What's up, everybody? Hope you're having a great start to your week. My name is George Wright III. I am your host here with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Let me get you started with the quote of the day. The quote of the day is from David Justice, and the quote is, you get what you focus on. You get what you focus on. So let me talk to you today about something. Look, it's Monday. We like to talk about mindset on Monday to get your week going. I want to talk to you a little bit about your purpose, your life's purpose. I think a lot of times people, and I have myself throughout my career, throughout my life, had those moments where you kind of ask yourself, what am I doing? What's my purpose? What is the reason I'm going through all these obstacles day to day? What should I focus on? Where should I put my time? Where should I put my focus? And so I want you to think a little bit about this idea of what your perfect life's purpose is or what it is you want to do. And I want to share with you something kind of unique today. One of my mentors, an individual that really helped me to craft and shape the direction of my career, my profession, and everything else. One of my actually first mentors and business partner, Robert Stuburg, had a program. And he was one of the executive vice presidents of Nightingale Conant, which created a lot of personal development products and resources for the industry for many, many, many years. And we went through an exercise one time where we helped to identify what my personal mission statement was and what my life's purpose is. And he created this program called Discovering Your Life's Purpose. And you may or may not have heard of it. I may or may not have shared it in the past. But what I want to do for you today is I'm going to share this audio with you. It's about 19 minutes or so, and I'm going to take you through this audio so that it will just get you inspired and maybe motivated to create some direction in your life or to reevaluate the direction that you have in your life. Because I know at a deep level, most of us have these questions that we have about what we're doing and where we're going. And so I thought this would be a refreshing break and also some really great information from one of my personal mentors, Robert Stubart. So I hope you enjoy. What is the meaning of my life? What is the purpose of my existence? For what reason was I put here on this planet? From time to time, we've all asked these questions of ourselves, and perhaps we've asked them of our friends, loved ones, or spiritual advisors. And of course, if you discuss these questions with different people, you will certainly notice that you get different responses. For this reason, throughout history, philosophers have debated whether they're actually is a purpose for living, and if so, what it is. I hope that just because there are no consistent answers to these questions, you don't think that no answers exist, for the exact opposite is true. A life's purpose is a very real and concrete structure, and your purpose can be exactly what you want it to be. And what's more, whether it's been a conscious acknowledgement or the faintest inkling, you already know what that is. The answer is already inside you, waiting to be discovered, waiting to fill your life with meaning and fulfillment. What you need is to have the confidence to recognize that answer and boldly frame your life around it. The reason why there are so many answers to the question, what is my purpose, is that there are as many potential purposes and reasons for existence as there are people who exist. Sure, some purposes will be similar to one another, but remember that yours is as unique to you as you are unique from the billions of other people in the world. Nobody else could ever create or fulfill a purpose for your life. Your life's direction is completely in your own hands. So what is your purpose? Have you recognized it yet? Can you put it into words? Some background information on purposes in general may help you to focus on what yours is. You might ask, what is purpose? What does it mean to have one? Does everyone have one? Well, to start at the beginning, a purpose is basically a reason for doing something, not an action itself, but a justification of it. This session is about your life's purpose, and within the framework of this program, this will be the reason behind the ultimate destiny you design. It won't be the actual steps that you take toward achieving your goals, but it is the direction and driving force behind them. It will be the focal point around which your goals and ambitions are arranged. Your purpose can be based upon some intrinsic talent or interest you have, or it can be a part of some of your grander ideals. It can be something you want to achieve for yourself, or it can be something you want to bring to the world at large. The benefits of organizing your life around a purpose are profound. Elsewhere in this program, we've discussed the characteristics of a life out of control. If you'll remember, some of those characteristics were directionlessness, conflicting actions, inefficiency, and being easily manipulated. Well, these are also possible qualities of a life with no defined purpose. In fact, a defined life's purpose is one way you can start to bring control to your life. You can have control without purpose, but to what avail? What benefit is control when it's for no reason? The 19th century writer Mary Shelley wrote that, Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose, a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. By tranquilize the mind, Shelley didn't mean putting yourself to sleep. No her thought was that having a steady purpose makes a mind calm and sure Eliminating uncertainty and aimlessness A life purpose is your inspiration It the motivation behind your actions It's the force that not only leads you to realizing your dreams, but that also provides a context for your dreams to