by Ray White
Having a Higher Purpose helps guide our priorities. We can focus on goals and actions that will keep us motivated and energized, rather than following the path of least resistance, feeling de-motivated and bored.
A Higher Purpose will also help keep us on track when unexpected negative events occur, like family in the hospital, or other tragedies close to home.
My wife is very clear on her Higher Purpose: it is our children. She would give her life to save one of our children without a second thought. She would go hungry so they can eat and be cold so they can be warm. This Higher Purpose includes all the characteristics we have discussed. It fits with her values of children first, empathy, kindness, and integrity. She has someone else to focus her efforts on, the children. She has a strong sense of self-worth in helping them grow to be healthy, thoughtful, well-mannered, industrious, and independent. Finally, she knows she is making a difference in their lives and the lives of the people they help and interact with. She has not always been able to articulate that our children were her “Higher Purpose.”
She explored graduate school and a career in insurance first. She always knew she wanted to stay home and take care of her children once she had them. She always knew that taking care of the children was a priority in her life. But it took a lot of thought and self-reflection to identify and fully embrace that as her Higher Purpose and eliminate the feeling of guilt for not having a job and a career. Once she identified the values she already lived by and identified the experiences that made her happiest, she was able to get comfortable with her Higher Purpose and become much happier and more satisfied with life. It was not as much about search and discovery as it was about identifying the clues that were already a part of her life.
When I was younger and first studying success, I was referred to a couple in a nearby town. They did not have any children, were not wealthy, and had low-paying jobs. But I found them to be extremely successful and happy. They had created a Chinese garden in their backyard, and their Higher Purpose was taking care of each other and that garden. They went to work at 7 am each morning and left work by 4 pm. They were happy with their work and talked positively about it. But their real love was being at home and with each other. After work they would go straight home, have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and sit and talk or work on their garden. They were deeply satisfied with their life together and always had smiles and positive things to say.
What do you want to do? What is meaningful and fulfilling to you? Don’t try to impress or meet the expectations of others. Don’t do what you think the people you know would want you to do. Do what really matters and is important to you. A good test: if you took action related to your Higher Purpose, and no one knew you had taken those actions, would they still be meaningful? For example, if your Higher Purpose were to feed the hungry, and you dropped off $100 worth of groceries to 10 different families, and no one knew it was you, would it still feel as meaningful? If the answer is yes, then congratulations; you have found something that fulfills you, rather than trying to impress other people.
My nephew Ben works at a mortgage company, on a team that handles homebuyers who have been unable to make their payments, are experiencing foreclosures, or are caught up in bankruptcies. He was unhappy with his job because he didn’t like the constant flow of calls from unhappy people, and he felt like changes in their bonus system had resulted in him losing a significant amount of money. He had no interest in putting in extra effort or working extra hours. He had a form of a career, but it was not going well; and he we was not getting the promotions he wanted and the consideration he thought he deserved. He had a career orientation. He wanted the money and the satisfaction of moving up in a career. This was enough to keep him somewhat motivated and minimally happy.
Ben worked to identify his Higher Purpose and discover how he was using his strengths for this job. As it turns out, his strength was in taking the angry callers and converting them to happy (or at least happier) callers before the call was over. He also found satisfaction in helping some of the clients save their houses. So he set a goal and started tracking the number of houses he saved on a monthly, then weekly, and eventually daily basis. He also started tracking the number of people he could turn from angry to happy. This gave him a noble Higher Purpose to pursue. It was no longer about money or working to grow his career, or even to keep his job; it was about saving homes. The initial impact was almost immediate. Within a week, he was enjoying work more and having better interactions with his executives and teammates. He moved up in team rankings, qualified for top bonuses, and became a source of inspiration, rather than an average employee. He had a different perspective on the same job. Answering calls from angry homeowners all day can be draining and surely does not seem like a long-term job for happiness. Saving homes and helping angry callers become happier, however, does reflect a “Higher Purpose.” It is a great reason to get up in the morning and go to work. It is a reason to look forward to those calls, rather than resenting them and wanting to avoid them. It turns a career into a calling and results in your interactions with peers and executives becoming more positive as you reflect a positive attitude about what you are doing, rather than seeming downcast and defeated.
During this process, Ben also discovered an additional purpose. It turns out that he often takes calls from clients assigned to other members on his team or the organization. He found that if he can successfully handle those calls and do everything possible to help out his teammates, it will also make them successful. So his list of Higher Purposes now includes helping to make his teammates successful. How do you think those kinds of changes will affect his success? Can happiness and success result from having a Higher Purpose of helping people save their homes, turning callers from angry to happy, and helping your teammates become more successful and make more money?
