Entries Tagged 'Purpose' ↓

One of the major reasons why I started this blog was to help develop myself and share the things that I’ve learnt with you.

The intention was to create more real life for both you and I by doing something that I enjoy, and in the process of doing this, build a value generating, life creating, wealth building asset online to create another source of income.

(It’s one of the basic principles to getting rich on the Creative Plane of Life using what is sometimes known as the Law of Attraction, versus fighting with others for wealth in the Competitive Dimension.)

It’s only natural that we get distracted and stray off the course we originally set out on. Come on, let’s be realistic. You and I are constantly bombarded by advertisements, newspaper headlines, demands from work, and every other thing that might be screaming for your attention.

As much as we want to move in a straight line towards our target, there inevitably will be deviations from the course that we initially mapped out. However, that’s what happens to almost everybody, which means if others can succeed, so can you.

The answer to solving this dilemma is to look at how heat-seeking or guided missiles work. No kidding.

How Guided Missiles Work

When a guided missile is launched towards a target, it’s buffeted by elements of nature along its journey like wind, rain, flying birds etc. Not to mention if the target is moving around trying to avoid being hit.

What the on-board computer does is to constantly adjust the flight of the missile along the way, with only one end in mind. To say “Hello!” face to face with the designated target.

It does this by constantly checking the position of the target and adjust itself as necessary, sometimes making big changes, sometimes making small movements to stay on course.

The majority of the time, however, the missile is off course which means it has to constantly readjust itself.

That’s pretty much what happens to us when we try to accomplish a goal as well. We get buffeted and can be constantly taken off course in our journey of life.

So what can you and I do to stay on purpose? Well, the short, simple and most effective answer to staying on purpose is… ( Cue the drum roll please…)

To Write Your Purpose Down and Read It Every Day… (ta dah!!)

Is it really that simple? Well, it’s the simplest and most effective way I know how. You could do a multi-media powerpoint presentation to present to yourself everyday, but I really prefer simplicity.

My Experiences

When I find myself going off course, I usually do one of two things.

1. I write from memory what my purpose is.
2. I review the things that I have written down previously, and mentally go through it again.

What it does is to bring my purpose back to the surface of my consciousness, and I deliberately remind myself that this is what I set out to do. Exactly like this:

The Mission of Darbright.com is:

• To raise the consciousness of others
• To make clear the way to Increasing Life
• To help others have strategies and systems that create Personal Freedom and Abundant Living

And going through the process of reviewing my purpose, I’m brought back on track to evaluate if the activities that I’m doing are in line with what I set out to do.

It’s not very complicated, or very sophisticated, which is great! I love keeping things simple, and the simpler it is, the less likely it’s going to breakdown. And usually the simpler something is, usually it’s easier to do as well.

So if you do have problems staying on track, then the simple act of reviewing your purpose, goals or life mission on a daily basis will keep you on course.

Finding your life purpose is about finding who you really are. Not the person that you are being now, but the person that you are going to be. The person that is the “Highest, Grandest Vision” of who you really are.

Now what does that mean?

Have you ever been helped by someone who’s mediocre, takes pleasure in pulling others down into misery, and generally makes life lousy for other people? I’m taking a shot in the dark, but my best guess is that you probably haven’t. And if you haven’t, you’ll understand why I say that you’re actually fulfilling your purpose when you make the best possible use of your talents, gifts and abilities as you know how right now.

By being the best “you”, you are helping to fulfill what you were placed here on earth to do.

Being mediocre never really helped anybody, especially yourself. Unless you’re the sort of person who takes joy in the misery of others, which is highly unlikely since you’re reading this post about finding your life purpose, and looking at personal development articles. On the other hand, we could be in a state that we’re not even aware of!

In the process of discovering yourself, you’ll realize that each and everyone of us has characteristics that make us unique. You’ll also realize that you do have talents and abilities, and combined with experience, education and your skills, you develop your strengths.

Strengths can be and are developed over time. Even though you may not have a personal strength that you desire to have right now, if you gain the experience, education and have the desire, you can develop your skills and knowledge to a point where it becomes a strength for you.

For example, let’s take someone who has no knowledge of how to use computers and create a blog on the internet. Well, tell me who gets born knowing how to write and create websites on the internet? Obviously, no one, right?

If you have the ability to read, and the ability to comprehend, you already have the necessary ingredients to start something. That doesn’t mean you are able to immediately build a blog or website, but you do have the raw ingredients necessary.

