges and growing from your experience. Overcoming challenges brings you closer to your ideal self, which should be the purpose of all things you do.

Energy and Grit

Passion, perseverance, vigour, energy. We all need these to last the long stretches of time between the present and the ideal future self we are striving for. The future self that has achieved what we have set out to achieve now.

Energy and endurance are hallmark qualities of one determined to fulfill their purpose in life. Seo Dal-Mi’s team is a great example of energy and grit. How many times have they stayed back late in trying to solve a problem or in trying to reach a deadline?

Without energy or grit, without being passionate about what we do, without the ability to persevere, reaching your long term ambitious become almost impossible. Find ways to increase your reserves of energy throughout the day, and increase your levels of grit, and you will find that finishing tasks and goals will be much easier.

Constructive Mentorship

Han Ji-Pyeong is to Seo Dal-Mi and Nam Do-San, what Yoda is to Luke Skywalker, or what Gandalf is to Frodo. The role of mentors streamlines the process of the pursuit of your goals, and mentors aid in helping young, motivated, passionate individuals in achieving their ambitions.

The act of going into your field and finding mentors, or even mentor figures, demonstrates clearly your willingness to humble your ego and accept that you need the help of one more accomplished than you. If you are serious about fulfilling your purpose, one will do this.

Find good, honest, encouraging mentors that will never cease to help you reach you aims, and push you to be the best you can be.

Strategic Thinking

Strategy is the essence of any effective endeavour, even more so in the pursuit of your life purpose. An effective plan of attack is high proof that the individual is in high pursuit of his purpose, his dreams, his highest goals. Having a strategy shows that the strategist cares so deeply about his sense of purpose that a plan has been laid out in its pursuit.

In Sandbox, countless strategy meetings are held within each office, with all start-ups calculating and thinking through ways in how their end product will eventually dominate their niche.

Just like the young upstarts in SandBox, you too must have an overall plan in the pursuit of your purpose, your mission. Without it, we would be wandering aimlessly, and reaching our goals would take longer than necessary.

Self-Actualization

We see all characters of SandBox comfortable and in their own element. They have found what they were meant to do for the rest of their lives. What they do gives them joy, contentment, and fulfilment. Advancing with a sense of purpose will give us that sense of meaning, and we will find our truest selves.

When you fulfil and pursue your life purpose unwavering and unshakeable, we discover more of what we can do, and how much more we can push ourselves. When fulfilling our purpose, we become more confident and fervent in our calling, and we continue to always want more, to be filled with even more purpose. It is easy to tell those who are self-actualized, striving and chasing their dream, and becoming their ideal selves.

Once you commit yourself to developing or strengthening your sense of purpose, then the hard work begins.

-Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)

Life gains meaning when we strive to fulfil our life purpose and commit to growth, development, and improvement in order to reach our fullest potential. The purpose of our life is to strive for our ideal self, even if we will never reach it. How we do that is up to us.

Find your purpose and reach for it, strive for it, fulfil it the best way you can, much like the characters in ‘Start-Up’ that populate SandBox. Become better, set and achieve lofty goals, and fulfil your purpose. It is your life. Your destiny.