Create your own purpose

- Has this ever happened to you? You're working late at night on a tight deadline somebody gave you, basically going through the motions. And you wonder, what am I even doing with my life? Well, I can't tell you what you're doing with your life, but together we can create a purpose that you find meaningful. What I've found in my hundreds of hours of coaching with clients is that purpose is very personal. There's no grand purpose that we should discover. Rather, we can create purpose for ourselves in our daily work lives. We do this when we connect with what's meaningful to each of us. Let's take the example of Anna. Anna works on the Apollo project. She drafted her purpose statement as, "I connect people, "so together we can accomplish the impossible." Anna found that her meaningful experiences were when she was working with or organizing a group of people to exceed what they thought possible. They showed up both at her work and her volunteer work. Here's a five step exercise I take my executive coaching clients through to help them create their purpose statement. It's important to download the exercise file, Your Purpose Statement. Step one: make a list of the people who matter. At work, in family, and community. This could be your boss, your coworkers, your friends and family. Make a list of about five to seven people. Now imagine I was to go talk to them and ask them what they value in you. Note this down. Step two: let's discover what energizes you. We will try a short guided visualization exercise. It's important that you're relaxed. We're activating your empathic brain. Close your eyes. Put your hand on your belly below your navel. Take a deep, slow breath, counting to seven while you inhale and feel that part of your belly rise. Let's start. Inhale. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Exhale. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Pause this and take a few more deep breaths if you need to relax some more. Keeping your eyes closed, remember a time when you felt energized, inspired, or in flow at work. You were in the moment, fully immersed in an activity, and time just seemed to fly by. You were contributing, creating, or being part of something meaningful, and it just felt good. I invite you to fully experience this with all of your senses. Pause the video and take as much time as you need. When you're done connecting with that peak experience, take a few minutes to write down what energizes you about it. You can come back and repeat this exercise as often as you'd like. Step three: find what's common between how you create value for others that also inspires and energizes you. Here's my example. When I ask my coaching clients about how I create value for them, they tell me that I'm able to help them understand themselves better: their strengths, their dreams, how they get in their own way. What energizes me is connecting in a deep way with others and helping them to be the best versions of themselves. So I've created my purpose statement as, "I connect deeply with others "to help them become transformational leaders "who make the world better for all." This shows up in my work, but it also shows up in how I interact with people. Step four: as you finish this exercise, draft a purpose statement for yourself. Step five: read through it and see what feelings come up for you. Do you feel inspired and energized by it? If not, keep working on it and perhaps find a trusted friend to help you. The root of the word "inspire" comes from the Latin word "to breathe". I hope that connecting with your purpose breathes aliveness into you, so you can be fully energized and find meaning in the work that you do.