With your ability to read and comprehend, you can start to get the proper “education” on how to build a website. With the education, you also gain the “experience” in trying to put a website together, and in the process learn the ins and outs of the cyberspace world. As you practice your knowledge and use of software, writing articles, etc, you develop your “skill” in building a website.

Over a period of time, trial and error, you build your expertise and skill in building websites on the internet. Knowing how to build a website then becomes one of your strengths. But you see how all this started with your simple ability to read and comprehend?

This process is something that we all go through in all aspects of developing skill and expertise. It can apply to building a business on the internet, it can also apply to building a business in the brick and mortar world. While it’s seemingly obvious that this is what happens, having a conscious understanding of it helps to bring patience to the process of developing expertise in any area.

Of course, the development of a strength is made easier when you are developing a natural gift or ability, like singing or running or having a “green thumb”, for example. Having the latent capacity to be good at something makes developing your strengths easier, but isn’t necessarily a prerequisite to build your strength.

In fact, if you have been alive for some time and not in a state of coma since birth, you would very likely have developed some strengths already.

As you start to uncover your gifts and develop your strengths, you’ll find that there are naturally some areas that you are drawn towards. These are your interests and passions, that when you combine together with your strengths, make it easier for you to express your life purpose.

Your Strengths and Weaknesses

As you start to uncover your strengths and weaknesses, you’ll also start to understand what you can naturally do to express the creation of your purpose. You don’t see an elephant trying to fly, do you? Or an eagle trying to swim? They do what comes to them naturally, because that’s who they are. They are just “being”.

The difference with human beings is that we are endowed with consciousness and intelligence. We tend to foul things up when too much intelligence is involved, because we can question and poke holes into almost everything with our mind, and in the end make our own lives miserable.

Our Mind Is A Tool that Creates our Experience

I’m not saying you should be dumb and stop thinking, but just realize that the mind can be equally destructive as it can be constructive.

So How Do I Define What A Strength Is?

A strength consists of 4 components:
1. Your natural talent & abilities
2. The education you had
3. Your experiences in life, either working or otherwise
4. Your skills

Natural talent and abilities are something that you tend to do so naturally you don’t realize that you’re good at it. It happens to everybody all the time, when they are able to do something so well that when someone else who tries to do the same screws things up, they don’t “understand” why other people just can’t do something so simple!

Your education helps to build your strength, because it gives you additional background and knowledge that others might not have. With proper and deliberate practice, you can build a competency based on your education simply because everyone else doesn’t know what you know!

Your experiences in life contribute in the building and development of your strengths. Experiences give you a real life participation to understand the actual events and requirements to make something happen. It’s easy to say “build an internet business”, but it’s another thing to actually do it. The detailed work and implementation involved comes with experience.

Skills are something that we aren’t born with. Skills are abilities that you hone and polish over time, continually and deliberately refining your ability to execute till you do it unconsciously with a high degree of competency. Like Tiger Woods, who practices almost from morning to night to hone his skills in golf, or Michael Jordan who would spend time building and developing his basic basketball skills to high degrees of competency.

When you are able to combine these 4 components together, that’s where you get your strengths.

Emotional Resonance

When you can combine the understanding of your context, together with your strengths, and feel strongly about it, you’ve found your purpose. It’s something that you choose based on your understanding of your life. It’s not something written in the sky, but something you feel joy and bliss in pursuing and expressing.

Some exercises to help find your Strengths and Purpose:

These are some exercises you can use to find your Strengths and your Purpose.

Exercise No. 1: Finding Your Strengths

For a period of 2 weeks to a month, every day I would write down what I thought my strengths and talents are. I would take note of what I did naturally, and what I enjoyed doing. Things that I felt that I was either already good at, or that I could become good at with some practice and education.

During the process, you’ll experience several “aha!” moments about what your strengths are, and you’ll find that you tend to write certain things over and over again, indicating to you that you already “know” your strengths, just that you weren’t consciously aware of them.

Exercise No. 2: Crafting Your Purpose

I found this exercise that I used to craft my purpose. It isn’t fool-proof, but it’ll help you gain a better understanding of what your mental model of life is by the type of “life purpose” you come up with.

What I did was, based on my understanding of life and nature, I wrote on a piece of paper (you can use your favorite word processor like Word, notepad, etc) and kept writing variations of my purpose.

Start at the top with “My Purpose in Life is…” and then write what comes to your mind below. You can write as many variations, or different purposes as you can think of.

As for me, I wrote until I came up with something that I felt served a higher purpose which included the good of myself and everyone involved. I continued writing until I felt an emotional response within myself to the idea/purpose that I wrote. And once I felt that, I knew that I was near the point of hitting what I felt my life purpose was.