come true. And it's one of the key components to your ultimate destiny. If you're not living by a purpose, you may achieve some of your individual goals, but those goals won't be cohesive or organized around any unifying principle. Instead, they'll be random accomplishments based on immediate desires, probably not contributing much to each other, to the whole of your life, or to the world around you. On the other hand, recognizing your life's purpose automatically creates a structure for your goals and desires. It gives you something to work toward, something for you to measure your progress against. You probably wouldn't believe the number of people in the world who have no idea why they're living the life they lead and doing the things they do. Well, a life's purpose is an all-encompassing answer to the question of why. And it's an answer that will constantly inspire and motivate you to make strides in this direction you've set for yourself. As to whether everyone has a purpose, well, of course. There is one or more inside each of us waiting to be discovered or grasped. But since a vast number of people have not done so, the issue becomes murky. Think about this philosophical question for a moment. Can you have a purpose if you don't consciously know what it is? That's a bit like asking whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if there's nobody there to hear it. Although your own unique configuration of mind and spirit might result in a number of potential directions for your life, these won't be of much benefit to you until you recognize them, decide among them, and put one to work for you. Can you decide on more than one? The answer is yes, as long as they don't conflict. I believe that you will have only one or two major unifying life's purposes at a time, but you can certainly assign purposes to the individual areas of your life, and you can always change what you've defined for yourself. This is where the power of decision comes in. So now the question becomes, how do you recognize your life's purpose if you haven't already done so? Well, there are a few guidelines I can offer to help you there. The first is not to confuse your purpose with your role in society. Your role might be acting as a banker, a lawyer, a salesperson, a manager, or a mechanic. But your role is not your purpose. That's like defining your identity by what you do for a living, a phenomenon we've discussed earlier in this program. If you're living your ultimate destiny, your role will probably be closely aligned to your purpose, since your role will be a result of your destiny, while your destiny will be a result of your life's purpose. And as you encounter other individuals and groups with their own purposes, try to keep your own purpose distinct from theirs. Too many people substitute the purposes of other groups and individuals for their own, and just as many people think that part of their own life's purpose is to get as many people as possible to adopt the same one. Unfortunately, both of these tendencies are flawed. You must find your own individual direction and leave others to do the same. This is the nature of a life's purpose. Your life's purpose is like a calling, something inside of you that draws you to a certain field of endeavor. It comes from a part of you that's difficult to categorize, but you'll recognize it when you see it. There may be some doubt surrounding it. It may even be a bit frightening to contemplate. But if you grab it and run with it, you'll have such a sense of rightness. Embracing a life's purpose is like reclining in a chair that was custom-built to your proportions or slipping into a bath that's just the right temperature. It's comfortable and comforting. Aligning your life to meet your direction may actually take some effort, but it's always worth it. A life lived on purpose is a wonderful and productive life indeed, and it's an absolute must for living your ultimate destiny. So let's bring this concept a little closer to home. Since you've been listening to this session, have you been searching your soul, hoping to discover your life's purpose? If you haven't thought about it before, perhaps you're striving to find some grand, perfect ideal around which to shape your life. Perhaps you're waiting for some revelation or epiphany to reveal exactly what your life's purpose should be. Well, I hate to break it to you, but there's no perfect life's purpose for you or for anyone. Perfection is, in fact, the lowest standard you could hope for since it's actually unattainable. Being preoccupied with finding something that's perfect for you holds you back from making any progress. So don't wait around for the perfect life's purpose to enter your life through whatever means before you take action. Take action now. Remember, some part of you already knows what your life's purpose is. If it's your conscious mind, there's no acceptable excuse for procrastinating. Start organizing your life around your purpose as soon as possible. If your purpose is still hidden in your unconscious, the time for action remains right now. Quickly find a direction that feels right and gives you a sense of joy and fulfillment. Then make your decision and act upon it. You can always change your mind later if you need to, but you may be surprised at how what seems like a spur-of-the-moment decision is actually the direction you've been waiting for the whole time. You see, while your conscious mind has been occupied with other things, perhaps even frantically trying to find the perfect life's purpose, your deeper unconscious mind has had the answer buried within it all along, just waiting for the right moment to reveal it. After all, your unconscious knows what needs you have, what it will take to fulfill them, and what the life purposes are that will bring that fulfillment We all crave fulfillment in our lives We all have the desire to expand ourselves to actualize our full potential It a basic need of the human psyche The pioneering