I think that we can trudge through life sometimes, and we might end up asking why we wasted so much time or wonder how we got to the point we’re at. Purpose is truly what we should be focused on every day of our lives. JFK said, “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” You can go through life and feel like you’ve worked hard, made sacrifices, and stood up for what you believed. But at the end of the day, if you haven’t created a purpose and given your efforts a direction, that hard work really doesn’t have an impact on your overall lifespan.
Why should you create a specific, clear purpose for your life? When we have a view of the big picture, the small things won’t trip us up as often. Sometimes it can be very hard to get back up once you’ve tripped. When we face adversity or difficult circumstances, we can become extremely angry or frustrated if we don’t have a purpose in our lives. We also probably won’t see our passion come out as frequently, and passion is a really cool thing if it’s channeled in the right way. If you are aware of your purpose, you’ll see your passion come to the surface much more frequently.
If we don’t have purpose, we’re going to naturally focus on ourselves. We’ll be about self-gratification, and most of us know that our lives really aren’t just about ourselves. We tend to experience the most joy out of giving, helping others, or living for somebody else. Without purpose, we rarely get the opportunity to do that. Purpose is your why: Why do you do what you do? Why are you where you’re at? Why do you have the roles that you have in your life? Why are you passionate about certain things? Mark Twain said, “The most important day in your life is the day that you were born and the day that you find out why.”
It’s important to understand that when you create your purpose, you aren’t focused on yourself. We need to be consistent in all the roles in our life, and we all have certain things that we care about. For instance, I deeply care about my children, and if you were to harm them, I would become very passionate (and possibly very angry, depending on what was done to them.) If you were to harm my employees, would I feel the same way? Would it invoke the same response? That’s how consistency is very important as we stretch out through our different roles. If we limit our purpose just to ourselves, we would dramatically decrease our own potential.
Being selfish leads to judgment, anger, bitterness, dissatisfaction, low performance, and unhappiness. I’m not talking about having low self-confidence. Humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking about ourselves less. Having a clearly defined purpose sets you on track, so it’s very important to create the purpose in your life. Always ask yourself the question, why am I here? Figuring out your why is very monumental in a lifespan.
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