I want to clarify that, even though Ben saw immediate success, it took a lot more time and investment to confirm that these Higher Purposes were a good fit for him. It also took time to change the old habits of distaste and inward focus so that he could enjoy his job every day and not just on certain days. Identification of your Higher Purpose and changing the habits related to living it is hard work, but it is worth it because of the happiness and success it eventually brings.
Why Do We Need a Higher Purpose?
People yearn for stability in their lives and the concept that life is not just a series of random events that are not connected and have no real reason for occurring. We distinguish ourselves from other animals by our intellectual ability to connect events across time and understand how they will impact other people, our future, and the world in general. It is one of the things that enables us to make progress in our lives and across time and generations. Identifying our Higher Purpose ties our past and present with our future, helps explain how we matter in the world, provides validation that our values are correct and that we are making the right decisions, and gives us confidence that we have a reason for being and that we are adding value to the world.
A Higher Purpose provides resilience. You are able to endure countless more challenges and obstacles when you know your “Why” and you are clear on your direction. Your resilience is even stronger when you know your sacrifices are going to benefit someone else.
A Higher Purpose can seem overwhelming and too big to take on. You don’t have to be trying to solve world hunger to find meaning and fulfillment. A Higher Purpose can be as simple as “Sharing my music” or “Teaching others the joys of surfing.”
Here are a few examples of Higher Purpose that were posted on the Internet. (See Kimberly Pichot’s web site – Complete Success, Inc., http://completesuccess.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/examples-of-life-purpose-statements/ )
My life purpose is to energize, connect, and inspire purpose in others.
My purpose in life is to be a mom: to empower independence, self-reliance and confidence in others through being a positive, supportive role model.
My pu
rpose in life is to grow continually and use my wisdom to help others grow through teaching and encouraging them while making a difference in their lives and the lives of those around them.
To be a positive role model & help people.
Your Higher Purpose can be simple and attainable. The important concepts are that it provides a “Why” for your daily activities, it gives you energy and enthusiasm for getting up and getting started in the morning, and it helps you feel like you matter and can make a difference.
Chapter 17
Finding Purpose
"When you walk with purpose, you collide with destiny" Bertrice Berry
From a happiness standpoint, the next step down from a Higher Purpose, is having any purpose. Purpose means we are able to connect what we are doing today with some benefit in the future. It is part of having meaning. If we know why we are doing something and how it connects to the future, we can endure the mundane or difficult challenges we run into. Without understanding that purpose, we have no reason to endure the pain or be disciplined about completing a task. The difference between purpose and Higher Purpose is who is being helped. A Higher Purpose requires something bigger than yourself. If you have a purpose, you know how what you are doing is going to help you in the future. If you have a Higher Purpose, you know how what you are doing is also going to help the team, the company, or someone else in the future.
One interesting study showed retirement-aged people with a “purpose in life” lived longer than seniors who did not have purpose. They defined purpose as the sense that life has meaning and direction and that one's goals and potential are being achieved or are achievable. They evaluated 1,238 people in two studies and found that seniors who had a “purpose in life” had a mortality rate that was more than 40% lower than those who did not have a “purpose in life.” These conclusions held true even after controlling for factors like gender, race, depressive symptoms, disability, neuroticism, chronic medical conditions, and income. In their questionnaire, they found three questions that particularly related to mortality. “I sometimes feel as if I've done all there is to do in life,” “I used to set goals for myself, but that now seems like a waste of time,” and “My daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me.” Another study showed that “purpose in life” was one of six factors that increased the release of chemicals and other indicators of stronger immunities and lowered the risk of heart disease for women over 65. Yet another study of 950 people with an average age of around 80 showed that those with a “purpose in life” were half as likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s, and were better at housekeeping, managing money, and getting up and down stairs. Having a “purpose in life” and setting and pursuing meaningful goals on a daily basis is good for your happiness, health, quality of life, and longevity.
Purpose works across time. Describing something as it exists today does not provide purpose. Understanding how it connects across time helps it have a purpose. “I wrapped a box in colored paper” is not purposeful. It is a description of an action that only impacts one point in time. Understanding the result of that action, “I wrapped a present that Tina will be so excited to open,” provides purpose. Our brains become engaged emotionally and chemically at the thought of Tina being excited to unwrap her gift. We connect what we are doing now with how it will impact us (or even better, someone else) at a later point in time.