psychologist Abraham Maslow outlined this in his famous Hierarchy of Prepotency, or Hierarchy of Needs, as it's often called. Maslow's theory described people as wanting animals, constantly trying to fill a certain set of needs, which run from basic physiological ones like food and shelter, to more complex psychological motivations, such as esteem and self-actualization. Once the lower needs for sustenance are taken care of, the mind is then technically free to focus on the greater issues of what will bring it fulfillment. Fortunately, most of us have our basic needs for food and shelter met, but the conditions that will bring us fulfillment are somewhat more elusive. This is where individuality comes in, because while it can be proven scientifically what nutrients and conditions all of our bodies need for survival, there's no master guidebook for what all of our minds will find fulfilling. There are some basic emotional needs that we all have in common. For example, we all have the need to love someone and the need to feel loved by or connected with someone. We all have the need to feel important or significant in the world, to stand out somehow. We all have the need to grow mentally or spiritually, to expand our horizons and ourselves. And we all have the need to contribute something of ourselves to the whole of society. But the degree to which each of us feels these needs and what it will take to fulfill them are entirely unique to ourselves. And what's more, most people aren't consciously aware of either their needs or what is the best way to meet them. In our distracting environment, these questions are often delegated to the unconscious mind, which does a remarkably thorough job of pursuing this sort of thing when our active minds are preoccupied with other matters. And when you ask the proper questions in the proper way, your unconscious will release the information it knows. If you approach a question like, what is my life's purpose, as if some part of you already knows the answer, which it does, and you demand the answer quickly, it will often be provided by your unconscious mind. So a first impression or quick revelation of what your life's purpose might be is not necessarily the wrong one. If you don't have another one already in mind, seize upon what you come up with and move forward confidently. You now have a clarity in your actions, an organization for your goals, a focus for your accomplishments, and a direction for your life. As you contemplate your purpose in life, you may want to keep the needs we just discussed in mind. The point of categorizing them here is not to say that one way of meeting them is any better than the others. Just as the point of this session is not to get you to subscribe to any particular direction or reason for living. All of this information is just to spur you into thinking about what your life's purpose might be. You will need to have a life's purpose in mind when you begin to design your destiny. We'll talk in a moment about integrating your life's purpose with your ultimate destiny, but first I want to give you a few more words about deciding upon your own life's purpose. First, a life's purpose is simple. It's usually only a short phrase or a sentence at the very most. Second, I want to remind you that a life's purpose is not an action plan. A life's purpose is the reason you take action. With these characteristics in mind, I'll give you a few samples of life purposes. To become a world-class concert violinist is a life's purpose. The destiny that flows from that purpose is probably based upon rigorous daily practice, auditioning for one of the big symphonies, excelling there, and then beginning a solo career. To help people who are in need is a life's purpose. and destinies associated with that general direction are naturally quite varied. You might become a spokesperson or volunteer for a cause. You can donate money or work to raise it from other sources. You can base a career around that purpose and, for example, become a doctor or a nurse to help those who are suffering. You can become a teacher, a foster parent, or even a good example of how to happily live a destiny. The life's purpose for an artist might be to challenge the way people view themselves and the world around them. The life's purpose for a writer might be to become as good a writer as she can be, so she can then educate as many people as possible on a certain topic. For a business person, the life's purpose could be to create a corporation that, along with making profits, also contributes something special to the world. This could be done either by starting a new business or working on an existing organization from the inside. The corporation could be completely responsible ecologically, for example, and encourage other businesses to do the same. or it could promote other forms of social responsibility, or it could contribute a certain percentage of its profits to a specific cause. Here are a few last things to remember. A life's purpose is merely a guide for living your life. It's a rule by which you can align your actions and ultimate destiny. However, it does not necessarily have to be a full-time obsession. You'll probably be happiest if you can align your career with your life's purpose, but don't feel bad if your purpose does not lend itself to such a destiny. Although something with a bit more focus is generally more helpful, a life's purpose can be something as general as to make people laugh, or to experience life as an adventure, or even to make the world a better place. And remember, once you've decided upon a life's purpose, it doesn't necessarily mean that this needs to be the one driving force that lasts the rest of your life. You may live a section of your life using a series of smaller specific purposes as your guide. or every few years you may choose to review your purpose and see if it still an ideal you hold true If not rededicate your life to a different purpose In the long run it doesn