Why Should You Define Your Personal Purpose?
Having a clear personal purpose guides our actions and ensures that they are meaningful. It generates confidence and enables collaboration with kindred spirits. Purpose-driven life is essential for crafting our lifework, as it provides passion and inspiration to make a positive impact on society.
By articulating and embodying our purpose, we tap into an endless reservoir of drive, propelling us to continually learn, persevere, and actualize our aspirations. Once we pinpoint our purpose, we can direct our focus and efforts toward the practical missions and day-to-day tasks that pave the way for its fulfillment.
Having a Genuine Purpose Enables Peak Performance
When we find and serve our genuine personal purpose, we become an inspiration to those around us. Embracing our true inner power enables us to protect our dreams, independent of others’ beliefs or opinions. Bringing our full potential to fruition is what leads to maximum levels of creativity, innovation, and impact. Nonetheless, this path is not necessarily easier as challenges and opposition are inevitable.
Purpose does not diminish in the face of adversity; rather, it equips us to transcend it. While challenges and oppositions will always come our way, acting from our purpose—coming from a place of why we do what we do and answering the question of what’s missing in the world—empowers us in our capacity to navigate and overcome them.
With personal purpose, acting from a place of passion and inspiration enables enhanced focus and a greater drive to learn, grow, execute, and deliver. It lights us up from the inside, encompassing our unique gifts and talents that make any notion of competition obsolete. Everyone has a unique way of approaching and doing things that matter to them— in essence, the gift and responsibility of personal purpose is open to anyone, not just a privileged few.
The Dangers of Lacking a Personal Purpose
Without a defined purpose, we face the dilemma of too many possibilities and options at hand, not knowing which path to decide. This can cause analysis paralysis and regrets for roads not taken. Although there’s a spectrum from defining to fully living with purpose, not defining one at all might lead us to feel restless, unfulfilled, and unsatisfied despite achieving goals—and ultimately drains our energy.
When we act and perform upon given conditions, defined either by tradition, parental expectations, or societal norms we might be drawn to escapism and burying ourselves into more work, hoping that only resilience and discipline will sustain us. By doing so, we are following a predetermined path, limiting ourselves to the boxes others have put around us.
Not knowing our personal purpose represents a significant blind spot in self-awareness, a vital characteristic for leading. As self-aware leaders, we are less reactive and more proactive in our responses to both internal and external stimuli. Therefore, reactive leadership that is not driven by purpose can have a profound negative impact on team engagement, performance, and overall motivation. Restricting our potential and not adhering to our true purpose may prevent us from developing or sharing ideas, products, or services that others might need and benefit from greatly.
To become purpose-driven leaders, we should examine the concept of purpose as an intrinsic and essential part of our leadership philosophy, which encompasses a genuine commitment to serving others and working towards a visionary future.
The Evolving Nature of Purpose
The notion that everyone has a singular, unchanging purpose is not entirely accurate, as our understanding of purpose can shift and evolve over time.
We may add different meanings or adapt our purpose based on new understandings of what we believed to be true. When we do find our purpose, however, it resonates deeply, often manifested by physical sensations like goosebumps and a profound sense of direction and ease, combined with a surge of creative energy.
How Personal Purpose Connects with Organizational Purpose
Individuals who understand their personal purpose can seek out and thrive in organizations where that purpose can be expressed in its entirety.
The connection of personal and organizational purpose nurtures a deeper sense of drive and significantly boosts employee inspiration, engagement, commitment and satisfaction.
The Role of Personal Purpose in a Competitive Environment
In an ideal world, each person would be fully aware of their personal purpose and capable of expressing it through their work successfully. This awareness would reduce competitive tensions, as individuals would focus on utilizing their unique skills and talents rather than competing.
Such an environment suggests that there would be no need for a hierarchy of purposes; everyone would be suited for the tasks at hand and find sufficient meaning in serving their role.
Enhancing early recognition of personal skills through education and support like apprenticeships could cultivate this awareness from a young age. However, achieving this level of self-awareness to recognize and pursue a personal purpose today requires some proactive effort since our large-scale systems in education and industry have not yet realized the value of a purpose-driven approach.
Real-Life Examples of Personal Purposes
The following purpose statements are examples of what recognized individuals could have as their purpose statements based on what the world knows about them. The statements are not necessarily the ones they used to describe their purpose, but give a great example of how purpose statements can be formed.
Stephen Hawking: “The mysteries of the universe are unraveled through groundbreaking research in theoretical physics, others are inspired to explore the cosmos.”
Jane Goodall: Wildlife is protected and conserved, and humanity is aware of the interconnectedness of all living beings.
Yvon Chouinard: “The source of all wealth is protected”
Mahatma Gandhi: “Indian independence from British rule, peace and equality.”
Martin Luther King Jr.: “Civil rights advance, and racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans is eliminated.”
Mother Teresa: “The poorest of the poor are served, shown love and compassion.”
Leonardo da Vinci: “Art, science, and invention explore the limits of human potential. The world in all its facets is understood.”
Marie Curie: “The field of science is advanced, contributing to humanity's understanding of radioactivity.”
Albert Einstein: “The fundamental principles of the universe are understood.”
Nelson Mandela: “South Africa is apartheid-free, with reconciliation and unity among its diverse population.”
Steve Jobs: “Technology is both aesthetically pleasing and functionally superior. People think differently.”
Malala Yousafzai: "Every girl, every child, is educated."
Oprah Winfrey: “Students are inspired to be more than they thought they could be.”
