Start Here to Figure Out Your Life’s Purpose

“It is one of the great tragedies of civilization that ninety-eight out of every one hundred persons go all the way through life without coming within sight that even approximates definiteness of a major purpose.” ~Napoleon Hill

To be honest, are any of us certain that we’ve found our true calling in life? I love what I’m doing, but there are parts of my job that I find awfully tedious. Further, I believe we can have more than one purpose in life or that our purpose will most surely change as we age. For myself, I was a partner in my own company for many years and when we received a good offer, we decided to sell it and move on. That was around the time that my children were embarking on their own journeys in life and going off to college. I also had to overcome some health issues. All of these things combined — some good, some not so good — led me to a bit of a crisis of confidence. What was I going to do next? While I liked my job that I had done in my company and I appreciated what it afforded me, I didn’t feel like it was a true calling or my life’s purpose.

An older friend was talking to me about his large and prosperous company one day. He had become enormously wealthy starting and growing this company which in all honesty, sounded incredibly boring to me. At one point I stopped him and asked, “Yes, but was it your dream?”

He responded, “No, it was my opportunity.”

Fair enough. Would you do a job for your entire working life that you weren’t really passionate about, if you could make a very large amount of money doing it?

The renowned psychologist, Frederick Herzberg, developed and wrote about the two-factor theory of job satisfaction. He called the two factors that influence people in choosing jobs or sticking with them, motivators and hygiene. Hygiene factors are things such as comfort, benefits, location, colleagues and salary. These are mostly extrinsic factors — beyond one’s control — and that must be there for people to choose a job. But they will not make people happy about their job, they will just keep them from hating their job. The opposite are the intrinsic factors, or the motivators. They are things such as, “achievement, recognition for achievement, the work itself, responsibility, and growth or advancement,” or growth factors.

This is what we need to go after our life’s purpose, our passion. The risk is the hygiene job. You start a career because the salary is good, and then you get married, have kids, and you can’t leave, and all the while, you are not satisfied with your career, and yet you stay in it for obvious reasons.

How many of us have found ourselves in the hygiene careers?

Around the time of my crisis of confidence, a couple friends and I started our First Friday Mastermind group (which I initially wrote about in my S.W.O.T. Analysis article). I got the idea because I thought about all the business principles I applied to my business that helped it become successful to the point we were able to sell it, but I never did that kind of planning for my personal life. I’m talking about vision strategies, mission statements, S.W.O.T. analyses, goal setting, marketing plans, projections, board of directors, and so on.

I deserved that. You deserve that.

I was also re-reading the iconic, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill. He’s the one who suggested the idea of a mastermind group, to take advantage of collective intelligence.

Five of us got together the first Friday of every month, to learn about business principles which sadly most people don’t know about or use, and also to drink (wine) and eat (potluck) and check-in with each other and pour out our hearts and cry and laugh and hold each other accountable. In written, almost beseeching snippets of exercises, told with heart-wrenching honesty and longing, every one of us wrote knowing, knowing we could do better, we could be better.

I remembered that my partner and I had gone through this period in our company where we were just struggling all the time and nothing we did seemed to work or improve our situation. Money was always an issue and I was tired. We hired a consultant who used a methodology called, “Chart Your Own Course,” by Caryn A. Spain and Ron Wishnoff. The idea was to choose the four things your company should focus on — your vision strategy — and do those things really well. Every management decision or action taken, should be to further something on your vision strategy. The value of a vision strategy in business cannot be overestimated in my opinion. Our business turned around and within a few years we were able to sell it for a huge multiple.

“Chart You Own Course,” suggested starting your exploration process by listing all the things your company does well. At the first meeting of our little group, we convened on a wet and chilly December evening, took off our shoes, and did our first tell-tale, potent exercise. It was a variation on that first step. I called ours, The Top 50, a list of fifty things that you do reasonably well. It didn’t actually need to be fifty things and could be more, but fifty is a good number.

Some felt that there was no way they could come up with fifty skills or talents, but I told them that they could. We looked at it like a brainstorming exercise and did it right there in the meeting and then read the results to each other. I personally, completely missed some of the things at which I excel. No fewer than two Masterminders put down, “loading the dishwasher.” One of us came up with over seventy five that first night.

The TOP 50 was a list we would use over and over as a springboard for other exercises, like in writing our vision statements and our mission statements. It was the start of a process for many of us to figure out what we wanted to do, to question our direction, our life’s purpose, our calling in life, our dreams. We then utilized business tools to put our dreams into action.

Here is the theory behind The Top 50 and why it’s important:

First of all, you’ll be surprised at how many things you do well. It’s an esteem booster. I revisit my list whenever I am feeling down about myself, frustrated, or impatient with how things are going.

Second, the reason we use this list as a springboard for other exercises is because it makes sense to start from a position of strength: we’re reinventing ourselves not the wheel.

Third, you want to do something you enjoy, and typically people enjoy the things they do well.

Fourth, I believe that writing things down makes them real. It is an acknowledgement in ink. Indelible.

Fifth, by thinking about your strengths and writing them down (and even being reminded by your friends in the room when you have momentary lapses about the things you do well and have never acknowledged), you may discover something helpful about yourself that surprises.

My last word about the importance of working from the TOP 50 LIST: Don’t let anyone else define you. There is a Latin expression: Temet nosce. Know thyself. The longer version of that is, “Know thyself and thou shall know all the mysteries of the Gods and of the universe.” This is your choice, not the Universe’s or God’s or your spouse, mother, children or monk’s choice.

Here’s what I learned about myself from my Top 50 list. I was really good at business skills, but I also possessed many creative talents like writing, painting, music, and graphic design. I knew that with my next company, I had to be doing something more creative. Even though I could make a lot of money in management and finance, I didn’t want to do that anymore. Working through all the exercises as a part of my mastermind group helped me to start my company, Bloomers Island.

I highly suggest that if you are reading this, do your own Top 50 and let me know if you discovered any surprises. Also, I’m curious how many of you think you are living your life’s purpose.
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Next up is your vision strategy.