Clarity on PURPOSE (Contd..)

 Clarity on PURPOSE (Contd..) 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we have discussed the need to be aware of our purpose last week,,a few responded that the purpose would vary from time to time. For example, at a young age, money was the purpose, and later stage of life, the purpose changed to impact society. The purpose may not be the same throughout life.

That is right only and let me give my perspective on purpose with reference to time, based on my experience. 
 
a few years back,i  met a successful entrepreneur who ventured into the business at a young age, and even at 70+, he is active and involves in business decisions. When i asked about his high energy level even at this age, his response was, "when i started my entrepreneurial journey, the purpose was to make money and survive. Those purposes drove me then and met. Now my purpose is to enhance the life of my employees that motivates me now to do more" .

we can relate the above example with our life as well.

The key learnings are 

• The purpose will get change over time, depending on the maturity of individual learning and maturity.
• Today money may not be a purpose but does not mean that he ignored it. It becomes a subset of the higher purpose of providing quality life to employees.
• The purpose may vary from small /short term to high/ long term perspective. Those are all interchangeably accepted as a purpose or goal, or objective. Achieving those little/ short term goals are all very essential, and that eventually lead you to find your TRUE NORTH. Finding purpose is an evolution and time-consuming process.
• We should have some higher-level purpose to drive us, else, we will get distracted. We need to find some meaning in what we are doing, which will keep us at an elevated emotional level.

Earlier, you get your TRUE NORTH or ULTIMATE PURPOSE in life and align your actions, better you will become emotionally healthy and balanced.

Let us discuss the practical way of finding the purpose next week!

Why finding PURPOSE is essential?

 

Why finding PURPOSE is essential? (Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)   In continuation of knowing self more through getting value clarity, the next step in Achievement Orientation is to know your purpose in life. There is a saying that everyone comes to earth with a purpose, and everything happens with a purpose only. There is a school of thought from a philosophical perspective that the meaning of life to live happily or go along with the flow. It may be valid, and only a few people are aligned with that perspective and internally motivated. That is a high-level maturity of living. However, from a materialistic perspective, there is always a compelling need to be on a high level of internal motivation and achievement-orientation. One way of fulfilling the requirement is to find the life purpose at the self-level at some point in a lifetime.  Given the realm of our education, knowledge, skillset, experience, and background, we need to find the purpose of our life. The tough question that needs to be answered is," why do i exist"? what is meaningful to me? What is the real fulfillment for me? What is my identity? , what will i be remembered for, at least for some time?!!. The purpose could be anything as it depends on the individual. It could be making a difference, creating an impact on others, building wealth, solving a chronic problem, entertaining others, and so on. Finding purpose is the exploration process, and it is not a one-time activity. Why should we find our purpose? When we have clarity on the big-picture of our existence, it will give a sense of direction. When the direction is not right, how fast we move, the path does not take to the right destination. When we do not know our true north and being busy with all the distractions of life, we feel empty despite all the success. When we know our purpose, even though there are struggles, it won’t hurt much. When we do not have any clarity about our purpose, we are vulnerable to even small disappointments, rejections, failures. When we are clear about our purpose, our journey will be enjoyable even if it is slow because we are aware that we are marching in the right direction in our path. That realization makes us feel good. Optimism comes out when we are clear about our journey’s direction. Let us learn the different ways of exploring self to get clarity on our purpose next week. Given below the link to an interesting video on meaningful life/vision/purpose, you may relate them.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bumPyvzCyo

How to identify your core values?

 How to identify your core values?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Having discussed the importance of knowing our values and their influence on our behavior, actions, and decision-making speed, let us understand the step-by-step process of identifying our core values.

The identification process is iterative, and anyone can do it by themselves through analysis. It may be challenging for some people to identify by themselves, and for those, i recommend seeking help from the coaches.

Values are nothing but some of the principles we stand for or the importance or priority we give in life for most of the time. Those values will drive our behaviors, decisions, and actions on a personal and professional front.

Whether we realize it or not, each one of us has inherent values within us that are driving us every moment. We might have acquired from our parents, childhood experience, or even with current experiences. The more we are sure about our core values, it will help us make the right decisions during challenging times and emotionally healthy.
 
How to identify the values?:
 

1. Go through the list of values and identify the favorable values with which you are associating yourself frequently or the unfavorable values which you do not like to be associated with. Given below some of the lists of values, you may get more than 200 values when searching on the web. My suggestion would be not to get into the searching for a list, and you do the self-analysis, identify and label on your own as it would reflect you correctly without bias.

Favorable Values:

Growth /Love / Challenge / adventure / Pride in achievement / making difference / individuality / creativity / passion / honesty / integrity/stability / freedom / achievement / contribution / gratefulness/ courage/ expressive / fun / harmony/ power / peace/happiness/secured/ intimacy /sense of control/intelligence/ success/ sharing /giving / family/ career / money/ compassion/Loyalty/connections/commitments/Health / Nature/ relationship/ risk taking
 
Unfavorable Values:

Anger/ Guilty / Being control/ rejection / failure/ insecurity/ jealous/ sadness/ humiliation/ victimized/worry/ instability/ mediocre

2. First, choose the top 10 values you are associating with either favorable or unfavorable values, and further analyze and bring to the top 3. It would be challenging to prioritize the top 3 values. In that way only, you are clear about your values.

As said, this is an iterative process. The more you spend yourself, the more clarity on your preferences.

The awareness of your preferences, principles, or what you stand for gives more clarity to deal with life challenges. Internally, it will help you have a balanced emotional level. Also, it allows you to design your professions inline with your values.

Why should you know your VALUES?

 Why should you know your VALUES?  

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 As we discussed the VALUES as a prime step towards achievement orientation, let us understand the need to realize the value by self.

We are driven by mostly two emotions, viz happiness (pleasure) and sadness (pain). Either we want to maximize the pleasure in any activities/circumstances or minimize the pain as much as possible. The outcome of the task depends on the emotional mix of pleasure and pain.

For example,

When your boss/ colleague asks you to prepare a presentation content, you may have two choices in executing the task. If you like preparing the presentation content, you want to maximize the pleasure of the preparation process. Hence you will be striving to give your best.

If you do not like the presentation preparation task and at the same time, you do not want to lose your boss/colleague's confidence or relationship, which you perceive as painful. To avoid the pain, somehow, you complete the preparation with a half-hearted effort.

In both choices, your presentation quality is based on the emotions you are undergoing in the task, maximizing the pleasure or minimizing the pain.

Now you can relate any task or circumstances in your professional context, you will realize you are driven by those two basic emotions only.

The key point is when you are driven by the emotion of pleasure, your quality of work is excellent, and when the emotion of pain guides you, your quality of work may be substandard.

The emotion comes from your like / dislike, which i term as your PREFERENCE or INTEREST or VALUES.


 

 
Life is a series of events or circumstances, and if we ensure most of them are inline with maximizing pleasure, our effectiveness would be high.
 
We need to learn how to identify our likes/dislikes or Interests or preferences or VALUE and align life inline with VALUES.

Let us learn the process of identifying the values and their significance in the coming weeks'.