05 Sep What it’s all about Alfie: On Purpose and Meaning
Only the other day I was with my 10-year-old daughter and I asked her what would be the most useful thing she wanted to know?
She said, “I’d like to find my dharma.”
Not even knowing that she knew what a dharma was, I asked her how that would be helpful, and she said: “Well, then I would be able to plan out my life. I’d know what my purpose was, and what I was meant to be doing.” After I recovered from this, I said to her, “Well, let me see what I can do.”
Dharma or purpose gives you:
- a reason to get up in the morning
- an enviable energy to those that know it and can live it
- richness to our lives
- resilience in the difficult and tough times
- courage
- meaning to exist
I know my 10-year old is not alone. The great task for any of us in life is to find meaning. The true core of what makes us happy and motivated is knowing what we’re here for.
“You have been put on this earth to find and be your greatest self, to live out your purpose, and to do it with courage.”
If I reflect on all my clients over the past two decades, the one emergent theme is that they all wanted to do something of meaning, something of purpose. Those clients who have truly flourished, are the ones who either knew or found out what their purpose was. They did this by asking the right questions. They found a way to articulate their purpose, and then found a way to live a life where they could fulfil it. Oftentimes this takes courage. It requires the ability to recruit your values, to live your purpose. What my clients also all did, was get some help. None of them have done it alone.
Having a purpose will help you:
- filter your decisions.
- decide if you are where you’re meant to be.
- work out if you are doing what you’re meant to be doing.
When you know your purpose, it is much easier to do what you need to do, and you’re far less likely to get side-tracked. People who know their purpose exude it, in all that they do. People flourish when they have a sense of purpose.