Summary

With the combination of these two, I got a better picture of what my purpose was. To be honest, I still had to continue shaping and refining my purpose over the following weeks as I got to understand myself and the events that occurred around me better.

Eventually, I reached a purpose statement for my life that included everything I desired, gave me meaning and direction, used my strengths, benefited myself as well as others.

If you haven’t already found your purpose, you might want to test out the exercises I mentioned for yourself.

Before you can actually start finding your Purpose in Life, it would help to understand what “Purpose” really is.

Otherwise, you may not even recognize it when you find it!

What does “Purpose” mean, exactly?

To understand and define your life purpose, it helps to understand the context in which you are working in. Using different frames of reference to derive your Life Purpose would result in you coming up with unique results.

What do I mean? First of all, let’s understand what context means.

A context is defined as:

“The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.”

And what does “purpose” mean?

“The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal“

For example, a student’s purpose is defined by his or her context, which is to study and get good grades. A policeman’s purpose is to maintain law and order in society. A fireman’s purpose is to extinguish fires and help out the public. A teacher’s purpose is to educate and “teach” his or her students.

The issue with finding purpose is related to what your current role in life is, and understanding who you are. If you identify yourself with your role as an employee, by default the purpose of the company becomes your purpose. The same thing goes for identifying yourself as a parent, because then your purpose naturally becomes the purpose of a parent, which is to nurture, nourish, educate and best prepare your child for life.

The problem comes when your temporary role as an employee or parent changes, and the purpose that you have identified yourself with no longer exists. You lose your “purpose” in life. (That may be a reason why some mothers feel lost and depressed when their children grow up and move on in life?)

Understanding that many roles in human society are temporary, defining my life purpose became a search for something that would stand the test of time and change. I wanted something that would be constant as I moved throughout the various stages of my life. Perhaps it has something to do with my idea of a life purpose being my purpose for life. (no pun intended )

The Context of Life

One of the clues that helped me to define my life purpose was to look at nature. If I were to have a life purpose, then obviously my purpose had to relate to something bigger than myself. The very idea of a life purpose implies that I was born for a reason, and came to earth to do “something”.

Taking a hint from nature, you can see that life is constantly evolving and growing. Nature doesn’t stop. It just grows and evolves over time to adapt to changing conditions.

However, having the purpose of continual growth and evolution is so general. It’s hard to make it practical in every day life. How does one continue to grow and develop? What does one grow and develop into? The idea of continual growth and development is a good purpose to have, so how does one incorporate something so general into your Life Purpose?

This is where the concept of having two levels of Life Purpose comes in useful:

1. The Higher Life Purpose
2. The Self-Chosen Life Purpose

The Higher Life Purpose

The Higher Life Purpose refers to the higher levels of human purpose. It refers to the part of your Purpose of Life which remains constant and unchanging throughout your lifetime. For me, it included the following:

▪ Growth, Development, Evolution

With the understanding of nature, it only makes sense that personal growth and development would be a core purpose for me. The moment one stays stagnant, it’s already a step backwards. The world is moving and evolving all the time, and continually developing myself to the fullest extent of my potential allows me to continue improving and moving on to higher stages of life.

▪ Mutual Benefit (Benefit for everyone involved)

Understanding that we don’t exist independently of other people, creating value and helping others would be part of my Higher Life Purpose as well. The form of value creation would then be determined by my Self-Chosen Life Purpose.

Whatever value that I create has to benefit both others and myself. It doesn’t make sense for me to create something that benefits me at the expense of others, because it would create a negative feedback that would eventually affect whatever I created for myself. At the same time, it doesn’t make sense for me to create something that benefited others at my expense. I wouldn’t be around very long if this happened! With this understanding, whatever I did would have to be beneficial to BOTH others as well as myself.

(This understanding of my Higher Life Purpose was part of the reason why I started this Blog site “Personal Development With A Purpose”. )

▪ Making the Best Use of My Potential

Each of us is born with unique gifts and talents. Just because one doesn’t know what that unique gift or talent is doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It could just be lying below the surface of your consciousness, and with a little self reflection you might just find out what it is.

I realized that when I did something, and did it well, I usually found satisfaction and pleasure. If part of having a Life Purpose was to have meaning and joy in life, then making the best use of my talents, abilities and potential would also have to form part of my Life Purpose.

Natural talents and abilities can be used across more than one vocation. Using natural athleticism for example, a person could be involved in tennis, or basketball, or soccer, etc. Such gifts can be expressed through different forms, although the essence remains the same. The actual expression of your individual gifts and talents are determined by your Self-Chosen Life Purpose.