Your purpose could be linked to a fundamental challenge or crisis you endured or observed someone close to you endure. Deep emotional experiences create a strong empathy for others in similar situations and motivate us to go to great lengths to help them. Many people who have someone close to them die from cancer, or a car accident, or some other tragedy find a Higher Purpose in helping raise money or change laws to support those causes and prevent someone else from enduring similar pain.
Write Your Sentence
Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, uses the story of Clare Boothe Luce to provide an example of finding purpose. Clare Boothe Luce, a US Congresswomen in the 1940s, later gave President John F. Kennedy some advice. She told him that “a great man is a sentence, and it is always a sentence that has an active verb.” For Abraham Lincoln it was “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” For Franklin Roosevelt it was “He lifted us out of the Great Depression and helped us win a world war.” What is your sentence? Is it focused at home? “I raised two kids to be healthy, happy adults.” Is it focused on your work? “I kept patients and their families healthy and comfortable.” Is it focused on one of your charitable efforts? “I helped less privileged children have happier holidays.” Is it a result of your hobby? “I created art work that will inspire my great grandchildren.” It doesn’t have to be big; it just has to be yours--something you believe in and are passionate about.
Activity: Write Your Sentence
Examples:
1.Lincoln - “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.”
2.Franklin Roosevelt - “He lifted us out of the Great Depression and helped us win a world war.”
3.Parent - “I am raising two kids to be healthy, happy adults.”
4.Health Professional - “I keep patients and their families healthy and comfortable.”
5.Faith Based – “I will live a life that reflects positively in the eyes of my God.”
6.Volunteer - “I help less privileged children have happier holidays.”
7.Artist - “I create artwork that will inspire my great grandchildren.”
8.Mine – “I help others become happy and successful.”
Now You Try It
1.Start with “I.”
2.Add an active verb that describes what you do or want to do – help, create, design, provide, lift, build, etc.
3.Add the “who.” Who specifically fits into your Higher Purpose?
4.Add in any details that help make it unique to you.
5.See if it fits and make changes until you are comfortable.
My Higher Purpose Statement:
I ___________________________________________
(Active Verb)(Who)(Details)
This is your Higher Purpose. It can be anything you want it to be, and you can change it at any time. Like a finely tailored suit, it needs to fit you and make you feel proud when you show it to others.
Some purpose statements that have been posted on the Internet include:
I will energize, connect, and inspire purpose in others.
I will enliven, encourage, and re-inspire the love of music for children in public schools.
I will create an inviting environment for shop visitors so they can leave behind their daily challenges for a few minutes.
Chapter 18
Your Higher Purpose and Work
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain
Most of us spend close to half our waking hours working. If we can understand how to tie our Higher Purpose to work or how to find purpose and meaning in our work, we can make half of our life that much better. Having a Higher Purpose helps you understand your “Why.” You wake up in the morning glad to see and experience another day. You may even be excited and enthusiastic about what is ahead for you. You go to work with a clear understanding of what you will get out of work and why you want to go. It is important that on most days, going to work is a mental “thumbs-up” vs. “thumbs-down.” Your work may not always be your Higher Purpose, but it often helps to provide your living wages so you can pursue your Higher Purpose outside of work.
Meaning connects work and happiness. People find meaning in their lives when they can leverage their strengths and experience their passions. Often their work enables these two to come together. People who find meaning in their work are more motivated, miss less work, are more engaged, feel empowered, have less stress, have better job satisfaction, and experience more personal fulfillment. Charles Kearns’ research on happiness and performance in the workplace revealed that one of the characteristic
s of the top-performing employees, what he termed as the Happy High Performers, was that they found purpose and meaning in their work.
Many people will tell you they work for the money. But when surveyed, most people say they work because of the relationships, autonomy, and learning. They work because they believe they have something to contribute, and work is a method to fund that contribution or an outlet for that contribution. Research by the iOpener institute revealed that employees under the age of 30 are willing to stay at a company or recommend that company to friends based more on how fulfilled they are at their jobs than on how much they get paid.
Dan Ariely did some interesting studies related to meaning and work. He paid participants to assemble Bionicles, which are Lego models that look like robots. Each participant was allowed to build and get paid for building as many Bionicles as they wanted. With one group, as each Bionicle was completed, the researchers would place the built Bionicle under the table and give the participant a new Bionicle to build. With the second group, the researchers would disassemble the Bionicle in front of the participant and give it back to them to reassemble. The second group assembled far fewer Bionicles than did the first group and rated the joy that came from assembly as very low. By disassembling the Legos in front of the participants, the researchers were able to suck the meaning and the enjoyment out of the task.
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” Viktor Frankl