Defining Your Purpose

The Law Of Authenticity

The fourth Law of Stratospheric Success for the book The Go-Giver is The Law of Authenticity.

“The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”
The Go-Giver

Often in the world we see other people that we would like to be, people we envy or look up to. Often people use social media to present a better version of themselves, a more collated life. This has a lot to do with self esteem and comparing our lives with the lives that others present on social media that seem so much better than our lives because people only share the best bits.

The irony is that when we are more authentically ourselves we are the more likely to be successful. This is because when we live and act authentically we focus on what brings us joy and what we are naturally good at. When we are joyful and doing what we are naturally good at we thrive and achieve great things. People will also trust us more because we are being ourselves all the time. Trust is a big element of success, because we cannot be successful alone. And your authentic You is a gift to the world that you should not hide your awesomeness.

Overcome Your Limits

Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I have had a tough time recently with my Fibromyalgia kicking my ass and developing Visual Vertigo, which mean I am off balance some of the time. I was on a low ebb yesterday and then I realised that I had limited thinking. All I could see was the continuation of my suffering and, without realising it, I was seeing my current condition as permanent, which made me feel helpless.

I then remembered three things. Firstly, the human body has the amazing ability to heal itself, it is works towards optimum health. This is not to discount serious illnesses, but generally speaking the body heals itself.

Secondly, I was using a pessimistic explanatory style, as described in the book Learned Optimism by Martin E.P. Seligman, which adds to the feeling of helplessness. Thinking of my situation as temporary changes everything.

Thirdly, I remembered that my purpose is to help others to thrive and in order to do this I need to figure out how I can thrive. I am the test subject for all my future successes helping others to overcome their challenges. I will not let them down.

So, I began to see my current challenges as opportunities to build resilience and to learn how to help others overcome and thrive. I woke up with a positive mindset this morning and ready to try again.

Finding Your Purpose

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I recently watched an interview with Jay Shetty where he talked about his formula for finding your Purpose.

Your Passion
+
Your Strengths
+
Compassion
=
Your Purpose

This seems like a good balance of ideas in order to find Purpose. Your Purpose does have to include what you are passionate about, but if you focus on things that are not your strengths, then you won’t get very far. The inclusion of compassion ensures the Purpose you have is not a selfish one. We thrive more if we are focused on helping others, it is how we are wired.

Meaning In Life

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

We are all here connected to the interconnected web of all existence. We are connected to the tree that have become the wooden chair on which you sit, if you are, and the life that this tree fed and sheltered. We are connected to all that has come before us and all that will come after us, when we are again returned to the universal elements from which we are now composed.

These elements will be as useful in the grand fabric of the universe as they are now, in this very moment. All of this underpins whatever our beliefs may be. If we believe in God or we don’t, if we believe in an existence after we die, either in heaven or through reincarnation, or we don’t, we are all still part of the same ocean of existence.

According to the website ‘www.actionforhappiness.org “Meaning in life can feel like a mysterious or esoteric topic, one that philosophers through the ages, and later psychologists, have tried hard to pin down. At its core, it’s a sense of being connected to, part of, and/or contributing to something bigger, beyond ourselves. This might sound huge but it isn’t, we are all connected to the world around us in a myriad of ways which means there are many ways we can make a difference.”

2022 Goals: Living Your Purpose

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

It is one thing to figure out what your Purpose is, but it is another to act on it. To live by your Purpose takes courage and determination, because it can put you at odds with people in your life and can require you to make some difficult choices.

Step 6 in the Pathway To Fulfilment is Living Your Purpose. Once you have gone through Acquiring Wisdom, Self Mastery and Defining Your Purpose, if you do not live your Purpose it will have all been just a theoretical exercise. In order to live well and have a fulfilling life, you have to live by your Purpose, once you have defined it.

So, what will you do this year to live by your Purpose?

I appreciate that you may not yet have defined your Purpose, but you can work on it this year. While this important work is being undertaken you could figure out your principles, beliefs, values and ethics and live by them. These will be guides to how you live your day to day life.

