I am addicted to learning, and revisiting previous learning – both in formal settings and on my own. Remember, I’m both an autodidact and not. Recently I have been revisiting Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. (I also have begun a free workshop series in Walla Walla at In Town Ventures discussing several of his principles.) As I have been preparing to present the first workshop, I listened again to the first several chapters. Chapter two talks about finding your life’s purpose.
In 2006 I created a personal mission statement: Working with God to help others reach their full potential while following Him to mine. This statement feeds, but does not define, my life’s purpose. According to Jack Canfield, a life’s purpose makes it possible to direct all one’s choices to whether or not it meets your life purpose. A mission statement and a life’s purpose are related, but not identical.
As I considered my mission statement and speculated on my
life’s purpose, I realized:
I enthusiastically encourage, enable, and empower others to become their best selves at work and in life.
This realization is my life’s purpose.
I can fill this life’s purpose AND meet my personal mission in multiple ways. I found my life’s purpose to be empowering – which is funny based on the fact that empowering others is part of my life’s purpose. It means I must empower myself as well as others. I have learned that if I am to empower and encourage others, I must do the same for myself. It gives me courage in the face of fear, doubt, and “imposter syndrome” when I wonder if the person I have worked to become in the last 30 years truly has the ability to help the people and organizations I most enjoy serving. The answer is, Yes, I have the ability, knowledge, experience, understanding, and ability to continue learning to be helpful to the people and organizations I most wish to serve. I have worked on my own strengths –recognizing them, improving them, and building on them. Doing this for myself, my businesses, and other individuals and businesses allows me to find multiple ways to fulfill my life’s purpose. It’s exciting.
Mark Twain said,
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
I discovered I can enthusiastically encourage, enable, and empower others to become their best selves at work and in life through workshops, public speaking engagements, individual coaching, organizational/business coaching—leadership, teams, entire organizations, associations.
I also can enable and empower others to become their best selves at work and in life by pointing out the positive in my children, my spouse, my friends, people I meet at random, and so forth. If I ever chose to work as an employee instead of an entrepreneur, I can enable and empower others to become their best selves at work and in life through working at a nonprofit organization helping clients see their best selves, working at a school helping students realize how to reach their dreams, working at a for-profit organization in a leadership role that allows me to coach employees or management to reach their potential – or at least their next levels of excellence. I am sharing these ideas so that you can see how your life’s purpose can be fueled by your strengths and vice versa. Also, your life’s purpose DOES NOT pigeon-hole you to a single avenue of employment, entrepreneurship, or education. Use your passions, your strengths, and your goals to realize, recognize, and rejuvenate your life’s purpose.
Consider YOUR life’s purpose in the way that you most discover things about yourself—think on it, pray on it, meditate on it, discuss it with someone you trust and who can see you for YOU as you are and as you can be. Please share with me in the comments: what is your life’s purpose?
Consider then your strengths. How can your
currently-recognized strengths help you to fulfill your life’s purpose? Share
with me in the comments.
If you’re struggling to figure out your overarching purpose, reach out to me; we can have a free 30-minute get-to-know-you coaching session to help you recognize your strengths, passions, and guide you closer to your life’s purpose and true fulfillment.