The Self-Chosen Life Purpose

The various aspects of Higher Life Purpose are generally quite vague, and quite impractical to implement. Not that they are useless, but they have to be relevant to existing in our society and world today.

As far as I know, there isn’t a God given, ordained life purpose for me. If there is, I’ve yet to hear directly from a booming voice in heaven saying,

“Darbright, Your Life Purpose Is… (To be filled in with my divinely ordained life purpose).”

If I do hear a booming voice however, I might just fall off my chair…! However, if you believe in the existence of Free Will, being able to choose your Life Purpose does make sense.

Choosing my life direction and purpose then came to a synergy between my personal characteristics (strengths, talents, abilities, passions, interests, etc) and creating something of value that could benefit both myself and everybody else involved.

This is where knowing your Self comes in useful. It’s about finding a fit between your talents and providing something of value in this world.

If your talent is musical, you may find joy expressing yourself through singing, composing, playing an instrument or something that utilizes your talent. If your talent is in teaching and education, then perhaps you may choose a life purpose in teaching. If your talent is in maintaining order and discipline, then perhaps you may choose expressing yourself as a Law Enforcement Officer?

There really is no “right” or “wrong” answer here. Ultimately, when there is a fit between you and your chosen purpose, you’d find a sense of fulfillment and joy.

Summary

By separating my Life Purpose into two categories, I have a Higher Life Purpose that stays constant throughout my life, and a Self-Chosen Life Purpose that is adaptable to changes in human society and conditions.

My Higher Life Purpose would then be the driver behind my decisions for my Self-Chosen Life Purpose, because it would be my purpose for my lifetime.

When you choose your Life Purpose, it might help to understand what aspects are going to stay with you throughout your life, and what aspects would change as you go through the different life stages.

One thing for sure, modern day society is constantly changing and the Self-Chosen Purpose you have may become obsolete. But when you have your Higher Life Purpose, and a good knowledge of yourself, creating another Self-Chosen Purpose then becomes a matter of what you choose to do, and how you choose to express yourself in this world.

Usually the search for purpose and meaning in life comes at a point in time when you realize that what you’re doing seems pointless with no end in sight.

Life has become empty, lost its color, and almost everything that you partake in seems superficial. You could also be running a race for riches, fame and glory but with no end in sight. It feels like you’re the rat in the proverbial rat race.

Searching for your Life Purpose is a Good Thing

When you start your search for your life purpose, it’s a good thing. It means that your consciousness is waking up, and you’re moving to a higher level of thought and awareness.

While it’s true that you might feel terrible at the beginning, realize that you’re not the only one who started out this way. Practically everyone who started their search for purpose in life started out the same way you did. And if others have made it, so will you if you persevere and push on.

The Inward Search to Discover Your Self

The search for purpose is a journey of two worlds. It encompasses your journey inwards to understand and know yourself, and it also includes the journey outwards to learn more about the world you live in.

The core part in the search for purpose in life comes from inside you, not the outside. If you were to look to the world for purpose, it’s very likely that you’ll end up even more confused and disturbed by what you find.

In the journey of self discovery, you go within to find out what your likes and dislikes are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, how you relate to people, what causes emotional resonance and dissonance within you.

What you’re really doing is to uncover what talents and abilities that exist within you. At the same time, you start to find out what you really like and what your passions are. As you discover more about yourself, you start to realize how everything in your life so far has led you up to this point.

Everything in your life starts to make sense

Things that didn’t make sense before start to make sense to you now. All the little bits and pieces of your life start to click into one big picture in your mind, and the tapestry of your life starts to unfold before you.

The Outward Search for Purpose

As you begin to understand and discover more about yourself, the outward journey of life starts to accelerate. With the inner sense of knowing who you are and what you’re capable of, you gain confidence, calm and poise to interact with the external world.

Acting and moving from your center (your inner self), making changes and handling the issues of life become easier. This is where the often quoted phrase about

“having the courage to change the things you can, accepting the things you can’t, and having the wisdom to know the difference”

comes in. This wisdom is only truly possible when you know what you can and cannot do.

Summary

The search for your purpose of life may be short and simple, or it may be longer and not so easy. It ultimately depends on where you currently are in life. If you know yourself pretty well, then you would already have traveled the inner journey for some distance already. If you’re just starting on the path of self discovery, then it might take a little longer.

When you finally truly know yourself, that’s when you will be able to establish a life purpose that is meaningful to you.

