In my last article, “When the mirror questioned me?”, I discussed why finding one’s ‘WHY’ – the purpose of life is of utmost importance. While I was receiving a lot of comments and inputs, I also happen to watch Sachin: A Billion Dreams and listened to Mark Zuckerberg’s address to the students of Harvard University. Both the men are exemplary in their respective fields and are the role models for generations to come.
What I realized that they may be very different from each other but one thing that is common among them is that their sense of purpose is higher than their sense of being. Finding the purpose of life leads us to a direction but that is not enough, one must continuously strive for excellence to achieve the highest order.
Sachin played for long 22 years and has many world records to his name but the dream which he cherished the most was lifting the world cup for his country. He proved that when patience and perseverance are practiced, how sweet is the fruit of success. Indian cricket went through its hardest times when the allegations of match fixing hovered around the cricketing world and many big cricketers came under the scanner. But that did not deter Sachin Tendulkar from his path rather he became more determined and dedicated. For him, Cricket was not a mere sport to achieve rewards and recognition, but a religion which he followed earnestly. He never gave up and always bounced back like a true champion.
The same thing happened with Mark Zuckerberg also. The journey from a harvard dropout to the world’s best entrepreneur was not an easy cakewalk. It required vision, inner strength and a greater sense of purpose. When Yahoo approached Facebook for the buyout, Mark refused but his whole team favored to be sold out. Mark was shattered as his vision was much bigger than others. His entire management team left but that didn’t demotivate and discourage him. He stood like a rock and build everything again and today facebook is the largest social media networking site. Mark Zuckerberg rightly said, “Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves and purpose is what creates true happiness.”
The journey, the path we choose for ourselves defines our destiny. We are the creators of our own destiny by the choices we make in our lives.
Whether we choose to live a normal life; a life we quietly decide to live that others have chosen for us and do less than what we are capable of. This is the choice that leads to an empty Life.
And the other choice? To do whatever we want to do and become all that what we possibly are. It would be a worthy challenge for us all to stretch to the full measure of our capabilities.
Our ultimate life objective should be to create as much as our talent and ability and desire will permit. But it is not that easy. One must strongly follow it and make it happen. Money is the by-product of any activity we follow passionately. If your actions are laden with a strong sense of purpose, results are bound to follow.
Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, Angela Merkel, Indira Nooyi and Richard Branson are the individuals with different styles and behaviors but they all share one key trait and that is strong sense of purpose. For them, the sense of purpose is greater than themselves; greater than status, earnings and traditional measures of ‘success.’
Studies show that having a sense of purpose is an increasingly strong predictor of happiness and a powerful antidote to depression. Research has found that ‘purpose driven’ people
are four times more likely to be engaged at work and 50% more likely to be leader and have 64% higher level of career satisfaction.
earn a higher income and have a higher net worth.
enjoy a 42% more contentment overall and live upto 7 years longer.
As human beings, we are more conditioned to fight for survival all the time, without giving a thought to the fact that once our basic needs and desires are met, greater wealth has the diminishing incremental impact on our happiness.
What we fail to realize that our sense of purpose can only be gratified by doing something beyond, either by eliminating a cause of suffering or by helping others enjoy greater success. But the important question that comes to mind is how to identify one’s sense of purpose for higher good and finally move into that direction sincerely and unapologetically.
First thing is We must channelize our energies and find out we are good at? What drives us and what makes us work in that direction.
Then following that path, we will come across many challenges and the best part would be what we have learned from those challenges. Our greatest learnings emerge from our biggest failures. These lessons ultimately help in developing the inner strengths and adds to deeper dimensions to us as human beings. We should never underestimate the gifts that lay beneath our hardest knocks.
We must identify what ignites a strong spark of emotion in us, as emotions particularly drive our actions. Emotions must be channelised in the strongest sense, so as to further develop into something higher and higher.
Once we realize our inner strength and potential, the next step is to find out what problem we are best at solving and which part of the community we can serve the best.
Hard work never goes unrewarded when the sense of purpose is identified!!!
Hare Krishna!!!
About Dr Gazal Goyal Bansal
Founder and CEO, Life Coach and Speaker, Dr. Gazal Bansal is a
Doctorate in Political Science, UGC (JRF), a Gold Medalist, Certified ISO 22000 Lead Auditor, a Licensed Practitioner of NLP from The Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (TM) & a Pranic Healer.
As a spiritual evangelist and a practical thinker, she is a radical enthusiast and a firm believer in the philosophy of conceptual pragmatism, logical reasoning, and the spiritual energy matrix. She is a staunch believer of the fact that before you speak, your energy speaks.