In this session, we're talking about purpose. Your purpose. On purpose.
Purpose can be a vague and flimsy term if we don't pay it enough attention. Today we'll pay it the attention it deserves as it is foundational to building your plan.
What is your purpose?
Purpose: to develop a fully developed and considered purpose to allow me to fully realise my potential in the next 6 months.
Premise: Is this the way life's meant to be?
A common activity to help define your purpose is to write your own obituary! It sounds morbid, but it is a chance to think how you want your life to turn out.
For your Personal Strategic Plan, we're not looking at the end of your life, but the end of the next 6 months.
This provides you enough time to get the ball/s rolling in the areas you want to attend to.
Six months is far enough out that it will take some discipline and some consistency, but close enough to be expectant and curious about how it will turn out.
You may have heard people say, "This isn't the life I was meant to live."
This exercise helps us plan the life we were meant to live!
Many times we live a life, which is simply made up of days and moments, that meanders. If you don't want that, begin to work on specific goals and objectives.
As an aside, I see the people who now live on the street with all their belongings in a shopping cart. Their life wasn't always that way. At one time they were a child, went to school, probably had a job. I can't say what their background was, but this is now their life. I'm not suggesting you are on your way down that path, but are you on the path you want?
Below you will find a template for this exercise. I would love feedback on its usefulness and how it might be improved.
On the template, write down to day's date and then write the date six months from now, to the specific date.
Consider three areas you want to prioritise. A simple three to start with might be health, wealth and education (a.k.a., healthy, wealthy and wise). I've added a list of other options in the template.
Once you list your three, what is your purpose for each? What have you chosen these? Were they easy, obviously choices?
If they were, have you been considering these for a while or tackled them in the past? Or are you stumped for choice and can’t pick just three? Too many options? See the lifestyle segment tool below that might help.
Let’s play with “health”
What is your “why” of addressing health? I’ll assume it is to improve our health (we’re not taking up smoking … are we? 😳)
If it is health: what is your purpose?
Why is this important to me?
Is this important to others?
What happens if I don’t address this?
Who will that affect? Positively and negatively?
Write out the answers to these questions. Take your time, go a little deep, don’t just gloss over them. You may have some “aha!” moments and see some truths you may be reluctant to admit, or realise and want to get moving on them.
My purpose in developing this series is twofold:
help me structure my facilitation at the conference next week
help others find more success and satisfaction in their endeavours.
I love it when people succeed. My writing is the product, but I hope to affect people positively so they have a better existence in some form.
In Summary
To achieve something worthwhile we need a purpose, something deep down we want to achieve and prepared to sacrifice for in order to achieve it.
Remember to identify what might get in your way to achieving your goals and work out how you can eliminate or minimise the roadblocks.
Determine your Purpose, your “Why”, as in “Why am I doing this?”
Write these down so you can reflect on them regularly. I suggest daily.
In terms of whether your “why” is solid enough, Derek Sivers has this measure he uses when he’s thinking about taking on an activity or new commitment: It’s either a “Hell Yeah!” or a “No!”
Not a bad measuring stick when we are talking about life and fulfilment.
Resources
These templates can be downloaded, printed off and written on.
The PSP - 3a Purpose is also “fillable” so you can type into it.
Please let me know if these templates are helpful and how they might be improved. 🙏