Do you feel that your life is directionless, without purpose and meaning?

Do you wish you were doing something that brought you satisfaction and gives you a reason for being alive?

If you do, perhaps crafting your personal mission statement for life might just be what the doctor ordered.

One of the greatest fears that people have is living a meaningless life.

In the society we live in today, it’s easy to get lost in the masses, becoming just one of the other faces in the crowd. Many people get caught up with the day to day “things to do” of eking out a living, working for their next promotion, saving enough money to buy a house, take the family out for a vacation, or any one of these things. And before you know it, 20 or 30 years have gone by and you’re suddenly 65!

You look back on your life, and wonder where has time gone? What has happened to all the dreams, hopes and big goals you had when you graduated?

It doesn’t really matter what you’ve done in the past. The past is the past, and it will remain the past.

The only thing that all of us can do is to start living life in this very moment, making each day we live an effective, fruitful and purposeful one. And that starts by having a direction and purpose for your life.

What is a Life Mission Statement?

A Life Mission Statement is a written down statement of purpose. It is a statement for your “Being” on this planet we call earth. It’s what you have decided to do with your life that creates value and meaning for you.

It will be something that guides your daily actions, your decisions and your direction in life. With your personal mission statement, you will cut through the irrelevant “fats” of life that are slowing you down and clogging your life arteries. Your personal Mission Statement will help you focus your energy like a laser beam and accelerate your progress in life.

Having a Life Mission Statement can be frightening, and yet extremely exciting. Your Life Mission Statement becomes what your life is about, your purpose and intent for your existence.

It’s scary, yes, because with a Life Mission Statement, you are required to make decisions about what you’re going to accept in your life. That means cutting off the irrelevant and taking on new things that are relevant in accomplishing your Life Mission.

It means moving out of your comfort zone.

Benefits of having a Life Mission Statement

There are many benefits in having a Life Mission Statement:

1. It creates a focus for your Time, Energy and Money

We have only so much Time, Energy and Money at one given moment. Without focus, our resources of time, energy and money become diffused and ineffective. Without focus, You become ineffective, unable to build or create anything of appreciable value.

Work gets done halfway when other tasks come along to distract you. Taking on multiple tasks and roles causes you to create low quality work because you’re rushed for time. Your money is spent aimlessly, chasing one thing after another with no discernable focus or result.

With a personal mission statement, you have to focus and make better use of your time, energy and money.

2. It defines a direction for your life, moving you in a definite, consistent direction over a period of time.

We are moving all the time. It’s just that the majority of people are moving aimlessly, or walking in circles and finding themselves right where they began. With a personal mission statement, you have a consistent direction in life. You’ll start walking in a straight line, out of the circle that you might have been walking in your life so far.

Without stating the obvious, moving in a straight line will eventually bring you to someplace new in your life.

3. With a Life Mission Statement, decision making is simplified

You and I are bombarded by situations that require us to make decisions. Everybody wants something from you, be it your time, your energy, talent or money. With a Life Mission Statement, you have a basis on which you can make your decision. Anything that fits with your life mission statement, you give your time and attention. Anything that takes you away from your life mission, you either drop it or file it away for future consideration.

Decision making becomes simpler and easier for you when you have a life mission statement.

4. It creates Energy

When you have a mission statement that you resonate with, it gives you the energy and motivation to get out of bed every day. There is something to look forward to, and there is a reason for your existence. You are no longer an aimless blob of unfulfilled potential wandering the streets and byways of the world. You have somewhere to go, your life has meaning, and you are more valuable because only YOU can fulfill your life’s mission.

5. It creates Authenticity, Originality, Identity

A life mission statement spells out who you are. It tells others who you have chosen to be in life. It makes you unique, and creates a personal identity for you. If you have noticed, all the successful, well known people in the world are unique. They are original. There is no one else like them, who thinks like them, who talks like them, who has personally done exactly the same things they have done. With a mission statement, you can stand out from the crowd and make a unique contribution.

A mission statement can and is one of the most important positioning tools that a company or individual can have. If successful companies use it, so can you. A properly crafted mission statement positions you as a unique individual who has something valuable to contribute to the world.

Summary

If you want more out of life, perhaps having a personal mission statement can help in turning your life around. Your personal life mission statement will:

1. Create a focus for your Time, Energy and Money
2. Define a definite, consistent direction for your life
3. Simplify your decision making process
4. Create Life Energy
5. Create an Authentic, Original Identity that is uniquely you

By having a personal mission statement for your life, you might be surprised at what you can truly accomplish over a period of time. And you might be surprised at what your life can become.