Once you have defined your Purpose, however, you will be ready to set your sights on your north star and make big decisions on how you want to live your life over the next months and years.

2022 Goals: Defining Your Purpose

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

There is a lot of talk about finding your Purpose and then everything being good in your life. It is not as simple as that, but it is important to figure it out.

Step 5 in the Pathway To Fulfilment is Defining Your Purpose. This step comes after Step 1 and 2, where you firstly Acquire Wisdom and then develop Self Knowledge and then Self Mastery.

This process involves figuring out what your beliefs, values and ethics are. Then looking at the reason you do everything you do in life. Behind each reason is your Purpose. My Purpose is to help others live well.

So, what will you do this year to work on defining your Purpose?

You could look at what principle you already live by, you could define your beliefs about the important things in life, you could figure what you value or what your ethics are.

Finding Your Purpose

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Purpose is a word loaded with expectations. There is a lot of pressure on those wanting to develop themselves, to find their unique purpose for being born.

My view on finding your purpose is that by the time you are in your 20s you will have a reason behind everything that you do. For some it is to leave things better than they found them. For others it is to generate joy in others. Everyone has a think that makes them tick. This is your purpose.

For me it is helping others to live well, to ultimately have a fulfilling life. It is not one thing that you do, it is the reason behind everything that you do.

The Dangers of Seeking Reassurance

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

I have been think lately about why we seek reassurance before we step into doing new things or things that have creative risk and something happened to me this week which illustrates my thoughts on this. I work in a contact centre in a business park and walk for 15 minutes to catch the bus home. Now there are two buses with the same number which stop at my bus stop, one of the buses ends part way along the route and the other goes to where I live.

One bus came by so I waved it down to check if it was my bus, but it was the other bus that I needed, which promptly arrived and overtook the bus I had waved down and drove on by. While sitting at the bus stop waiting 40 minutes for the right bus to come by again I was thinking about why we seek reassurance and I realised that what I had done is outsource responsibility for knowing which was the right bus to the bus driver of the wrong bus.

If I’d have taken ownership of finding out which was the right bus, I could have checked the details on the bus stop timetable and compared them to the details on the front of the bus and could have been at home eating my dinner at the time the next correct bus arrived at the bus stop.

This to me illustrates the consequences we pay for seeking unnecessary reassurance that the thing we want to do is the right thing to do. Not taking responsibility for things in our lives, because we are worried about failing or choosing the wrong path is always the wrong path. We miss opportunities and we are left waiting for others to help us, or save us in some cases. No one is coming to save you, you have to save yourself and those around you will support you on this journey.

No one will give you the perfect answer as to what you should do either, because they are judging it based on what they would do, and they are not you. We need to make a choice and go try it, whatever it is. If it doesn’t work and we fall on our faces, we have learned something. The trick is to know that you will always pick yourself up and try again. A bird does not avoid landing on a tree branch because it is worried that the branch may break, if they did they would never land on a tree branch. A bird’s faith is not in the branch not breaking, it’s faith is in the ability of it’s own wings.

How To Live Your Purpose

The Fullfilment Framework

“If you have a strong purpose in life, you don’t have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.”
Roy T. Bennett

Starting With Your Why

The work of Simon Sinek has popularised the idea of having a Why with his book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action and his TED Talk How Great Leader Inspire Action. However, how can you use your Why to figure out what you should be doing in your life, your purpose?

As Simon Sinek rightly tells us, your Why is your origin story, it is the reason behind why you do the things you do. It is how you were raised, the early experiences you had and the decisions you made leading up to adulthood. In essence it is who we are. It is not always clear how to define your Why, but with self-reflection and self-observation you can find it.

Take me for example, I have a desire to figure out how to live life well and to share this with others. I have led worship in Unitarian churches for several years and worked in customer service and special needs education and started this blog without knowing my Why. It took the discovery of Simon Sinek’s book and some focused self-reflection to realise that my Why is to help others to live well, to find fulfilment. In all the areas of my life that I have mentioned I felt at home when helping others.

