Boosting leadership, resolution & peace by operating with purpose
What’s my purpose?
A simple, powerful and human question.
Professionally, the pursuit of that answer leads us down various academic and career paths. Existentially, it leaves us pondering the meaning of life.
We often think of purpose as a lifelong search for one’s true calling — leaving us faced with impossible odds. But what if purpose is a way of living that’s within our reach at all times? By tapping into it, we act more purposefully, achieving clarity, inspiring better decisions and helping us grow into leaders.
Instead of trying to decipher and pinpoint a single purpose, work to feel more purposeful. Watch how that can alter your relationship with the world and your role in it.
Elevate others
The search for a lifelong purpose can prove exhausting and isolating. Instead, shrink that search down to what you can do to bring value today — after all, your lifetime will be the sum of your days.
An easy way of doing this is looking around and seeing what others in your office or community need. How can you help? The benefits are multifold: you contribute to a better world and you are reminded of the value you can contribute. True leaders want to help and believe that they can.
Choosing actions that elevate those around you may take you out of the spotlight but it strengthens you as a leader.
Reach out to those around you, explore local volunteer opportunities or pursue a not-for-profit project that lets you dedicate your energy, time, strength, patience, skills or other resources to a worthy cause.
Taking the attention off of yourself shrinks the ego and puts you in a state of flow that can connect you to a sense of purpose. In other words, it lets you feel your way to wholeness and resolution.
While this practice of volunteering and helping others might seem strictly extracurricular, all aspects of your life — including your work life — get reinvigorated. Your renewed sense of purpose will start to reflect itself in your actions.
Foster authenticity
Personalities: we all have ‘em.
Our complex behavior, humor, opinions and mannerisms combine to form the person we present to the world…or rather, the personality. We even learn to adapt them to our surroundings: work, home, social environments, etc.
Personalities are important, but the person behind it even more so. Taking time to regularly connect with our being and let go of personality, immerses us in a rare vein of authenticity. Think about the people who inspire you most: business leaders, politicians, celebrities, anyone. Most of the individuals we look up have something in common: they are authentic. We feel that they are genuine, so we connect with them.
Moments of silence, solitude, pleasure or exercise give you a hiatus from your personality and open you up to the part of you that is not constructed. Make time for activities that ground and quiet you. Life is filled with noise. In one sense, your personality contributes to that noise.
Your inner self lives in a peaceful, unchanging space that is always accessible. Lead from that strength and ability.
You have everything you need now to move into the next moment.
Chasing purpose based on the illusion of your incompleteness causes pain. Instead, explore ways to embrace your inherent purpose and agency. Nurture it through actions that ring true for you: hobbies, causes, meditation, time with loved ones or whatever else that may be.
Forget your “one true calling”
We hear it all the time: he was born to be a leader, she was born to be a teacher, they were born for this. We set out in live with the belief that there is one role meant for us and everything else is subpar. You are a multifaceted human being with a spectrum of talents and qualities. Not to mention your ability to grow, learn and change.
How could it be that there is only one role out there waiting for you?
That misconception triggers anxiety and doubt. Open yourself up to the idea that your options are as limitless as your potential. Obsessing over one possible outcome creates unnecessary stress and impossible odds. Rather than looking for a single purpose, try to approach everything that you do with purpose.
This misunderstanding shows itself regularly in the professional world. We get distracted from living purposefully by the never-ending hunt for what we are supposed to be doing — a search for something on the outside to make us feel whole on the inside.
Embracing purpose in all that you do brings a new level of quality to your actions, making you a stronger leader and member of society. Simultaneously, it gifts you clarity and determination to guide you forward.
How would you define purpose? Share with us by commenting below!
Are you ready to start down the path toward fully owning your life — a life you love? Sign up for a Discovery Session.
Omozua is a Certified Emotional Mastery & Intelligent Leadership Executive Coach who empowers & prepares clients’ hearts & heads to take the journey from where they are to where they want to be by bravely accessing their own potential.
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