Inside-out! Living with a Purpose

Have you ever asked yourself the question of “Why” you do things? Why did you go to school? Why did you study your specific major at the university? Why do you work? Why did you marry someone? Why did you abandon a friend? ..etc, and so many “Why’s” in our lives that we forget, or ignore to ask .. isn’t this true?

Simon Sinek, in his famous talk, described the golden circle of making an impact to the world, with the “Why” in its center, focusing on the motivation that people will believe your purpose and what you do in life should be a product of that inner motivation of “Why” you do it..

The problem with most of the people is that during coaching sessions, they pause, think of the “Why”, decide on their mission, and then during movement they forget .. they get taken away by actions and then they lose their way once again in life .. the “Why” becomes so distant to them and with the speed of life, they decide to continue moving forward, disregarding what forward means in terms of direction..

The fact that we all ignore many times is that “Movement does not always mean progress”, you can be moving in the wrong direction and this will actually lengthen your journey and make it difficult for you to correct course and come back to the right track.. We get taken away by the waves so that our destination seems very very far ..

How to adjust that?

Flip the circle inside out!

What we really need is once we set direction, we need to keep visiting the purpose and benchmark our journey success factors to the purpose. This is the only way we can prevent ourselves from being dragged by activities in life .. It’s like when we set the car GPS to take us somewhere, then we never look at the GPS, and we get dragged by phone calls / music / traffic and then we forget where we were actually going, and why were we going there ..

For that … here’s your new GPS:

In an earlier blog post “Understanding the Essence of Life”, it was highlighted that life is all about “Time Trading”,  and for us to live life with a purpose, we need to take the “Why” circle outside, and keep it as the ultimate GPS destination..

The best efficiency metrics to use and measure are times spent in Covey’s four areas of his seventh habit “Sharpening the Saw”; and those were: Brain, Soul, Heart and body.

In order to live with a clear purpose, people need to audit time and ask themselves why they are spending time in those activities and also how much time they are spending in each activity. If your purpose in life is to grow good kids, then you need to measure how much time you actually spend building relationships (heart), mentoring kids (brain), establishing the purpose seed in them (soul) and help them being fit (body).. it’s not always about work and securing financial support to them … similarly, if your purpose in life is to grow professionally then it makes sense to ask yourself how much time you are spending in growing your competencies (brain), building relationships (heart), keeping your emotional balance (soul) and staying in shape during stressful times (body).

Living with a purpose is not rocket science, but it needs a lot of resilience and a very sharp, focused brain. Stick up your purpose map somewhere where you can see it .. in your car, at home, on your desk ..etc  visit that frequently and ensure you are following a clear path in life ..

Adjust your GPS now!

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher