Do You Know Your Purpose?
In the not-so-distant past, I woke up every single morning, dreading getting out of bed. I would stare into the blackness of my bedroom and ask, “What am I doing with my life?” Every single day was just like the day before and I wondered—can things be different? And, then someone asked me “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
Everyone on earth was born to be someone great. The definition of great is different for everyone. “Great” can mean being an influential high school teacher. “Great” can mean being a trillionaire CEO of a company that creates products that change the world. “Great” can mean being a mom that raises amazing children that raise and support amazing grandchildren and great grandchildren.
“Great” can mean helping patients find true health. “Great” can mean changing healthcare. “Great” can mean making great coffee and wishing anyone you encounter a fantastic day.
Greatness and success are completely subjective.
That is why so many people fail to achieve their greatness or their success—they are letting the world tell them how success is defined instead of defining it for themselves.
How do You Discover Your Definition of Greatness?
Be yourself. Your real self.
Sounds easy, right? However, are you your real self today?
For the longest time, I thought I was so self-aware. I thought this is probably as good as it will get, so I just need to think positively. I thought I had achieved success, yet I feared that I would never be great, and I kept waking up and asking, “Is this all there is?”
I was plagued by horrible anxiety.
Most of my relationships were tense.
I was tired all the time.
During a group leadership consultation, renowned speaker and life coach, Bob Hamp, asked the room, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” He shared a parable that basically suggests every individual should assess their lives and ask themselves if they know who they really are and their purpose in life—every day.
In the parable, the lead character actually asks that question every day. When you wake up in the morning—do you ask yourself, “How am I going to live my purpose today?”
There is some pre-work that has to be done before you really know the answer to this question every day and it might even evolve as you uncover who you were intended to be and do on this earth.
The first step is to look around at your life.
If you identify more with the questions on the right, the next step is to create change, and that change starts in your mind. And that means that you don’t need to spend any money or find more time in your day. You just need to think differently.
Thinking Differently
Thinking differently is really about how you approach your life and the people and circumstances in it.
The best advice I got when I really began to shift my mindset was to approach people from a place of compassion. Everyone is struggling with something no matter how confident or rosy things may seem from the outside.
Even if you are on this journey to find yourself and your purpose or you are facing a financial crisis, chronic disease, or mental distress—all the people around you are enduring some hardship too—big or small. It is important when you consider your day and the people you will encounter that you plan or “mentally rehearse” your encounters from a place of compassion.
That co-worker you despise colliding with in the breakroom or going toe to toe with during meetings? What if you just gave a compassionate smile or answered his questions in a meeting without frustration, recognizing that he has something going on within him that is prohibiting him from changing his behavior?
It is hard.
Trust me, even as I type these sentences, I am having to control my mind and think differently because there are people and situations in my life that require me to channel my compassion and make that my focus.
Do you hate your job? Angry at your spouse? Flip the script.
At your job, what would happen if you changed your perspective of why you are there? Sure, you are there to make money and maybe it is just a temporary stop toward the bigger purpose, but if you examine your purpose—how does the job fit right now? Is there someone that needs to know you and learn from your gifts? Is there a mission that you need to fulfill that will leave a lasting legacy when you move on to the next step in your purpose?
With your spouse, is he/she enduring hardships at work, with his/her parents or siblings? Are there challenges with your children or sleepless nights? Is he/she sick or scared of something? Approach your spouse with compassion—if there are things that are unspoken (which can happen often in a marriage), drop your perspective and just meet them where they are—don’t force a conversation. Sit in compassion with them.
Transforming the Mind-Body Connection
When I described any of the above situations, did you have a visceral reaction?
Did particular people or situations come to mind?
Did your heart start racing?
Did you begin to feel hot or tense?
Those reactions are the body trying to take control of the situation. It is your automatic or programmed responses to make things “easy” on you. The body was designed to manage many, many processes without ever putting any thought into it.
Society has evolved into a 24/7 cycle of stimulation where your nervous system never gets a break. Therefore, it automates a stress or emergency response—you know that “fight or flight system” that is designed to protect humans from bears and cougars in the days of the caveman. Now that the threats to most of humanity are tense board meetings, road rage, and parent-teacher conferences, these bodily automations are triggered often and to the detriment of physical and mental health.
When that happens, you must force your mind to take back control. Remember compassion. Remember why you are here. Remember calm.
It takes practice.
Personally, I am still working through this and, believe me, I have serious anxiety (what’s funny/no funny is that I had no idea I had anxiety until about three years ago). Once the definition of anxiety was clearly spelled out for me, I realized I had been responding that way and carrying that with me most of my life.
Making my mind greater than my body has transformed many things for me already. I am looking forward to many more great things.
What to Do Right Now
My mission is to ask you to join me on this journey.
I want to wake up happy every day. I want to live my purpose.
I want you to wake up happy every day too. I want you to live your purpose.
Ask yourself that question, “Who am I and what am I doing here?”
It might take days, weeks, or months for this to become clearly defined, but you can’t figure it out unless you start asking the question.
As you work through that, consciously rehearse compassion and calm in the situations that put your body in “emergency mode.” If you know you will be encountering those people or situations in a given day, rehearse what it would be like to approach with compassion and calm.
It is typical for humans to project what they know about a past situation onto a new encounter. This means that you are doomed to repeat the same patterns over and over instead of unfolding possibilities in the same environment with the same people.
You may be surprised by what begins to happen.
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