You might feel comfortable being a leader, being creative, working in a team or working alone. Whatever you do that makes you feel happy or content, these are clues as to your Why, because you feel good doing these things. Your Why is what defines you as a person. If you need guidance on finding your Why I recommend you read Simon Sinek’s book Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your

Turning Your Why Into Your Purpose

Once you have defined your Why, you will be able to use it as a compass to direct you towards the things you should be doing. Ideally, your job should be aligned with your Why. In other words your work should make you feel happy, successful and fulfilled.

This is largely effected by the environment you work in, the leader(s) you have and the people you work with. But, if you know your Why then you can choose work that is aligned with it. Work that you can really get your teeth into and make a difference in the world.

At the moment, with the difficulties caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, we have to do the work that is available. As needs must we must go. However, if you are interviewing for a job it is a good opportunity to interview them at the same time.

Choosing The Right Work

A good question to ask interviewers is how they reward performance. If they reward good performance with bonuses, money incentives, for hitting the numbers they set, then the company values your output over you. If they reward good performance in a way that values you as an employee then the environment you would work in will be more fulfilling and you will feel looked after.

You should also look to work in roles that fit your Why, that align with who you are. The work we do in the world matters. If we are not doing what we are meant to be doing, then resentment and unfulfilment sets in. I recommend using the Ikigai method, where you look at What You Love, What You Are Good At, What You Can Get Paid For and What The World Needs. This will then reveal your Passion, Profession, Vocation and Mission. Knowing your Why will help you fill in these categories and find your Ikigai, your Purpose in life.

Conclusion

When we start with defining our Why we can start to figure out why we do what we do and then what we want to be doing in our life. Once we know our Why we can narrow down what we are meant to be doing, what our Purpose is. And when we live out our purpose, our work feels like a privilege.

The Fullfilment Framework

Starting With Yourself

The Pathway To Fulfilment has the steps that it does because the end result are thoughts, speech and actions that are aligned with your purpose that you will define. They come from your Purpose Prism, which includes your beliefs, your ethics and your purpose.

You will have gained deep Self-Knowledge (Step 1), which is when you will define your beliefs and ethics, and you will have Acquired Wisdom (Step 2). A purpose can then be defined aligned with these elements from Step 1 and Step 2 that together will make your thoughts, speech and actions full of altruism and wisdom.

In regards to altruism and wisdom, there is a Buddhist mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, which explains how, in Buddhist understanding, one reaches enlightenment. Om is made up of through sounds A – U – M. These represent thoughts, speech and actions, and once we are enlightened these are pure. Mani means Jewel, which represents altruism. Padme means Lotus, which represents wisdom. Hum is unity of both infinite altruism and infinite wisdom, both of which are needed to become enlightened, in Buddhist understanding.

The reason I am asking you to begin with self-knowledge, then to acquire wisdom, and to figure out your beliefs and your ethics, is so that your purpose will be imbued with both altruism and wisdom, and that your purpose becomes your unity, your Hum. Your thoughts, speech and actions dictate how your life will be, because whether your life is good or bad, enjoyable or not is firstly based on your thoughts, of how you see the world, and secondly the impact that your speech and actions have on those around you.

How We Walk Through The World

If we walk lightly through the world, trying to live in balance and to help others, then we will live a more fulfilling life. Also, in order for us to find a purpose in life, we need to know ourselves really well, to have gone deep into the parts of our minds that we often shy away from, but also to develop a wise understanding of how the world works and how we can have a positive impact on it.

This is why Defining Your Purpose and Living Your Purpose are Steps 5 and 6. There is work you must do with yourself before a purpose can become clear. This work will not always be easy, but it is necessary, and I will be putting together a guide to help you along this Pathway to Fulfilment. It will take time to put together, as I want the pathway to be simple and the steps to be clearly defined, which means there is a lot to distill down into a clear and effective pathway. The outline of the pathway is set out below.

Something To Think About…

Think about how you currently live your life, how you treat others and how you earn a living. Are these ways that make you feel good? If not, what changes could you make?