make a difference if you had one purpose or many just so that you had something on which to base and focus your life, decisions, and destiny. Having a life's purpose leads to fulfillment and joy, because it's a motivation against which you can always measure your progress. If you're living in accordance with the direction you've set for yourself, and your needs are being met, you will always have something fulfilling in your life. It's that easy. Lastly, I can't stress enough how unique your own life's purpose is to you. No one else has your configuration of needs, talents, concerns, ideals, ambitions, interests, and longings. Nobody else thinks or does things in the way that you do. The purposes you discover within yourself are special and precious. Others may have similar ones, but there is no one who can express his or her direction and begin aligning his or her destiny toward it in the same way that you will. One way that you can integrate your life's purpose into your destiny plan is through something called a personal mission statement. A mission statement is a sentence that takes your life's purpose and combines it with an extremely general overview of your action plan or ultimate destiny. For example, in the case of the violinist, his mission statement might be, to become the best violinist I can by taking every opportunity to practice and play my instrument and share music with others. The person who wants to help illiteracy might have the mission statement, to volunteer my time and energy to promoting literacy and teaching the skills of reading to anyone who needs my help. The business person concerned with the environment could have the mission statement, to improve the natural environment of the area by making my corporation an example of ecological responsibility. I was having dinner recently with a group of business people when the subject of corporate mission statements came up. It's a popular topic in business these days. Judging from the results I've seen, a sound mission statement can have a tremendous unifying effect on a business when that statement is clearly communicated to everyone in the company and then backed up with action. Some companies are able to define their place in the world of business with just a few words, often in a sentence or two. An example of a mission statement might be, to excel in our field through hard work and a commitment to the customer. Anyway, as the conversation progressed that evening, and I heard more and more discussion about company mission statements, I finally just had to ask the question, what about personal mission statements? Now keep in mind, these were highly successful senior executives in a variety of companies, individuals responsible for steering vast resources of human and financial capital. Yet how many of them do you suppose had mission statements for their own lives? I'm sad to say not many. It was sad, I thought, because it's just as important to steer your personal life as it is to steer the company or organization for which you're responsible. It's so easy to get caught up in the momentum of a company or organization and let the years pass without giving your own mission much thought. Then you're liable to wake up one day and discover that you've spent a large part of your life pursuing goals that aren't all that meaningful to you. When you think about it, what could be better than having the ability to decide for yourself what your mission in life is going to be, and then working and living on that path every day. That's got to be one of our greatest gifts as human beings. We have the power to mold our lives with the opportunity to make a positive and worthwhile contribution to others. I think that the greatest mistake a person can make is not to make use of this power, not to make the most of his or her ability to choose. We each have the capacity to choose a course of action for ourselves and then live each day fulfilling that purpose. Exercising this ability is not only the road to success, but also the road to fulfillment. It's the course that allows us to live each day with meaning and purpose. Or in the words of Benjamin Disraeli, the secret to success is constancy of purpose. A personal mission statement is not like a company's mission statement in that you don't have to share it with anyone or post it near the front door of your home in an effort to prove your commitment. It's enough for you to know about your mission statement. It's merely one more guide in your life that helps you to focus your actions, end random behavior, and make more useful decisions. If you live faithfully by it, your mission will become clear enough to anyone who observes you. Let's take a moment to review what we've learned in this session about life's purposes. A life's purpose is the inspiration around which your destiny is designed. It's not your actions, but the reason behind them. It's an organizing principle through which you can measure your progress and fulfillment. For centuries, philosophers have questioned whether there is a meaning to life and what it might be, but you can rise above that debate. Your life's purpose is already a part of you, a unique expression of your mind and soul. All you need to do is discover it and not be afraid to embrace it and frame your destiny around it. And always remember, your life's purpose is exactly what you want it to be. One of the ways a life's purpose can be expressed is through a personal mission statement. For years, companies have been crafting mission statements, and you can make one of your own with similar success. A personal mission statement is nothing more than the articulation of your life's purpose, joined with a general overview of your action plan. It's just a sentence or two, but it's amazing how much power those words can have when you set them free to shape your thoughts, your actions, and your life. So start down the path of discovering your life's purpose today No destiny is complete without one
