Purpose
Last Week I talked about the central pillar to an extraordinary life well the second pillar is all about purpose, about why you believe you are here, about who you want to help and what you want to achieve.
It is in the progress towards our goals that we find fulfilment, it is the growth that brings us satisfaction, without a destination, a purpose in life, without a goal for our life to aim for we stagnate and eventually suffer.
In Good to Great by Jim Collins the philosophy that you should have big hairy audacious goals or BHAG’s shows why this is so important.
You need to have big goals, not because you want the money, not because you want the cars, or the houses, or any of the other material things, but because it is in the pursuit of your goals that you are forced to grow, it’s a fact that people with big goals who work towards them have healthier, happier, longer, less stressful lives that’s not just my belief there are multiple medical and psychological studies that shows this to be true.
If you’re happy with your possessions and what you have achieved in life then great, if your family and friends are taken care of, fantastic, and yet there is always more, what about a cause you are passionate about a charity you could give to, why would you not want to give them more, help more, do more? Consistent and everlasting Joy and that means your own happiness comes from helping others, if you have achieved a lot already then it comes from how you give back how you contribute, think about the legacy you can leave behind.
Happiness happens when your sense of Joy exceeds your fears, grief, guilt and disgust, and as I talked about last time in the first pillar you get what you focus on so if you want to be happy then set big goals that will bring you joy.
Be clear on what you are aiming for, I like to say
If you want to achieve anything then you need to know what anything looks like
How else will you know what to focus on and we have already talked about how a lack of focus leads to a life of mediocrity, knowing your purpose and being committed to driving towards it creates focus which as we covered in pillar one, leads to an extraordinary life.
Forcing yourself to grow, learning from people who have already succeeded expands your mind, BHAGs come to you from the growth you experience from working on your mindset, from the growth in your belief in what you can achieve, when you start to believe you can have an extraordinary life, you start to see it more clearly and ultimately move towards it.
It really has to be a purpose that you are serious about, should, could and must are not the same things, should and could are simply things that exist in potential
We should all exercise and eat healthier and yet we all know that not everyone does, it is only when we make a should do into a must do that we take action, and that my friends means a purpose that drives you.
To gain momentum, to overcome the inertia of life you must make what you are doing important enough that acting on things that move you towards it becomes non-negotiable.
If you know what you want then there is one more thing you need before you can really start to make progress, the one other thing you are going to need to know is your starting point, just like a sat nav before you can plot a route you need to know your current position.
On that subject another guy very smart guy I learnt a lot from is Ray Dalio, he owns Bridgewater associates I believe the largest hedge fund on the planet, and he’s outperformed the market pretty much for the last 20 years
My favourite quote from him from his book called principles is
Accept reality and deal with it
if you want to get somewhere you need to know where you are right now.
Don’t make it any worse than it is and don’t want to make it any better than it is
Just seek to understand what your current reality is so you can deal with it effectively, if you don’t know where you are with clarity, if you don’t accept the truth that you are where you are because of you then there is no way you are getting to where you want to be.
Knowing where you are will lead to knowing what you need to do and what you need to learn and that will start to get you momentum.
By Andy Walter
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